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| Sidney Bechet at Jimmy Ryan's Club in New York City, 1947 |
Sidney
Chambers, the troubled vicar of Grantchester in the PBS Mystery series that
bears the name of this actual Cambridgeshire village, is fond of jazz music. So
every now and then when Sidney is in a reflective mood, viewers are treated to
a few snatches, which often happily feature the unmistakable trembling soprano
sax tones of the incomparable Sidney Bechet.
I
cannot recall when I discovered Bechet; it seems as though his special sound
has always resided at least at the edge of memory whenever I’m not actually
listening to one of his recordings.
The improbably handsome actor James Norton portrays the
30-something Anglican priest, a Cambridge graduate and former Scots Guards
officer assigned to pastor Grantchester. But Sidney Chambers is hardly a simple
country vicar, as the plots of these stories invariably revolve around the
complex Reverend Chambers’ involvement in some crime or other. Bechet’s
alternatingly poignant and playful sound complements the often fraught
character of Sidney Chambers.
The series is set in the 1950s. When Sidney spins a Bechet
LP on his turntable, lights up a cigarette, and leans back in his study chair
with a tumbler of amber liquor, he listens to the jazz artist in his prime. New
Orleans-born Sidney Bechet (1897-1959) was largely self-taught and was
recognized fairly early in his career as perhaps the first notable jazz
saxophonist, although he played several instruments.
Bechet played mainly clarinet professionally in New Orleans
and elsewhere during the Teens and then about 1920 traveled to London, where he
discovered the straight soprano sax. The instrument would be used to produce
his signature sound. Critics called it “emotional,” “reckless,”
and “large.” His sound featured a broad vibrato, a technique common to
some New Orleans clarinetists at the time.
Bechet’s reckless, erratic behavior was career limiting. For
example, he was imprisoned in London for several days in 1922, having been
convicted of assaulting a woman, and was subsequently deported back to the
United States. Consequently Bechet did not truly rise to fame until the 1940s.
After performing at the Paris Jazz Festival, he moved permanently to France in
1950, and his popularity surged there. The next year he married
Elisabeth Ziegler in Antibes.
Sadly, Sidney Bechet died of lung cancer in
Garches, near Paris, on May 14, 1959, his sixty-second birthday. Fortunately
his recordings live on so that we, like Grantchester’s other Sidney, Reverend
Chambers, can still get lost in the trembling tones of Bechet’s sax. I
recommend “Petite Fleur,” Bechet’s own composition, which he recorded
In 1952: http://youtu.be/wMwckuWpxDs. You will fall in love
with the sound.
