Sidney Bechet & The Clarence Williams Blue Five * 1923-1925

Accidents of history are a strange thing, but sometimes all we know hinges on them. Had Sidney Bechet not gotten deported from England in 1922, for instance, we might legitimately wonder how long it might have taken for him to make studio recordings, and whether his influence on the likes of a young Duke Ellington and Louis Armstrong would ever have taken place. Shortly after his deportation, he was hired by pianist and composer Donald Heywood as part of a traveling show called How Come. It was while on tour with this show that the young Duke Ellington heard him in Washington D.C., an experience that Duke recalled for the rest of his life.

"I have never forgotten the power and imagination with which he played," Duke said of the experience. [Chilton, pg.56] In 1962, Ellington was to expand upon this, saying:

"Yes, there were some very good Lester Young imitators. Lester was one of the very potent influences. Charlie Parker had plenty of imitators. Johnny Hodges too. And there was a time when there was hardly a tenor player in the world who didn't try to sound like Coleman Hawkins. But we mustn't leave out the greatest--Bechet! The greatest of all the originators, Bechet, the symbol of jazz! [...] I consider Bechet the foundation. His things were all soul, all from the inside. It was very, very difficult to find anyone who could really keep up with him. He'd get something organized in his mind while someone else wass playing, and then he'd play one or two choruses--or more--that would be just too much."  [Stanley Dance, The World of Duke Ellington, 10]  


Listening to the first recordings of Sidney Bechet immediately after hearing the King Oliver Creole Jazz Band recordings of 1923 or Louis Armstrong's Hot Fives and Sevens, while paying attention to the timeline, is a revolutionary experience for anyone raised on standard histories. Many year ago, when I finally discovered Bechet for myself, my reaction as a clarinetist and soprano sax player, was simply that trumpet and cornet players must have had the greatest PR agencies on earth working for them to lay any claim to originating jazz solo style! I mean no disrespect to the great Louis Armstrong, Bix Beiderbecke, or the others, but I can't hear how much any of what that they did, conceptually, hadn't been mastered by Bechet long before they added to it.

I don't really have the time to do an analysis of these important recordings, so will refer readers interested in further analysis to John Chilton's important study: Sidney Bechet: The Wizard of Jazz. Oxford University Press. NY: 1987. Here let me just mention some highlights as I see them:

There is a pride of place to "Wild Cat Blues", as it's our first Bechet recording and the first great jazz saxophone on record.

"Kansas City Man" shows a fully formed blues soloist: we don't need to hear him grow into the music or go through and apprenticeship phase.

"Achin' Heart Blues" documents a clarinet soloist more advanced than either Johnny Dodds or Leon Roppolo.

"Shreveport Blues" is not only a demonstration of Bechet's mastery of lyric playing, but his double time figurations behind the cornet aren't the sort we hear other players struggling to master: he already has the music entirely within his scope and is comfortably throwing down exactly what he wants.

His lightening runs behind the melody in "Old Fashioned Love" are all musically substantial and emotionally relevant -- in this way he stands out in contrast to other flashy players, including Frankie Trumbauer and Jimmie Noone on some of their virtuosic choruses.

On "House Rent Blues" he builds perfectly balanced solo through interconnected triplet breaks. On "Mean Blues" he shows his lyrical ability to create a counter melody more interesting than the original. I can't stress enough how superior he seems to compared to everyone else out there at the time these were made. The listener remains glued to his lines no matter who is playing the lead at the time. Perfect variation after variation unfolds until the end.

"Texas Moaner Blues" features his first work with a young Louis Armstrong, this time on clarinet and soprano sax. His solo concept is clearly far in advance of Armstrong at this point, and Satch seems to have learned a lot, when we check out later recordings.  

Bechet's next recording was backing blues singer Sippie Wallace on "Off and On Blues." His clarinet is rich,  powerful, and his blues fills and choruses are perfectly conceived.

On "Mandy Make Up Your Mind" we get a little soprano sax work comping, but the big solo is taken by Bechet on sarrusophone! And it sounds great!

On the last of the early Armstrong/Bechet sessions, "I'm a Little Blackbird Looking for a Bluebird", it is once again Bechet who is the true soloist in the band, building a commentary of baroque ornamentation around Armstrong's statements of the theme, and motivic response to the vocal chorus.

According to Fabrice Zammarchi's notes to  The Complete American Masters of Sidney Bechet, the last two Clarence Williams Blue Five sessions were behind vocalists on January 8, 1925. They feature typical accompaniment by Bechet and tasteful solos.

Shortly after this era, Bechet returned to Europe and wasn't documented again on American records for several years of the important roarin' '20s, which fixed the canon in many jazz fans' minds. We can be grateful that Clarence Williams took the opportunity to showcase his talents between 1923-1925, or history might have lost perspective on the man Ellington considered the foundation and eptiome of jazz itself.

King Oliver's Creole Jazz Band * The Complete 1923 Recordings * Off the Record * OTR-MM6-C2 (2006)

Disc One

Just Gone 

Canal Street Blues 

Mandy Lee Blues

I'm Going Away to Wear You Off My Mind 

Chimes Blues 

Weather Bird Rag 

Dipper Mouth Blues 

Froggie Moore 

Snake Rag 

Snake Rag 

Sweet Lovin' Man 

High Society Rag 

Sobbin' Blues 

Where Did You Stay Last Night 

Dipper Mouth Blues 

Jazzin' Babies Blues

Disc Two

Alligator Hop

Zulu's Ball

Workingman Blues

Krooked Blues

Chattanooga Stomp

London (Cafe) Blues

Camp Meeting Blues

New Orleans Stomp

Buddy's Habit

Tears

I Ain't Gonna Tell Nobody

Room Rent Blues

Riverside Blues

Sweet Baby Doll

Working Man Blues

Mabel's Dream

Mabel's Dream (take 1)

Mabel's Dream (take 2)

The Southern Stomps (take 1)

The Southern Stomps (take 2)

Riverside Blues

On April 5, 1923, jazz history was made in Richmond, Indiana, when Joe "King" Oliver and his Creole Jazz Band laid down the first five of thirty seven recordings they were to ultimately cut that year in various studios. These first were for Gennett, but the band would also record in Okeh's, Columbia's, and Marsh Laboratories's Chicago studios. All of the recordings are important for their historical value, and a good number of the tunes became permanent in the jazz repertoire, among them "Canal Street Blues", "Weather Bird Rag", "Snake Rag", "Sobbin' Blues", and "Dippermouth Blues (Sugarfoot Stomp)".

King Oliver's band is best known for introducing Louis Armstrong to the world outside of New Orleans. Satchmo was known to have said he wouldn't have left his successful playing career in the Crescent City for any other outfit than Joe's. The way the two cornet players worked together is the stuff of legend now, with their special means of communicating which harmonized riffs to dazzle the audience with during solo breaks, their rapport, and the overall brilliance of performance that helped form Armstrong into one of the most potent and important figures in the history of music. The rest of the band was notable as well, though, comprised of some of the most significant early jazz musicians on record, including Lil Hardin on piano, Baby Dodds on drums, Honore Dutrey on trombone, Johnny St. Cyr on banjo, and most importantly for readers of The Jazz Clarinet, Johnny Dodds, Jimmie Noone, and Buster Bailey on clarinet.

Approaching these recordings without preconceptions, especially the historical weight of who Louis Armstrong was to become, the cornetist's perspective seems a bit exaggerated, actually. The soloing star of the show, to my ear (admittedly biased) is Johnny Dodds. Because the twin cornets of Oliver and Armstrong are muted, and because the clarinet seems to have been balanced or focused on properly in relation to the microphone (which was not always the case in Dodds's career), these remain some of the finest examples of Dodds's playing, and New Orleans style clarinet, on record.

His tone is full and rich, and when he reaches for that special piercing quality he had, it never loses strength and body. His solo breaks are confident and directed; his accompanying arpeggios so strong that one could be forgiven for thinking these tunes were movements of a concerto written for him. Taken as a whole they show the strength and depth of Dodds's playing at this point in his career. The contrast between his richness of tone and the lighter playing style of Leon Roppolo of the New Orleans Rhythm Kings or Jimmie Noone (on "Chattanooga Stomp", the one tune credited to him with King Oliver's band) is striking, and serves to really show us why Benny Goodman would have singled him out as having one of the best tones of the clarinetists in Chicago of the 1920s. The October 16, 1923 session at Columbia Studios in Chicago are the only multiple recordings by another clarinetist with the Creole Jazz Band,  this time Buster Bailey.  Bailey is impressively similar to Dodds in approach, with a substantial, rich sound, but the overall mastery of style and comfort with the ensembles isn't quite at Dodds's level.

In the years that followed, Dodds was to gain perhaps even greater fame as a member of Louis Armstrong's Hot Five and Sevens. On those records he impresses as being a soloist who could follow or precede Armstrong without musical quality being lost. But on these earlier recordings with King Oliver, it is Dodds who strikes me as the great soloist in the band.  We can hear why Lil Hardin, once she became Lil Armstrong, would hire Johnny Dodds for her husband's most important recording dates as a bandleader.  

This particular reissue from Off the Record in 2006 was an attempt to transfer, without noise reduction from original discs. They took great pride in their work, and the booklet has extensive technical information about the exact speed of transfer, styluses used, and grade of original source record. All of that will be of interest to audiophiles and recording engineers who have an interest in future transfer work. In the notes, it's clear that they hoped to get as clean and original a sound as they could, without adding reverb or cutting out too much sound. The results are quite good.

Five good reeds, of course.