[Dixielandjazz] FW: Bechet Marriage Cleveland

[Bill Haesler]

Dear friends,
The following article, sent to me by my friend, Sydney based jazz reedman,
David Ridyard, proves once again that the information is still out there. It
is up to enthusiasts like us to find it.
Kind regards,
Bill. 

__________________________________________________________________
 
JAZZED IN CLEVELAND
A jazz history by Joe Mosbrook
A special WMV Web News Cleveland series
Part 95 - Sidney Bechet Married in Cleveland
Story filed March 2, 2005

 I have never seen it mentioned in any biographies, but now, there is new
information that Sidney Bechet, the all-time master of the soprano saxophone
and one of the true legends of jazz  ­ was once married in Cleveland.
   It  was very early in his long music career. Bechet, who was born in New
Orleans and played as a teenager with a variety of  early New Orleans
bands, began a life-long obsession with wandering. At the age of 17, he left
New Orleans with pianists Clarence Williams and Louis Wade to play in shows
in Texas. He returned briefly to New Orleans to play clarinet with the King
Oliver band. In 1917, the Secretary of the Navy issued an order that
effectively shut down the sporting section of New Orleans known as
Storyville where many of the early jazz musicians were employed. That
secretary of the Navy was Clevelander Newton D. Baker. The closing of
Storyville sent many New Orleans musicians scrambling north, looking for
work. Among them was 20 year old  Sidney Bechet.
  In his autobiography, Treat It Gentle, Bechet said, "I wanted to see
places, so I joined up with the Bruce and Bruce Stock Company and we set off
on a very big tour." The small jazz group performed at theatres on the black
vaudeville circuit in Alabama, Georgia, Indiana and Ohio. They played at the
Washington Theatre in Indianapolis, according to an article in the February
2nd, 1918 edition of the Indianapolis Freeman, and then the February  9th
edition said they would perform at the Grand Central Theatre in Cleveland.
  A  little over a week later, while he was in Cleveland, Bechet married a
young woman who  lived on Central Avenue. Paul Klein of Cleveland Heights
discovered the marriage license at the Cuyahoga County Archives on Franklin
Avenue. Dated February 18th, 1918, it is in volume 108, on page 189. On the
form, the name listed is "Sidney Bachet." It gives his age as 21, (he was
actually a few months short of 21). Bechet listed his place of birth as
"New Orleans,"  his occupation as "musician," and his parents as "Omar and
Josephine Mitchell Bechet." Despite the misspelling of his name  (apparently
by a clerk), all of the information matches what we know about  the
legendary jazz musician.
  According  to the marriage license, Bechet was married on February 18th,
1918 by Justice  of the Peace W. J. Zoul to 22 year old Norma Hale, who was
born in Oklahoma. Zoul was a longtime justice of the peace in Cleveland.
The form listed Bechet¹s address as 3658 Central Avenue, Cleveland, and
Norma Hale¹s address as 3615  Central Avenue, just across the street.
Nowhere in his autobiography does Bechet mention his marriage in Cleveland.
Nor is there any reference to it in John Chilton¹s book about Bechet, The
Wizard of Jazz.
  Bechet  apparently did not stay in Cleveland  very long. By the fall of
1918, he was in Chicago playing with former New Orleans musicians Freddy
Keppard and Minor Hall, and pianist Lil Hardin, who would  later marry Louis
Armstrong. In 1919 in Chicago, bandleader Noble Sissle, whose father was the
pastor of Cory Methodist Church in Cleveland, heard Bechet playing and
auditioned him for his orchestra. Sissle remembered, "Bechet pulled half of
his clarinet from his right coat pocket, half  from the left, and his
mouthpiece from the inside coat pocket." According to Sissle, "The
instrument¹s keys were held together with tape  and rubber bands." But, with
the dilapidated instrument, Bechet played a spectacular audition and joined
Sissle¹s band despite the fact that he could not read music.  But, a short
time later, the clarinetist who loved to wander got a better offer.
  Will Marion Cook, who had studied at Oberlin College, was about to take
his large concert band, the Southern Syncopated Orchestra, to Europe  and
hired Bechet to go with them. The band was a big hit in London not long
after the Original  Dixieland Jazz Band first played there. It was in London
that Bechet first purchased and  learned to play a straight soprano
saxophone, his primary instrument for the  rest of his life. In England,  he
was hailed as "an extraordinary virtuoso." He left Cook¹s band and played
for about three years in England  and France before getting in trouble with
the law. He was involved in a shooting  incident and ordered deported.
  When Bechet returned to the United States aboard the steamship The
Finland, the manifest listed his last place of residence as "Chicago,
Illinois" and his marital status as "married." But, a search of Ellis Island
records disclosed absolutely no listing for Norma Hale Bechet, the woman he
had married in Cleveland  four years earlier.
  Back  in the U.S. Bechet played for about three months with the Duke
Ellington Orchestra and made a series of recordings with Louis Armstrong.
He went back to France and became involved in another shooting incident.
This time, he spent 11 months in a French jail. In his autobiography, Bechet
admitted, "When I  get mean, I can be powerful mean." When he was released
from jail in 1929, he got a wire from Sissle, asking Bechet to rejoin his
band.
  Bechet spent most of the 1930s playing and touring with the Noble Sissle
Orchestra. It was during this period that he married again. His second wife
was an actress named Marie Luise Bechet, who was in a 1939 motion picture,
Moon Over Harlem. Sidney appeared briefly in the opening scene.
  In 1949, Bechet returned to Europe and decided to live permanently in
France. In 1951, he married for the third time -- a German woman named
Elizabeth Ziegler. They separated a few years later. Bechet lived out his
final years in France and died on his  62nd birthday, May 14, 1959, in
Paris.
   In his autobiography, written shortly before his death, Bechet referred
only briefly to one of his marriages, but described in some detail several
affairs, including one with blues singer Bessie Smith. We have no idea how
long he continued his marriage with Norma Hale, the woman he married in
Cleveland in 1918. Nor do we know what happened to her.
  
Copyright  2005 Joe Mosbrook
<mailto:joe.mosbrook at multiverse.com>