Treat it gentle Book

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.