Sidney Bechet/Martial Solal Quartet (BMG/Media). In 1957, Sidney Bechet, who was already playing jazz in New Orleans when Louis Armstrong was still in kneepants, recorded an album of standards with a pair of modern rhythm sections that featured Martial Solal on piano and Kenny Clarke on drums. Some found the pairing incongruous, but Bechet had always had open ears–he’d been recording such harmonically sophisticated ballads as “Laura” and “Love for Sale” as early as the Forties–and the contrast between his straight-from-the-shoulder soprano-sax solos and the bebop backing of Solal and his colleagues is electrifying (TT).
Terry Teachout on the arts in New York City
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