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Treat It Gentle
This autobiography was taken down in interviews with John Ciardi and Joan Reid, and put into book form by Desmond Flower. In it, Bechet reacalls his life in music, highlighting his narrative with tales of Sunday afternoon "bucking contests" between black and Creole "musicianers", his deportation from London, and the gunfight that put him in jail in Paris. Unlike most jazz musicians, whose musical lives often end at 40, Bechet remained musically active into his 60s, adapting his style to each successive peak of jazz history, and reaching his peak in the New Orleans Revival of the 1940s and early 1950s. He was a keen observer of the jazz scene and his memoirs feature numerous profiles of the men and women who helped jazz grow and Buddy Bolden, Bessie Smith, Manuel Perez, Clarence Williams, "Duke" Ellington and other jazz personalities.
251 pages, Paperback
First published November 30, 1961
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Displaying 1 - 21 of 21 reviews
March 27, 2015
As an autobiography, this book by the great jazz saxophonist/clarinetist is practically worthless. But that's not really what this book is about.
The first half (and much of the rest) is something else entirely - a beautifully poetic, homespun meditation on the nature and meaning of music, particularly as it relates to being a black American. At its best, it's really remarkable.
Treat It Gentle can't really be taken as a factual work, for the most part. The long chapter about Bechet's "grandfather," Omar, is in reality an elaborate retelling of the Louisiana folktale of Bras-Coupé, the legendary one-armed runaway slave. That this chapter can't possible be "true" hardly matters - it's really an amazing forty-page essay on slavery, freedom, music, and what it means to be human.
Sidney Bechet could be unpleasant, even violent, at times. But he was a remarkably talented musician, as his many recordings show. And Treat It Gentle shows that, at some level, he was a very wise man, and a deep thinker.
The first half (and much of the rest) is something else entirely - a beautifully poetic, homespun meditation on the nature and meaning of music, particularly as it relates to being a black American. At its best, it's really remarkable.
Treat It Gentle can't really be taken as a factual work, for the most part. The long chapter about Bechet's "grandfather," Omar, is in reality an elaborate retelling of the Louisiana folktale of Bras-Coupé, the legendary one-armed runaway slave. That this chapter can't possible be "true" hardly matters - it's really an amazing forty-page essay on slavery, freedom, music, and what it means to be human.
Sidney Bechet could be unpleasant, even violent, at times. But he was a remarkably talented musician, as his many recordings show. And Treat It Gentle shows that, at some level, he was a very wise man, and a deep thinker.
March 18, 2020
Bechet's autobiography. Wonderful--i recommend this to anyone who reads jazz bios and autobios and books about the history of jazz. Bechet's voice is very modern, imo, and it's easy to not realize how long ago these events took place. At one point he is talking about opening a club and it took me a sec to realize that this was in 1920-21--about a hundred years ago!
The book is not a detailed chronicle of his life, it's impressionistic and he hones in on important stories and events. His viewpoint is so interesting because he was around as jazz was being born, when it was brand new and a break with the past. His takes on all the key players are interesating. I was fascinated by his somewhat contrarian view of Buddy Bolden. He is emotionally perceptive and articulate, to a degree that is not common among musicians.
The second chapter, Omar, about his grandfather, is pretty incredible. He never knew his grandfather, so this must have been passed down in the family. It's a wild story and if I could write screenplays I'd be trying to turn it into one right now.
The book is complete through 1936. From 1936, it's not quite as rich--he and his collaborator, Desmond Flower, weren't able to flesh out the later years as much as the earlier ones.
Bechet's life wasn't easy, but in some ways it was charmed. This paragraph about living in France in the late 20s sounds magic to me:
"In those days it was really something the way things went on. Times just aren't like that any more. Any time you walked down the street you'd run into four or five people you knew--performers, entertainers, all kinds of people who had a real talent to them. Everywhere you'd go you'd run into them, you couldn't help yourself. And everybody had a kind of excitement about him. Everyone, they was crazy to be doing. Well, you'd start to go home, and you'd must never get there. There was always some singer to hear or someone who was playing. You'd run into some friends and they were off to hear this or to do that and you just went along. It seemed like you just couldn't get home before ten or eleven in the morning."
The book is not a detailed chronicle of his life, it's impressionistic and he hones in on important stories and events. His viewpoint is so interesting because he was around as jazz was being born, when it was brand new and a break with the past. His takes on all the key players are interesating. I was fascinated by his somewhat contrarian view of Buddy Bolden. He is emotionally perceptive and articulate, to a degree that is not common among musicians.
The second chapter, Omar, about his grandfather, is pretty incredible. He never knew his grandfather, so this must have been passed down in the family. It's a wild story and if I could write screenplays I'd be trying to turn it into one right now.
The book is complete through 1936. From 1936, it's not quite as rich--he and his collaborator, Desmond Flower, weren't able to flesh out the later years as much as the earlier ones.
Bechet's life wasn't easy, but in some ways it was charmed. This paragraph about living in France in the late 20s sounds magic to me:
"In those days it was really something the way things went on. Times just aren't like that any more. Any time you walked down the street you'd run into four or five people you knew--performers, entertainers, all kinds of people who had a real talent to them. Everywhere you'd go you'd run into them, you couldn't help yourself. And everybody had a kind of excitement about him. Everyone, they was crazy to be doing. Well, you'd start to go home, and you'd must never get there. There was always some singer to hear or someone who was playing. You'd run into some friends and they were off to hear this or to do that and you just went along. It seemed like you just couldn't get home before ten or eleven in the morning."
September 7, 2025
"Music's a thing that you gotta trust: you gotta mean it, and you gotta treat it gentle. The music, it's the road. There's good things alongside it, and there's miseries. You stop by the way and you can't ever be sure what you're gonna find waiting. But the music itself, the road itself--there's no stopping that. It goes on all the time. There's no one ever came back who can't tell you that."
April 15, 2012
This might not be the most reliable source about the history of New Orleans jazz, but it is one of the most poetic.
June 5, 2019
Sidney Bechet was one of the all-time great jazz musicians. This book is put together from tapes he made at various times in his life. So interesting!
August 22, 2014
I don't know how much of Sidney Bechet's autobiography is "true". I do know that it is real.
February 24, 2020
Bechet spends a lot of time in the book trying to explain what is jazz and never really does, which might be frustrating until you realize why - jazz simply looms too large in his heart, it's too big for words. And I think that is actually a much better reason for reading this book, all of its tales and musings and anecdotes, than if it did have a succinct, clever explanation. This book is not an academic discourse, it is an impassioned love letter to jazz and New Orleans.
He does make one particular point rather furiously - that jazz was not born in the red light district joints, that it came from people playing whatever music they could, that moved them, in Congo Square. Jazz was an act of asserting and manifesting an identity rather than an act of economic opportunism.
The story of his grandfather is obviously mythologized, but in a way in which a fiction lies to tell the truth. The story of Omar tells the story and meaning of the origin of jazz. The particulars are told to deliver a greater story than a single person. It's a tale, certainly, but a weighty and beautiful one.
This is a man sitting there and telling you their life story, at a point where there is no longer a point to covering up or embellishing. It's about remembering and feeling, not accounting. Treat it as that, and you might be come away enamored.
He does make one particular point rather furiously - that jazz was not born in the red light district joints, that it came from people playing whatever music they could, that moved them, in Congo Square. Jazz was an act of asserting and manifesting an identity rather than an act of economic opportunism.
The story of his grandfather is obviously mythologized, but in a way in which a fiction lies to tell the truth. The story of Omar tells the story and meaning of the origin of jazz. The particulars are told to deliver a greater story than a single person. It's a tale, certainly, but a weighty and beautiful one.
This is a man sitting there and telling you their life story, at a point where there is no longer a point to covering up or embellishing. It's about remembering and feeling, not accounting. Treat it as that, and you might be come away enamored.
August 28, 2021
প্রথমেই যে বিষয়ে সাবধানতা প্রয়োজন সেটা হচ্ছে এই বইতে হয়ত কিছু ঘটনা একটু রঙচঙে করে বলা। কিন্তু তা কিছু ঘটনাই। তা বাদে, ঠিক-ভুল জানি না, তবে মিউজিক সম্পর্কে, র্যাগটাইম ও জ্যাজ সম্পর্কে সিডনি বেশেটের বেশ স্বচ্ছ একটা দর্শন আছে। বস্তুত, সেইজন্যেই বইটা বেশি গুরুত্বপূর্ণ।
সিডনি বেশেট জ্যাজের পাইওনিয়ারদের একজন বলা চলে। কিন্তু মিউজিকের প্রতি তার ডেডিকেশন এত উঁচুতে যে বেশিদিন কোথাও একটানা কাজ আর তার হয়ে ওঠেনি। বরাবরই ইনসিনসিয়ারিটি তাকে আহত করে এসেছে।
বইটায় বেশ কিছু মেডিটেশন আমায় মুগ্ধ করেছে। শিল্প ও শিল্পীর সাইকোলজি, রেসিয়াল অ্যাওয়ারনেস, কমার্শিয়ালাইজেশনের বিষয়ে স্কেপটিজম... সব মিলিয়ে একটা পড়ার মত বই!
সিডনি বেশেট জ্যাজের পাইওনিয়ারদের একজন বলা চলে। কিন্তু মিউজিকের প্রতি তার ডেডিকেশন এত উঁচুতে যে বেশিদিন কোথাও একটানা কাজ আর তার হয়ে ওঠেনি। বরাবরই ইনসিনসিয়ারিটি তাকে আহত করে এসেছে।
বইটায় বেশ কিছু মেডিটেশন আমায় মুগ্ধ করেছে। শিল্প ও শিল্পীর সাইকোলজি, রেসিয়াল অ্যাওয়ারনেস, কমার্শিয়ালাইজেশনের বিষয়ে স্কেপটিজম... সব মিলিয়ে একটা পড়ার মত বই!
August 26, 2024
Reads like what it is—a transcript of recordings—for better (immediacy, completeness) and worse (repetition, unnecessary detail) but usually some little nugget every few pages to keep you going. Not surprising in retrospect that Bechet never mentions anything about particular instruments or technique. Also, best description of Buckingham Palace ever: “it was like Grand Central Station with a lot of carpets and things on the walls. Only it had more doors.”
January 12, 2020
Based on transcriptions of Bechet himself, this tells his remarkable story from being a kid in New Orleans in the 1910s to playing across US and Europe with artists like Louis Armstrong. Time spent in prison as well as playing at Buckingham Palace, Bechet lived his life at full speed. Next I'm going to read a longer biography of Bechet that fulls the gaps that the man himself left out.
March 12, 2022
Great novel, have been dissecting it for a research project and Sidney is quite a character with many flaws and many great traits as well. It's never a bad time hearing someone talk about what they truly love though, and Sidney, he really loved the music.
April 21, 2019
Some neat anecdotes of other musicians, and growing up in early 1900s NOLA. Too much like a rambling diary though.
December 5, 2008
like many books in my library, i've been meaning to read this one for a while now. what an amazing life story sidney bechet recounts in this text! from the first chapter, where he describes his grandfather omar's heart-wrenching story, bechet keeps you engaged, interested, and in his heart. why is it that musicians have a way of telling stories that just grabs my attention? (on the flip side of that, at times they can be a bit UNbelievable) :) his tales of playing gigs and funny anecdotes about those gigs are wonderful!
ultimately, bechet thought life is about music, and where the music belongs is foremost in your heart. his ideas aren't necessarily mind-blowing, but they are so honest and humble - nothing is more important than playing music with a genuine spirit for both you and the people.
the only questions i now face (from reading his autobiography) are... if only a black man can play the blues, how do i (as a white woman) approach this? can't i, too, relate some of my experiences as a white woman into this music? why does the music have an owner (a question i've had for years)? if we're contributing something of our own into the music, doesn't it belong to us as well?
bechet also brings up the point of paying homage to the past -- what came before! i whole-heartedly agree with this notion, but where does the tradition start? how far back do we go?
i love this book, and i would recommend it to anyone interested in music!
<3
ultimately, bechet thought life is about music, and where the music belongs is foremost in your heart. his ideas aren't necessarily mind-blowing, but they are so honest and humble - nothing is more important than playing music with a genuine spirit for both you and the people.
the only questions i now face (from reading his autobiography) are... if only a black man can play the blues, how do i (as a white woman) approach this? can't i, too, relate some of my experiences as a white woman into this music? why does the music have an owner (a question i've had for years)? if we're contributing something of our own into the music, doesn't it belong to us as well?
bechet also brings up the point of paying homage to the past -- what came before! i whole-heartedly agree with this notion, but where does the tradition start? how far back do we go?
i love this book, and i would recommend it to anyone interested in music!
<3
November 27, 2011
A good autobiography about a true icon of jazz. Sidney Bechet, clarinetist and saxophonist, came up with the likes of Louis Armstrong, Joe Oliver, Freddie Keppard and Buddy Bolden, even beating Armstrong to the recording studio by a matter of months.
It's obvious this autobiography was dictated by Bechet and, in fact, he passed away just before it was first published in 1960. The language is of the time, pulling words and phrasing from early 20th century New Orleans, New York and Europe. As with any biography of early jazz musicians ("musicianers," as Bechet calls them), this is a history of the music and the time. Bechet's personal anecdotes add much to such a history, though there are wide gaps that are glossed over just as though they're being told by an old man who's seen much and wants to tell it all as quickly as possible. For instance, in the late 1920s, Bechet was arrested and imprisoned for 11 months in Paris, and he gives the episode about that much space in the book, devoting more time to the trial and how he felt he was railroaded.
Bechet was a man with a temper and great passion for his music. The book is full of philosophical moments about jazz - where it comes from and where he fears it's headed (in the late 1950s). He speaks well of those he played with and laments what he sees as "personality" taking over the music in place of real musicianship and love for the music, a fitting condemnation of much of entertainment now, 60 years later.
It's obvious this autobiography was dictated by Bechet and, in fact, he passed away just before it was first published in 1960. The language is of the time, pulling words and phrasing from early 20th century New Orleans, New York and Europe. As with any biography of early jazz musicians ("musicianers," as Bechet calls them), this is a history of the music and the time. Bechet's personal anecdotes add much to such a history, though there are wide gaps that are glossed over just as though they're being told by an old man who's seen much and wants to tell it all as quickly as possible. For instance, in the late 1920s, Bechet was arrested and imprisoned for 11 months in Paris, and he gives the episode about that much space in the book, devoting more time to the trial and how he felt he was railroaded.
Bechet was a man with a temper and great passion for his music. The book is full of philosophical moments about jazz - where it comes from and where he fears it's headed (in the late 1950s). He speaks well of those he played with and laments what he sees as "personality" taking over the music in place of real musicianship and love for the music, a fitting condemnation of much of entertainment now, 60 years later.
August 27, 2007
it's easy to fall under bechet's spell on this one. unless read side-by-side with other biographical material, one may believe that this jazz trailblazer is the good-natured, though sometimes sweetly curmudgeonly, patriarch he paints himself to be. and therein lies the genius of this book.
his editors and this soprano saxophone pioneer appeared to have one goal in mind: to save jazz (as they knew it) from the scourge of then-contemporary arbiters of africanist improvised music. and so they set out with this then septuagenarian jazz man to recount his life and myriad experiences with musicians and musicianers (an important distinction in this text), all in a rather preachy tone about the "right" way to play jazz.
this is a perplexing and crafty autobiography (especially the frequently-referenced opening chapter about bechet's symbolic? grandfather, the slave/musician "Omar"), so long as it is read with full knowledge of bechet's life as a gun-toting, womanizing, british deport, who rather than "save" jazz on the soil from which he so firmly believed it was born from, instead expatriated to france, where they would play anything he asked them to.
well done, sid. you almost had me fooled.
his editors and this soprano saxophone pioneer appeared to have one goal in mind: to save jazz (as they knew it) from the scourge of then-contemporary arbiters of africanist improvised music. and so they set out with this then septuagenarian jazz man to recount his life and myriad experiences with musicians and musicianers (an important distinction in this text), all in a rather preachy tone about the "right" way to play jazz.
this is a perplexing and crafty autobiography (especially the frequently-referenced opening chapter about bechet's symbolic? grandfather, the slave/musician "Omar"), so long as it is read with full knowledge of bechet's life as a gun-toting, womanizing, british deport, who rather than "save" jazz on the soil from which he so firmly believed it was born from, instead expatriated to france, where they would play anything he asked them to.
well done, sid. you almost had me fooled.
November 20, 2011
Though one can get bogged down in Mr. Bechet's recollections of people met, sessions played, and places visited, the passages about music--where it comes from, how it should be made, what can spoil it--are prose-poetry. And though they come from a supposed "old musicianer" like Bechet, they could just as easily come from the mind of Ornette Coleman. The opening, a retelling of a story about his grandfather and slavery and music, is absolutely stunning.
April 24, 2012
This book's charm comes from Sidney Bechet's voice that comes through on every page. I have never heard him speak but actually enjoyed reading it in my mind in a voice that I imagined he would have. Sidney Bechet was obviously a great "musicianer" as he calls himself, but also an old soul who could really tell a story. You will finish this book with a greater appreciation of not just jazz but all music.
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August 3, 2011"And to give you what this Jazz is - all you need is a few men who can hear what the man next him is doing at the same time that you know your instrument and how you can say on it what you gotta say to keep the next man going with you, leading one another on to the place the music has to go."
August 20, 2008
The greatest book I've ever read on jazz and music.
Wonderful language, evocative and profound
Wonderful language, evocative and profound
November 19, 2008
I read this book with a lens that focused on the performance culture. It certainly is a Black history book as well.
January 31, 2018
Sadly, nearly unreadable in today's literary context
Displaying 1 - 21 of 21 reviews