Books, Arts & Manners: Great & Imperishable

WE have had Louis Armstrong & Sidney Bechet in New York 1923- 1925 (Smithsonian), the Hugues Panassie dates (RCA Victor), and the retrospective Sidney Bechet—Master Musician (Bluebird) to teach us that Sidney Bechet led the jazz world in technique, voice, intonation, and invention until the mid 1920s, when Louis Armstrong, learning from him, caught up and surpassed him, at least in brilliance. Bechet, like the greatest of the early jazzmen, came from New Orleans, that melting pot of blues, quadrilles, opera, rags, gutbucket—almost anything that could make sound. As early as 1919, the classical conductor Ernest Ansermet heard Bechet in Europe and wrote that perhaps the fu

ture of music was bound up in this one instrumental singer.

RT

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Ralph de Toledano

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WE have had Louis Armstrong & Sidney Bechet in New York 1923- 1925 (Smithsonian), the Hugues Panassie dates (RCA Victor), and the retrospective Sidney Bechet—Master Musician (Bluebird) to teach us that Sidney Bechet led the jazz world in technique, voice, intonation, and invention until the mid 1920s, when Louis Armstrong, learning from him, caught up and surpassed him, at least in brilliance. Bechet, like the greatest of the early jazzmen, came from New Orleans, that melting pot of blues, quadrilles, opera, rags, gutbucket—almost anything that could make sound. As early as 1919, the classical conductor Ernest Ansermet heard Bechet in Europe and wrote that perhaps the fu

ture of music was bound up in this one instrumental singer.