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.

creator of the Smithsonian Museum’s “Programs in Black Culture,” and one of the leading authorities on Black American music culture,

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