Book Review : Tom Sancton * Song for My Fathers: A New Orleans Story in Black and White

Jazz clarinetists are particularly fortunate when it comes to autobiographies. Contributions to the genre include some of the most important players in the history of the instrument: Benny Goodman, Artie Shaw, Barney Bigard, Woody Herman, Pete Fountain, and Mezz Mezzrow have each published volumes, and at least one of them—Sidney Bechet’s Treat It Gentle—ought to be considered a masterpiece of American literature in its own right. Among the more recent books written by jazz clarinetists, however, is an extremely important memoir by Tom Sancton: New Orleans native, one time Paris Bureau chief for Time magazine, and trad jazz clarinetist.

Sancton’s book is entitled Song for My Fathers: A NewOrleans Story in Black and White (Other Press, New York, 2006). Beginning with the New Orleans jazz funeral of Doc Celestin on December 18, 1954, we’re given more than a glimpse into a crucial two decades of Crescent City history, unfolding through the eyes of young Tom Sancton. Son of a reporter and aspiring novelist, whose mother was a southern belle, he is thrown into the world of Creole and black jazz musicians during the foundation of Preservation Hall. His perspective is unique: a white kid in that milieu, at a point in time that will never be repeated—when musicians like George Lewis, Creole George Guesnon and Sweet Emma Barrett pioneered the early jazz revival.

The book is masterful, combining many genres seamlessly. A coming of age story, a chronicle, an analysis of oral tradition music making, with the flair and page-turning quality of a novel, this is simply one of the best books about jazz, and about New Orleans, I’ve ever read. Through much of it, Sancton’s adolescence on display as he learns to play clarinet, falls in love for the first time, and tries to balance his passion for jazz with school and other obligations. We overhear him taking music lessons from Lewis and Guesnon; in the process becoming privy to their struggles, ambivalences, and hesitations, as they were finally showcased and given a share of success for the music they helped pioneer and preserve. Throughout the book, the figure of his father looms large: the younger Sancton’s admiration, then disillusionment, with his father is skillfully and poignantly told, settling into a sober middle aged reassessment. None of this interferes with the musical aspect of the story—instead, like the quality of New Orleans jazz itself, Sancton’s life and the music become inseparable.

Like Sidney Bechet’s autobiography, this written demonstration of the life becoming the music, and the two flowing in and out of each other, is the most remarkable aspect of the book. Anyone who seriously involves themselves with New Orleans jazz must eventually come to this conclusion: it is the life one lives, and the depth of one’s soul, that must come through the music. There is no faking it. And Tom Sancton fakes nothing: you can smell the Zatarain’s, feel the humidity, taste the danger of bullets being thrown during a parade, get lost in the tunes—you can experience with him a type of hero worship turning bitter, then mellowed, then resolving into something like pure gratitude. I picked this volume up on the recommendation of a friend from NOLA, and at first wasn’t so sure what to think. It ended up giving me a far deeper appreciation of music, life, and the relationship of the two.

[ This review first published in the September 2015 edition of the EARLYJAS Rag ]

The Autobiography of Benny Goodman * The Kingdom of Swing * 1939

It's a generally annoying habit of celebrities to publish an autobiography just after their first flush of major success, resulting in little more than commercial fluff. The genre is cliché-ridden: glossies in a middle section, often of more interest than the text, optimism writ large, and celebrity itself celebrated. America likes these stories, and rarely wants volume two, the sordid discontents, which generally follow.

There are a couple of major exceptions to this rule in the history of jazz clarinet autobiography, most notably Sidney Bechet's Treat it Gentle, which was compiled from interview tapes and published posthumously, and Artie Shaw's The Trouble With Cinderella--a challenging book questioning the premises of fame, fortune, and their relation to music.

Goodman's The Kingdom of Swing was co-written with Irving Kolodin, and published in 1939, at the zenith of Goodman's popularity. Benny himself was still in his late 20s as it was being written, and so this book bears all the hallmarks of commercial fluff. It therefore comes as a great surprise that it isn't.

From the dedication page reading "To the Memory of My Father, David Goodman" forward, Benny talks quite a bit about his family. His father is depicted as the reason he got into music in the first place, due to his love of it and their poverty--a type of poverty that made free concerts at Douglas Park, and affordable lessons at the synagogue, particularly attractive. If America likes rags to riches stories, this is certainly a good one. As Benny wrote:

My memory of those early days is hazier than that of most kids, because we moved around a lot. But I can remember a time when we lived in a basement without heat during the winter, and a couple of times when there wasn't anything to eat. I don't mean much to eat. I mean anything. That isn't an experience you forget in a hurry. I haven't ever forgotten it.

The thumbnail sketches of Benny's childhood are deftly chosen and portrayed, rendered in admirably true voice by Kolodin. He describes the now famous time the young Goodman went down to Kelelah Jacob Synagogue with his brothers to pick out instruments. Benny, being the youngest among them, ended up with the clarinet.

I remember going down to the place for the first time with Harry, who was about twelve, and Freddy who was a year older than me. This was in 1919, when I was ten. Harry was the biggest, and he got a tuba. Since Freddy was bigger than me, he was given a trumpet. The only thing left for me, the smallest, was the clarinet. There have been stories that I went for the clarinet in a big way because it had shiny keys and looked pretty. There might be something in that, but I know that if I had been twenty pounds heavier and two inches taller, I would probably be blowing a horn now instead of a clarinet.

Goodman's description of Franz Schoepp, and his influence, are more forthcoming and gracious than many jazz musicians tend to be, regarding a teacher's influence.

About this time, I started to take clarinet lessons from a man who probably did more for me musically than anybody I ever knew. He was a German named Franz Schoepp, who once taught at the Chicago Musical College. He was quite an old man when I studied with him, and he died only a few years ago at the age of 77.

[...] Buster Bailey, the fine Negro clarinet player [studied] with Schoepp about the time I did. Schoepp was a small man quite white-haired when I studied with him., and he used to look over the top of his glasses at me. He was very strict about details, and never allowed a mistake to pass without being corrected. For a while Buster came for lessons on the same day I did, and we'd play duets, while Schoepp stood over us, counting time and watching that we played correctly. Another very good Negro musician who studied with Schoepp was Jimmy Noone, who still plays a lot of clarinet. As a matter of fact, one of the first things I heard about Schoepp was that he gave lessons to anybody, regardless of color, and I guess that sort of impressed me, because there was plenty of prejudice about such things, even in Chicago. If you remember, they had those terrible race riots there only a little while before, in 1919.

The two years I spent with Schoepp was the only real teaching I ever had, but I went through the regular books like Baerman [sic], Klose, and Cavallini with him, and got the foundation for a legitimate clarinet technic. After all, the most any teacher can give you is a foundation--after that, you're on your own.

This is one of the things that makes this book so interesting: Benny didn't use it as an opportunity to build a mythos--he discusses the hard work without exaggerating it; gives credit where credit is due, and shares more than a little wisdom along the way for aspiring musicians.

His mention of other clarinetists is almost always positive--including a gratuitous nod to rival Artie Shaw at one point. But the most important thoughts concerning jazz clarinetists occur early on, when discussing his formation. The influence of Leon Roppolo on Goodman is of historical interest, and best expressed here:

My idea of a great player...was Leon Rapollo [sic], who was playing at the Friars' Inn then with the New Orleans Rhythm Kings, and I did my best to sound like him. I never heard him play in person more than once, but there were plenty of good records to study up on.

Benny's preference for Roppolo's approach to playing had a direct influence upon his career and the future of jazz clarinet. In terms of his career, it helped land the breakthrough gig of his early career--playing with Ben Pollack. Pollack was somewhat of an enigma, and even a tragic figure in the history of jazz. He had an eye for talent, and even an ability to develop that talent as a bandleader, but inevitably those players he recruited would find far greater musical success only after leaving his ensembles. It was his love of the New Orleans Rhythm Kings's sound and approach that made him hire a young Benny Goodman.

Benny's youthful hero worship of Roppolo lead to him playing slouched in his chair--almost on his back--as 'Rap' had done. This, and Benny's ability to play like Roppolo, impressed Pollack enough to offer him the gig, which eventually took Goodman to both coasts.

For the history of jazz clarinet, the connection is equally important, as it links the first great recorded soloist--Leon Roppolo of New Orleans--to the next generation's most important jazz musician, Benny Goodman of Chicago. There is a natural rivalry, especially in the world of jazz clarinet, between New Orleans and Chicago, stoked by the fact that many of the most famous sons of NOLA did their gigging and living in Chicago. The artistic link between Goodman and Roppolo, however, demonstrates a kinship between styles, and the natural growth of an artform. Sidney Bechet once commented that there was no real difference between New Orleans and Chicago style, and Goodman's story helps corroborate this understanding: Chicago style was a development of New Orleans style, not an opposing force.

This also highlights the importance of Leon Roppolo to multiple branches of jazz history. His influence extended through Goodman to most mainstream jazz clarinet that has followed, but also back to his native New Orleans--both Irving Fazola and Pete Fountain's playing bore a strong family resemblance to Rap.

This digression aside, Benny's autobiography has a good amount of quotable material on other topics.
Here he is on conductors:

With some conductors I got along well, but I had trouble with some of the others, especially when it came to doing jazz, and they would tell me how to handle something on sax or clarinet. That rubbed me the wrong way for two reasons: I hadn't grown up in the habit of following somebody else's idea of what the music meant--I had knocked around the business, at that time, for almost ten years and figured I had a way of playing the instrument that was my own, and I wanted to stick to that way. Then, too, some of these conductors didn't know their stuff.

On other peoples' opinions:

Well, lots of musicians and leaders have had their say about me, just as I've expressed my opinion about a lot of fellows I've worked with.

On growing up poor:

One game we played pretty much all the time , though, was cops and robbers. A funny thing about this was that the cops always got the worst of it, because in that kind of a neighborhood, the cops represented something that never did much for the poor people.

I grew up with pretty much of a resentment against the way folks like my father and mother had to work, trying to take care of a big family, making a go of things with most of the breaks against them. Even in the hottest part of the summer they never could get anything like a rest or a vacation.

I was no great shakes in school. I gave more time to music than I did to books, and, like all kids, did the most in what I was interested. Only in my case it didn't happen to be sports, but music. What I might have become if I didn't play an instrument--I never stopped to think about that. From the time I was old enough to think about working, music was in my hand, and I guess I grew up with it. As a matter of fact, judging from the neighborhood where I lived, if it hadn't been for the clarinet I might just as easily have been a gangster.

On the first clarinet he ever owned:

...[was] a swell Martin that my sister Ethel helped me to get. She was also responsible for my first "tux," which I needed for work. At that time she was working for a clothing firm (Kuhn, Nathan and Fisher) as a bookkeeper, and I went down there to see about a suit. But I was so small (what she called a "peanut") that none of the ready-made suits fitted me. So they made one to order for me, for which she paid back by working extra. That was the first tuxedo in the Goodman family, a very big thrill.

On growing up in a big family:

Growing up in a big family naturally put us kids on our own a lot more than if there had been fewer of us. Ida was already married; Harry, Ethel, and the rest were out working, so we didn't see so much of each other except on Sundays. But occasionally things happened that brought us together. For example the time during the summer when Mom discovered there was another baby coming. The youngest one, Gene, was then about six, and Mom didn't have any equipment in the house for the next one. So one night after I had got my week's pay for the job (about fifty dollars) she took the money and got the things she needed. It made me pretty proud to help out that way in preparing for the arrival of the baby of the family--Jerome.

At fourteen I was able to bring home some money regularly, and help out with things which was even better.

The book is filled with interesting notes on a bygone era, as seen from one its most important musicians. The centrality of Benny's family to the motivation for his career, and his background of extreme poverty (but also extreme talent) give a different perspective on his life story, not always sympathetically rendered in more common histories of jazz.

Barney Bigard on Everyone

Few jazz clarinetists have amassed a comparable resume to that of Barney Bigard, whose career stretched from the 1920s through the 1970s. Born and raised in New Orleans during the crucial transition to the recorded era, and a student of the legendary Lorenzo Tio, Bigard went on to work in what many consider to be the most important of the Chicago-based New Orleans bands (King Oliver), moving to arguably the most creative big band ever assembled (Duke Ellington), before rounding out his triptych with Louis Armstrong's All-Stars.

Fortunately for us, beyond his formidable discography with each of those legendary ensembles (and his own as a leader), Bigard left us some important interviews and a slender, yet informative autobiography. His opinions on early New Orleans clarinetists and everyone else are presented in a clear, concise manner, without frills or subterfuge, and make for an interesting perspective. Many other clarinetists have weighed in on opposite sides of the opinions presented here (Goodman disagreed with Bigard about Frank Teschemacher, for instance), but these thoughts are worth remembering, if only to prevent jazz clarinetists from falling into a rigid orthodoxy of opinion.

All page numbers are from With Louis and the Duke, Oxford University Press, 1986, unless otherwise noted.


on Alphonse Picou:

I was really disappointed with Picou and in later years I found out that he became famous just for that little part in High Society, and in fact he got that from one of Sousa's marches. That was all that made him famous. [13]


on Lorenzo Tio:

On the other hand, the first time that I heard Lorenzo Tio I was not disappointed at all. I heard him on a parade playing his A clarinet. He knocked me out right from the very start. My uncle promised me that he would take me to his house, as he knew him, and ask him to give me lessons. [13]

I started to watch for Tio, where he would play and all. I followed him all over the city of New Orleans. Anytime he would play a parade I would be right there listening to what he was making on that clarinet. Wherever he played I'd go and stand around the bandstand and all my listening was to the clarinet. I didn't care about the rest of it. If I heard a riff of something else that I liked , then I would hum it in my head, and keep humming it. I'd leave the dance and keep humming it until I got home and no matter what time it was when I got home I would get out the horn and try to pick out the notes. I would keep on until I got it down right.

Tio was at that time the best damned clarinet player in the city... [15]

I found out that Albert Nicholas had been taking lessons from Tio before me. Albert was really far advanced and a fine clarinetist. Funny, although we both had the same tutor, we don't have the same style at all. He was also teaching Omer Simeon, and there's one of the real unsung clarinet players.  [16]

[Tio] was a great reader [of written music], even by today's standards. He had real fast execution and he could improvise--play jazz in other words--on top of all the rest. He would even make his own reeds out of some kind of old cane. Yes, Lorenzo Tio was the man in those days in the city of New Orleans. [17]


on Johnny Dodds:

I know for a fact that [Kid] Ory could never read, and Johnny Dodds couldn't either...to tell the truth, when I heard him he never did impress me much. [11]

He was a little what you might call "limited." But what he played was good. He by no means ever impressed me like Jimmie Noone did. [38]


on Jimmie Noone:

I really like his style. In fact, I stole a whole lot from Jimmie. While he was playing with Charlie Cooke he mostly played harmony parts or whatever they had written on paper for him, but after at The Nest he played mostly lead all night because the band was so small.  
     

on Pee Wee Russell, Frank Teschemacher, and jazz critics:

I used to buy DownBeat magazine all the time but once I read that Pee Wee Russell had won a DownBeat poll. That did it. I never read that magazine again. Guys like him and Frank Teschemacher aren't clarinet players to me. But then I suppose even in those days critics were just as ignorant as they are today. I never, ever, played to please the critics. Not once. I never really cared about them at all. Even today I still don't. I mean you can pick up a music paper and read them knocking all of the old-style New Orleans musicians that are currently out there doing their thing. [126] 


on Edmond Hall:

Edmond was a real fine clarinet player, and in fact was a more forceful player than I was. We were buddies because I had met him years ago in New York, but without a doubt he was the "cheapest" man I knew. He used to live in a place where he had to walk up so many flights of stairs to get up there, just to save rent. When Edmond got into the band [Louis Armstrong's All-Stars] they were going on a tour of France so I asked him to pick me up a couple of boxes of reeds that they make over there. He said that he would, and so when the band came back they played out here in California and I went to see them. Edmond said, "Man. I got your reeds." You know that he wouldn't turn loose that little box of twenty-five reeds until I had given him the money. He was like the duck's ass. Water tight. [124]


on New Orleans musicians:

To me it was just beautiful to see those old guys, at their age, coming out on stage and doing a lot of things the youngsters can't do. Most people forget that those guys are the foundation of jazz music. They started it, but naturally everything progresses as it goes along. It's like the Wright brothers' plane. Now you could throw a rock  and knock it out of the sky, but...give them credit for building the first. [125-26]

A lot of those old characters from New Orleans think that anything they do is alright just because they're from New Orleans. They think they can walk on your head if they want to, but it just isn't that way. [88]


on George Lewis:

[In the old days] I never heard of George Lewis. I heard him play once at the Beverly Cavern and once again when Louis Armstrong and I went to see him in New York. This time in New York he was so sick he couldn't play at all. I heard he was a nice enough guy but as to being a legend that people built him into? Willie Humphrey was more of a legend than George Lewis. [88-89]


on Musical Style:

The only thing I say is to play your own self. Don't be copying someone else. Try to create a style of your own and then stick to it. Any of the big names have their own style. You can always tell a Louis Armstrong or a Teagarden or a Hodges, but when you get down amongst the lesser ones it's hard to tell them apart. I tell all the young guys I meet, "It's good to take influence from someone, but don't play note for note like them. You'll never make it in this racket. Play your own way." [126]


on being a Jazz Clarinetist:

I never figured myself as being a "temperamental" musician. I put myself down as easy going and I think that helped my career a lot. I was never one to care about who had top billing, or who played the last act. Some guys, that was all they thought about. I just wanted to be good at what I did. I wanted to get jobs that were in my category. I didn't want to be no symphony man. If I had devoted all my time to that I wouldn't have been a jazz clarinetist. I did want to be a good clarinetist though. Just to read enough music to get me by. That's the way I always felt. I never thought of myself as an artist, or anything like that. Just as a good jazz player that always tried to do his best. Of course I try to live up to my own standards of playing. Sometimes it materializes, sometimes it doesn't, but I keep trying anyway. I would hate to say I was all set on the horn. There is always something more to learn. And you can't stay away from music for long--at least I couldn't.  [126-27]


on Artie Shaw:

What Shaw did to begin with was to make the clarinet sound unusually beautiful in the upper register. He wasn't a low-register guy, but he was more creative than Benny Goodman. Benny did all the popular tunes and standards, but Shaw made up his own and played them so well. The guy could execute like mad. Benny could also execute, and had much more drive than Artie, but I like Artie for the things that are almost impossible to do on the clarinet. [from Stanley Dance's The World of Duke Ellington. p.88]

To me the greatest player that ever lived was Artie Shaw. [quoted in Gene Lees notes to Artie Shaw: A Legacy, p. 5]

on Benny Goodman, Buster Bailey, and Jimmy Hamilton:

Benny is a hell of a clarinetist, really great, but he's not the easiest guy to get along with. [111]

I thought Buster Bailey was one of the fastest clarinetists there ever was. He had his own style, and I could always tell his playing. He was a good musician with good execution, but he didn't have the jazz drive or the soul in there like Goodman and some other guys. In other words it didn't have the oomph to it. Where Buster was great was in a studio or a show. That's the same way I figure with Jimmy Hamilton. He's a terrific clarinetist, but he doesn't have that soul to go with what he's doing. He should have been in classical music. He's got that studio tone to begin with, and he plays straight and fluent, but it's not jazz. [Dance, 89]

on Omer Simeon:

Omer Simeon was a fine musician, an unsung hero, and a great clarinet player. [Dance, 89]

Artie Shaw on the Pitfalls of Academia

Those familiar with Artie Shaw's biography know that one of the defining characteristics of his career was a dissatisfaction with the life of a gigging musician. His various retirements from the music business have been well documented--usually explained within the framework of his literary goals. Less well known is that, when Shaw was still a young man making his way through the New York studio scene, he was deeply attracted to the notion of an academic career. He was dissuaded from doing so by an assistant professor of biology, who encouraged him to continue making a living in music.

[He] pointed out, in an academic career such as I had in mind, instead of achieving any real freedom from preoccupations with petty detail, I would only bog down in more petty details. "You'll find yourself, some twenty years from now, worrying about money, worrying about trying to meet your annual expenses on a salary no self respecting plumber would be willing to work for. On top of that you'll be all snarled up with campus and faculty politics, disillusioned with teaching, because for every one student who wants to learn anything you'll run up against five thousand who are only there for the sake of a degree by which they hope to better themselves financially, and in general you'll wind up a tired, cynical, disgusted old man, wondering why the devil you ever got yourself into such a cul-de-sac to begin with."

At first I tried to argue with him. "But it is a secure life, isn't it?" I insisted. "And in it a fellow can find time to write and think and work toward some constructive end, can't he?"

"Oh sure--I suppose it's secure enough, as far as lives go," he told me. "But it's kind of a living death, too. And as far as constructive ends are concerned, you're better off trying to earn some money in your own profession, where you've got a good chance of doing that, and then figuring out what you want to do about constructive ends. At least you'll have some freedom of choice that way, whereas once you get yourself involved in the life you'll have to live as a teacher, you'll soon find yourself so disillusioned you'll be glad to get away from anything connected with what you do for a living."

I still wasn't convinced, however. I went to his laboratory with him several times, and when he showed me some of the fascinating work he was doing I was more convinced than ever. Finally, though, he managed to show me graphically what he meant.

What he did was to take me to a faculty "tea." After that, I began to see the light. 

One other thing occurred at about this same time, which had it's effect on my ultimate decision.

I was taking a course in American history.  [...] [The] instructor was one of the most narrow-minded, dull-witted, unimaginative, uninspired, insensitive, and downright stupid hacks I have ever run into in my entire life--not only in "his" field, but in any field I have ever even brushed up against.

The blow-off came after I had taken my examination for this "course." He flunked me. It all resolved itself down to one question in the exam. [...] The exam had asked for "three causes of the War Between the States." Although the answers I had given were all correct enough...they were not the ones "in the book"--meaning the particular textbook used for that particular course. [...]

"But aren't there any other books you're willing to recognize as having any authority?" I demanded.

"I don't believe," he said primly, "it is the place of the student to inform his instructor as to which are or are not proper sources."

"That isn't what I was trying to do," I said. "I'm only saying that there ought to be some room for further or even other causes than those given in that one text we've been studying."

"I'm sorry," he replied, more primly than ever. "I'm afraid my decision must stand. Your answer may be correct according to other sources than the ones I accept. In that case, I can only suggest your taking this course with some other instructor."

I walked out of there, and out of the entire Academic Life as well...

Now, that one silly affair by itself would not have been enough to cause such a decision. I knew enough not to blame all instructors for my misfortune in getting tangled up with this one cretin. The point is, this came as the culmination of my gradually increasing discontent with a great many such people I had met during the past couple of years.

So that took care of that.

[ from The Trouble With Cinderella, pp.276-279]


What an irony: to think that we might not have some of the greatest jazz ever recorded, had Artie Shaw simply had a decent History prof ! As J.R.R. Tolkien (who spent his entire career in academic life) might point out, even Gollum has his role to play.

Artie Shaw on Anti-Semitism

Among jazz clarinet autobiographies, there are two which I consider indispensable. The first, Sidney Bechet's Treat it Gentle, has already been reviewed here. In it are some of the most important observations concerning the history of jazz, performance, and even the nature of music itself. The second, Artie Shaw's The Trouble with Cinderella, is an altogether different kind of book. Rambling, autobiographical and discursive, it is a text that yields its content by wrestling. Shaw was not the natural writer he'd hoped to be, but he was undoubtedly a real intellectual, which can make him seem strange in a culture so often dominated by pseudo-intellectualism.

To analyze this book would be almost as difficult as to analyze Shaw himself, which was a task too difficult for anyone who ever knew him. So for this post, I've decided to quote from Artie's thoughts on anti-Semitism: a topic which unfortunately never seems to become as culturally irrelevant as it ought to be. For those who have not thought in depth on the subject, or haven't felt the direct results of it, Shaw's autobiography gives us a window into not only its effects on a musical genius, but the era he lived in, which bore the immediate seeds of our own.



[...] I had never given much thought to such matters as being "different" from other kids I knew. As far as I was concerned, kids were kids, some were bigger than others, some were boys, and some were girls. [After moving to New Haven], I suddenly had to unlearn any previous notions I may have had about myself and other kids. Because there was this one thing about myself, this "difference" that set me apart.

I learned what it means to be a Jew...

[...]

No Jewish child, no matter how carefully protected, can avoid at least a few head-on collisions with this thing called anti-Semitism; and as to how any individual child will react, or how hard it throws him and how weird a character-malformation he may develop as a result of his first contact with this particular type of stupidity--well, your guess is as good as any. All I can do is explain how it worked in my own case.

[...]

All I could figure out was that there must be something about me that was different, alien, strange, and (worst of all) undesirable--that is, from other kids' point of view. I'm sure I wouldn't have recognized the word anti-Semitism if I'd tripped over it. I had no idea what the words "kike" or "sheeny" meant, for I had never heard them before. As for being called "Christ-killer"--all I can tell you is that up to that time the word Christ had never been used in my presence except as a something I vaguely recognized as a "swear-word." 

[...]

I drew into a little shell, a coat of armor of outer toughness, inside which I tried to conceal my feelings. In other words, from the moment I realized that my being Jewish was something to be jeered at for, called names for, or hated and excluded for--from that moment I was no longer the same kid I had been before. And not only not the same kid, but changed in a certain, specific way, and in a way that I don't believe could possibly have occurred otherwise.

To put it as bluntly as I can, I believe in all honesty and with as much awareness as I can bring to bear on it from where I stand right now, that this one lesson had more to do with shaping the course and direction of my entire life than any other single thing that has happened to me, before or since. (...) I had to resign myself to what even at that age I knew to be the plain truth: that for no reason I could understand, and certainly through no choice of my own (for how could there have been a choice when I had not even been aware of an issue?)--there I was, a Jew, whatever that meant, and, whether I liked it or not, a Jew I would remain for the rest of my life until the day I died. [pp.23-26.]

I've been told a number of times that there has been great progress made. But somehow I find it difficult to believe. Maybe it's just naivete on my part. But it seems to me that when a disease like [anti-Semitism] can reach such proportions as we've seen it reach within the past two decades--when some six million human beings, men, women, and children, are murdered, raped, tortured, experimented on like guinea pigs, herded together like cattle (but not treated like cattle because cattle is valuable property), gassed, burnt in charnel ovens, thrown like dead dogs into lime pits, branded and made into hideous skeletonlike caricatures of human beings, before finally being "mercifully" permitted to die and put an end to the whole miserable sport--when all this can take place before our eyes  and you can still to this very moment find any number of well-fed, prosperous citizens going around thinking to themselves, and quite often saying right out loud (for it's a free country, isn't it?) that after all Hitler was right about one thing anyway--that same old puke-making one thing--well, I ask you, what is a guy supposed to think and feel? I don't believe you'll have any great deal of difficulty in understanding a very small amount of mild bitterness. To say nothing of a slight disgust at the idea of having to be a member of a species which can behave the way it quite often does and continues to call itself "human"!

I am not deluding myself with any notion of making any Great Contribution in this matter of minority persecution. Bitterness and anger, justifiable or otherwise, cannot help much, practically speaking. Certainly there is good and sufficient reason for both bitterness and anger. I have had my share of both these emotions. But I know they're of no use. In fact, I have seen them work to the detriment of those who use them in the fight against this disease; particularly where they lead victims of discrimination into their own measures of discrimination against those who discriminate--an even more subtle form of discrimination, a kind of counter persecution, inevitably doomed to failure as a method of dealing with the evil. Minorities cannot afford to blind themselves in their fight against persecution. No man can last long as a fighter if he's kidding himself that he can afford anger--and if you don't believe that, ask any professional.   [pp.34-35]


These words are as sadly relevant now as they were in 1952. That Shaw had the courage to share these specific wounds and reflections is a very rare thing in the history of jazz. The last paragraph quoted seems to me, in fact, a Great Contribution in its own way, reminding us of a principle not often enough detailed in our public discourse and obsessive social planning: hate cannot be snuffed out by hate. Shaw continues:

...it seems to me only natural that if we think about it at all we have to hold ourselves, each one of us, at least partially accountable for the mess. For it is, after all, our own mess. We, collectively, as a species, made it."

We might as well each start cleaning it up now, in whatever small ways we can, wherever we find ourselves.  

Treat It Gentle: The Autobiography of Sidney Bechet

To this day, even the very name of Sidney Bechet evokes intense images and stories. Feisty, explosive, operatic, mellifluous; his blazing, intelligent eyes staring back at us from photos: we know all the stories of his temper and his prodigal career. If Bix Beiderbecke was the prototypically alienated young man with a horn; the distanced aloof genius; Bechet was the first of the unyielding, spiritually restless reedmen who found themselves at odds with the crass commercialism of the music business. His abandonment and intense re engagement of a musical career, multiple times, was to echo through jazz history in the careers of Artie Shaw and Sonny Rollins. Likewise, his expatriation to Europe became the template for later luminaries such as Dexter Gordon and Kenny Dorham.

We know this Bechet: Bechet the misunderstood, under appreciated icon. We also know the Bechet Duke Ellington referred to as the "symbol of jazz", preeminent over even Louis Armstrong as the foundation of jazz itself.

We can listen to all the old recordings, hearing a sound that shakes us internally, sometimes soaring lyrically, sometimes shouting, often pushing the bounds of whatever group he is playing with: Bechet the master; Beethovenian Bechet.

Then there is the Bechet of the mugshot. Bechet the violent, who got in a gun fight at rush hour in Paris. Bechet the deported. This is the Bechet of the Documentary Videos: Bechet of the Ten O'Clock News.

But there is another Bechet to know: a reflective, older Bechet. This is the Sidney Bechet described by Desmond Flower as "warm, wise, kind and gentle." A Bechet whose words rolled like warm poetry, who humbly sought to place his journey in perspective of the music. This is the Sidney Bechet whose wisdom radiates from what might be the finest autobiography of any musician, and an essential work of American literature.

To write a real analysis of Treat it Gentle would require a book length study longer than the brilliant text itself. Some quotes here will have to suffice as an introduction to a work that has the potential to change our understanding of America, jazz, and the nature of music itself. From the very beginning of the book, he sets out to shift our understanding, to give us something (the concept of giving, united to music, is a central aspect of Bechet's philosophy of music). So I'll start there:

You know there's people, they got the wrong idea of Jazz. They think it's all that red-light business. But that's not so. And the real story I've got to tell, it's right there. It's Jazz. What it is--how it come to be what it is.

People come up to me and they ask me 'Are you going to play Tin Roof Blues?' They ask me, 'What's bebop?' or what do I think of some record Louis Armstrong put out. But if I was to answer that, I'd have to go a long way back. [pg. 1]


On what Jazz is:

Bechet was once told by an enthusiastic man in Paris, "This music is your music."

But, you know, no music is my music. It's everybody's who can feel it. You're here...well, if it's music, you feel it--then it's yours too. You've got to be in the sun to feel the sun. It's that way with music too.

The man persisted, however. He wanted to know what would happen when men like Bechet passed on.

..you know, Jazz isn't just me. It isn't just any one person who plays it. There'll always be Jazz. It doesn't stop with me, it doesn't stop anywhere. You take a melody...people can feel a melody...as long as a there's a melody there's Jazz, there's rhythm. [pg 2]

But here's what I really mean. All God's children got a crown. My race, their music...it's their way of giving you something...of showing you how to be happy. It's what they've got to make them happy. The spiritual, that's sad; but there's a way in it that's happy too. We can be told: 'Maybe you don't belong in Heaven, and you haven't got a place on this earth; you're not in our class, our race.' But somewhere, God's children wear a crown, and someday we're going to wear ours too. [pg 3]



On inspiration and the reason to play music:

The real reason you play...it's just because you're able to play, that's all.

Inspiration, that's another thing. The world has to give you that, the way you live in it, what you find in your living. The world gives it to you if you're ready. But it's not just given...it has to be put inside you and you have to be ready to have it put there. All that happens to you makes a feeling out of your life and you play the feeling. But there's more than that. There's the feeling inside the music too. And the final thing, it's the way that life-feeling comes from in you...even if you start playing a number from a love-feeling, it has to become something else before you're through. That love-feeling has to find the music-feeling. And then the music can learn how to get along with itself.

But drinking and reefers and all that stuff, most times they just mess up all the feeling you got inside yourself and all the feeling the music's got inside itself. When a man goes at the music that way, it's just a sign that there's a lot inside himself he don't know how to answer. He's not knowing which way he needs to go. He's not going anywhere at all. [pg 128]


On contracts, the music business, and commercialism:

My answer--all I can say of it--it's just to be giving, giving all you're life, finding the music and giving it away. God maybe punishes a man for wanting too much, but He don't punish a man for giving. Maybe He even fixes it so that what you give away, it's the mostest thing you've got.

And maybe there's another thing why so many of these musicianers ended up so bad. Maybe they didn't know how to keep up with all this commercializing that was happening to ragtime. If it could have stayed where it started and not had to take account of the business it was becoming--all that making contracts and signing options and buying and selling rights--maybe without that it might have been different. If you start taking what's pure in a man and you start putting it on a bill of sale, somehow you can't help destroying it. In a way, all that business makes it so a man don't have anything left to give.

I got a feeling inside me, a kind of memory that wants to sing itself...I can give you that. I can send it out to where it can be taken, maybe, if you want it. I can try to give it to you. But if all I've got is a contract, I've got nothing to give. How'm I going to give you a contract? [pg 124]


 On the Blues:

And it was when I was in jail...that I played the first blues I ever played with a lot of guys singing and no other instruments, just the singing. And, oh my God, what singing that was! It was my first experience that way, hearing someone right next to me start up singing...Got a life so full of punishment, Got me a feeling. Come down Jesus. Oh why don't they put God on this earth where you can find Him easier. Hearing someone else come in after a minute, just hearing his voice in the dark and knowing right away his life has a long way to go. Seeing someone hungry and beat up, seeing his face all bloody and knowing he can't speak your language to tell you what it is, knowing that the only way he has to explain himself is being human, suffering, and waiting....

I'll never forget what those blues did to me. I can't remember every single line, but some I remember. And how it was, the thing it was saying inside itself--I remember that entire. This blues was different from anything I ever heard. Someone's woman left town, or someone's man, he'd gone around to another door...then there was something that took every thought I had out of my mind until it had me so close inside it I could taste how it felt...I was seeing the chains and that gallows, feeling the tears on my own face, rejoicing in the Angel the Lord sent down to that sinner. Oh my God, that was a blues. The way they sang it there, it was something you would send down to earth if it had been given you to be God. What you'd send to your son in trouble if he was on earth and you was in Heaven. [pgs 106-107]

[Both] of them, the spirituals and the blues, they was a prayer. One was praying to God and the other was praying to what's human. It's like one was saying 'Oh God, let me go,' and the other was saying, 'Oh Mister, let me be.' And they were both the same thing in a way; they were both my people's way of praying to be themselves, they had a kind of trance to them, a kind of forgetting. It was like a man closing his eyes so he can see a light inside him. That light, it's far off and you've got to wait to see it. But it's there. It's waiting. The spirituals, they're a way of seeing that light. It's far off music; it's a going away, but it's a going away that takes you with it. And the blues, they've got that sob inside, that awful lonesome feeling. It's got so much remembering inside it, so many bad things to remember, so many losses. [pgs 212-213]

There have been countless books written on the Blues, countless interviews with experts on the matter, but these quotes constitute the best explanation I have ever read or heard in words of what the blues actually do, what they are, how I experience them, and what they're meant for.

I could keep quoting until the whole book was reprinted on this blog...these have only scratched this surface of Bechet's wisdom. Just as Bechet is foundational for jazz clarinet, and jazz itself, I believe his musical philosophy and analysis ought to be treated as a foundational hermeneutic for jazz. 

Treat it Gentle is a book to be returned to, regularly, through the course of one's musical life.   

 

Jazz Clarinet Autobiographies: an Overview

Although most of them are out of print, jazz clarinetist are startlingly well represented by highly informative autobiographies--books that are more than marketing hype, and give a real look into the lives and thoughts of the musicians who wrote (or, more often, co-wrote) them.

In my opinion the most important of these books, and a literary work of art in its own right, is Sidney Bechet's Treat it Gentle.  Bechet's book was compiled from interview recordings and edited by a team of writers, among them Joan Reid, Desmond Flower, and the poet John Ciardi, who is still well known for his masterful translation of Dante's Divine Comedy. The work was so well done that Bechet's voice comes through almost as clearly and profoundly as his playing did. This book, which Nat Hentoff called the "most valuable and moving of all jazz biographies" ought to be required reading somewhere--at the very least among all jazz musicians.

Another brilliant, if uniquely odd and idiosyncratic book, is Artie Shaw's The Trouble with Cinderella. This book is unfortunately out of print--and the Ebay prices are climbing.

Benny Goodman's The Kingdom of Swing, published at the height of his popularity in 1938, would seem by context a fluff piece meant to capitalize on music sales, but it isn't. Instead, Benny's self-portrait reveals a side of him not often mentioned by contemporary commentators. In the beginning, especially, it details his family's struggles through poverty, radiating the warmth of that large family, while always focusing on the music and what it meant to him. Like Benny's sound, it is both warm and hard edged, simultaneously. Benny's book has been out of print for a very long time, and can be quite difficult to find.

In 1972, Pete Fountain published his memoir, A Closer Walk,  which reads like his music sounds: a upbeat party, with some heartfelt blues, to be sure, but a whole lot of brightness. As of this writing, the only copy available on Amazon is selling for about $100.

Two other important autobiographies were published posthumously: Barney Bigard's With Louis and the Duke and Woody Herman's The Woodchopper's Ball. These books, while slim, give invaluable insights to the men and their era.

Finally, Bill Russell's volume, New Orleans Style, deserves mentions, as it includes brief autobiographical sketches of Omer Simeon, Edmond Hall, Raymond Burke, and Lawrence Duhe.

I'll be giving more detailed reviews of these books in the near future--interested readers will want to get copies while they are still available. This is an endangered part of our jazz heritage.