Sidney Bechet: The Wizard of Jazz

"The definitive work on Bechet. This is one of those rare books that once started you have difficulty putting down."—Jazz Journal



Fifty years after hearing Sidney Bechet (1897-1959) in 1923, Duke Ellington recalled, "I have never forgotten the power and imagination with which he played." The first great jazz soloist, Bechet was a genius of the clarinet and the notoriously difficult soprano saxophone. In a career that spanned five decades and two continents he worked with Bunk Johnson, King O...