That Old Feeling

Sidney Bechet (pronounced Be-shay), who looks like a sleepy Pullman porter, has been talking through a clarinet for more than 40 years. Last week, in a smoky joint called Jimmy Ryan's on Manhattan's brassy 52nd Street, Sidney was proving again that he is the best Dixieland two-beat jazzman anywhere on clarinet or soprano saxophone (which looks like an oversize clarinet).

Up front on the bandstand, his chunky bulk overlapping a fragile barroom chair, sat Sidney, his shiny golden saxophone in hand. Behind was Lloyd Phillips, grinning at an upright piano with its insides laid bare. A Neolithic-looking fellow named Freddie Moore stared glumly at his drums. Lloyd began patting it out and Freddie picked up the beat. Then old Sidney started. The other members of the trio had sense enough to stay out of Sidney's way.

First his music was slow and mournful, wailing and growling, on Dear Old Southland and Summertime. Then it was fast and happy, on New Orleans' oldtime South Rampart Street Parade. After that came soft, sentimental ballads, like Love for Sale.

Sidney Bechet, who is 49 but looks older, has delivered the same two-beat jazz over half the U.S., in London, Paris, Berlin and Moscow. With his pals, including Louis Armstrong, Jelly Roll Morton and Zutty Singleton, he has played it on nearly 100 records. Experts have named him on their all-star bands. But he hasn't made a fortune.

Sidney didn't like the big sleek bands where the money was: the musicians were trying to outblow each other. In 1933 he gave up and opened a tailor shop. Then came the hot jazz "revival," and all of a sudden schoolkids who had never seen Sidney knew all about him, from hearing the old records. He shut up his tailor shop and started to play again--usually in small groups, including one of his own called the "New Orleans Feetwarmers." Unlike his friend "Satchelmouth" Armstrong, he refused to front for bigtime, second-rate bands.

Pet It a Little. When he was six, Sidney had just picked up a clarinet and started playing. Nobody told him how, and he still can't read music well. He played his first date in New Orleans' red-light district when he was 10. He says "If I couldn't find the notes in the proper place, I made 'em myself. If you want a soft mellow tone, you have to take it easy and pet it a little. But you take an awful chance, you may not get anything." He still uses his own unorthodox fingering. "I seem to have a gift," he says. "If I hear a bar or a couple of notes of a melody I always seem to know what is next. I seem to go so fast that I don't bother with the music."

What is he trying to say? As Sidney Bechet tells it: "Three old men is trying to convince the world of something you've heard about. Who's going to explain it? All the other musicians is dead. As fast as you explain it, the radio comes on and tells you you're wrong." He wrinkles his forehead and says: "I'd like to bring back that old feeling of music which is nothing but life; that's what I'd like to bring back to life."

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