Sidney was born on May 14, 1987 into a very musical New Orleans Creole family living on St Antoine St.; he was the youngest of seven children. Grandfather Omar was a great natural musician who danced, sang and played drums in the fabled Congo Square (where Buddy Bolden made jazz history). Sidney's father, a shoemaker by trade, also had a love of music, sang and on occasion played flute and trumpet.

Sidney never had much use for school, nor even for formal music lessons, and his preferred education was roaming New Orleans, listening to the great ragtime bands of the city and second-lining the marching bands.

One delightful story is of Bechet hanging around Piron's barbershop, which out back was crammed full of all kinds of musical instruments. The young Bechet would pick up a new instrument and say, "Let's see if I can make this sing." It says a lot about Bechet's approach to music and the full-bodied "singing" tone that became his signature.

Early on Sidney played with his brothers' Silver Bell band, but by the age of 12 he was playing with Buddy Petit and the Young Olympians and already borrowing long pants to sit in with and sub with some of New Orleans' finest bands. One of these was the Eagle Band, Buddy Bolden's old group led by trumpet player

Bunk Johnson. Bunk asked Bechet to join the Eagle band around 1911, replacing the great Lorenzo Tio. Sidney's mother required Bunk to collect the young teenager for the frequent evening gigs they played and then return him home afterwards. Getting Sidney back home was no easy task - he was always off down an alley "chasin' them little women."

The Eagle Band's music was hot with a rough edge - they played rags and they could really play the blues. Later Sidney was to remark that "the blues is the whole foundation of jazz - if you can't play the blues, feel the blues, you can't play jazz."

It is amazing to realize that Bechet, still in his early teens was acknowledged to be one of the best jazz clarinetists in New Orleans.

Bechet's talents extended to the cornet, which he played in the New Orleans marching bands, along side of Bunk and Joe Oliver. Many could not believe that the cornet player and the clarinet player were one and the same.

The fall of 1917 found Bechet in Chicago playing in a hot group with cornetist Freddie Keppard. Soon after, Bechet took a band into Chicago's Dreamland and sent back to New Orleans for the great cornet player Joe Oliver, who in turn would bring Louis Armstrong to the windy city.

In 1919 Bechet made the first of many tours of Europe and on this trip he began to play soprano sax, the reed instrument he made his own.

The first of Bechet's many recordings was cut in 1923 with piano player Clarence Williams' Blue Five, producing Wild Cat Blues and Kansas City Man Blues.

There isn't space to detail the full career of the mature Bechet, but one can briefly mention a short spell with Duke Ellington in the twenties, the 1940 recordings with Louis Armstrong which were part of the Trad Revival, and his later work in France which fueled the European Trad revival.

Bechet is renowned for his wonderful melodic jazz compositions. Petite Fleur, one of his later tunes, was hugely popular with the general public as well as with jazz audiences. A tango beat and a simple haunting melody of great beauty, are its principle features.

Various tours of Europe led Bechet to eventually settle in France. He died in Paris in 1959, leaving behind a spectacular legacy of musical compositions and unique recordings. He also left behind a next generation of musicians to whom he had taught soprano sax, among them Bob Wilbur, Jacques Gauthé and Richard Haddlock.