Tune Req: blues clarinet

Subject: blues clarinet
From: GUEST,Cool Colin
Date: 05 Aug 01 - 12:10 PM

Played the clarinet a long time now just convertd to the blues by my son. Is there any sheet music out there that I can play. [e-mail]

Subject: RE: Tune Req: blues clarinet
From: Lee Shore
Date: 05 Aug 01 - 05:31 PM

There is surely sheet music for blues clarinet, but there probably shouldn't be. Sheet music is to blues what paint-by-numbers is to visual art. The greatest blues piece every played on the clarinet was "Blue Horizon" recorded by Sidney Bechet.

Subject: RE: Tune Req: blues clarinet
From: M.Ted
Date: 05 Aug 01 - 05:37 PM

I vote with Max Ebb---you should just get a hold of some of those Sidney Bechet records and listen to what is happening--also,listen to the great blues harmonica players, the parts they are playing, and the places they are playing them, are your parts--

Subject: RE: Tune Req: blues clarinet
From: Rick Fielding
Date: 05 Aug 01 - 09:03 PM

There is a picture of Sidney Bechet on the wall of the basement/teaching studio. Sadly, virtually none of my students (or even musician friends) have a clue who he is. What a prodigious talent. What an original style. Sure he never had the dexterity of Benny or Artie, but that wasn't the kind of music he played. Soul? Feeling? He's simply never been touched.

Go to my favourite website, Redhot Jazz and listen to him make the first multi-track recording. It's the Sheik Of Araby. He plays ALL the instruments in the band.

Lets keep this thread going. There must be a least two or three folks around here who'd be interested.

Rick

Subject: RE: Tune Req: blues clarinet
From: Lee Shore
Date: 05 Aug 01 - 10:05 PM

S'truth, Rick. I was fortunate to hear Bechet live with Louis Armstrong in Chicago back around 1954. A religious experience, that. I have the album with the Shiek of Araby cut. It won me a bet with a jazz maven who insisted that Les Paul was the pioneer of multi track. Sure he was,20 years after Sidney. I agree that blues deserves a long thread. Who was the greatest blues singer? Off the top, I'd vote Little Jimmy Rushing. Max Ebb

Subject: RE: Tune Req: blues clarinet
From: M.Ted
Date: 05 Aug 01 - 10:58 PM

What is the story? One of the Bebop players supposedly made disparaging remarks about New Orleans Jazz and players--Bechet showed up at an afterhours jam, blew him out of the water and literally followed him out of the club, dancing around him and playing--finally, the guy turned to him and said, "All right,you can play, man!".

Subject: RE: Tune Req: blues clarinet
From: Mark Clark
Date: 06 Aug 01 - 01:04 AM

Bechet is one of my favorites as well. He just soars above everyone else in the band and his ideas and execution just put everyone else to shame. You don't find many players taking up soprano sax these days.

      - Mark

Subject: RE: Tune Req: blues clarinet
From: Brian Hoskin
Date: 06 Aug 01 - 09:19 AM

Bo Carter (aka Armenter 'Bo' Chatmon) would sometimes play clarinet with the Mississippi Sheiks (when he wasn't playing other instruments), although I couldn't say whether he was recorded doing so (Stewie probably knows?)

Also, Johnny Dodds played with some blues artists (as loosely distinguished from jazz artists), I'm now trying to remember who without CDs to hand to check, but I think I have recordings of Dodds playing with someone from Georgia, possibly Curley Weaver. Needless to say, Dodds is worth listening to anyway and sheet music might be available for some of his stuff.

Brian

Subject: RE: Tune Req: blues clarinet
From: Rick Fielding
Date: 06 Aug 01 - 10:58 AM

So WHY is it that bechet is often treated lightly by jazz critics,(the same way Louis was)? I think that wide vibrato was seen as verrry old fashioned. Bechet was a hell-raiser of immense proportions, did serious time, and spent a lot of time in France. I'm glad that Ken Burns gave him a decent chunk in his film.

Rick

Subject: RE: Tune Req: blues clarinet
From: M.Ted
Date: 06 Aug 01 - 11:00 AM

Mark,

You mean other than KennyG?(expletive deleted)

Because of Coltrane, soprano sax was added to the mix of instruments that reed players were expected to play. Coltrane's interest in the instrument came directly from Bechet--though jazz fans tend to keep the two separate, a lot of the raw energy in Trane's music seems to me to have come from Bechet--also, though he used really different scale and melodic material, the rhythmic ideas he used seem (to me) to be solidly connected to Bechet--