Listen to Count Basie’s recording of “Li’l Darlin’” if you want to hear how this is done at a very high level of virtuosity.

“I’m going to give you one note today,” Bechet told his surprised pupil. “See how many ways you can play that note—growl it, smear it, flat it, sharp it, do anything you want to it. That’s how you express your feelings in this music. It’s like talking.”

He took the saxophone and he did fundamentally non-Western things with it the way the harmonica players used to jackknife keys to get those 12 tones and flat that third, like that. His use of field hollers in his sound really connotes a thorough and passionate understanding of tradition.