Sublime

“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.”

The Original Dixieland Jazz Band enjoyed a huge hit with its recording of “Livery Stable Blues,”

The “old style rhythm and blues” he referred to was the roaring, riff-laden music with chanted vocals of band-leaders like Lionel Hampton, Paul Williams and local band-leader Jimmy Preston, whose “Rock the Joint” (Gotham) was a national R&B hit in 1949.

“Sidewalk Blues,” recorded by pianist Jelly Roll Morton and his Red Hot Peppers in Chicago on September 21, 1926.

As Dead lyricist Robert Hunter wrote in the classic Dead song “Uncle John’s Band,” “When life looks like Easy Street, there is danger at your door.”