A Story in Sound: The Unpublished Writings of Sidney Bechet

Abstract

In a letter dated 22 April 1952, to the poet and editor John Ciardi, jazz musician Sidney Bechet enclosed an eleven-page manuscript titled “Wildflower (or The Story of Frankie & Johnnie).”1 At the time, Ciardi was helping Bechet edit his autobiography, and Bechet valued Ciardi’s literary collaboration. “Should I make this a ballet, or a picture, or a stageplay and ballet combined, or maybe a book?” Bechet asked. He tells Ciardi that he has the music “all in mind,” and that “it would make a hell of a play, maybe better than Pogy[sic] and Bess.” While Bechet seems to have hoped that Ciardi, who was editor of The Saturday Review, could help him find a venue for publication or performance, these comments also suggest that Bechet did not yet know what genre or medium his story ought to take. Ciardi responded on 8 May 1952 with characteristic editorial diplomacy: “I wish I knew what to say about the Frankie and Johnny. There are certainly terrific possibilities for the scenario but I’d be bluffing and doing you no good at all if I pretended to know the right things about stage productions.” Ciardi acknowledged the theatrical potential for the treatment and promised to send a few letters to request guidance on the matter, but nothing ever became of Bechet’s “Frankie and Johnnie.” It remains unpublished and unproduced—a fragment in the archive. However, the recent discovery of this fragment along with a second untitled narrative among the papers of his Parisian manager, Charles Delaunay, at the Bibliothèque nationale de France (BnF) raises new questions about how we have understood the role of narrative and writing in the artistic life of one of jazz’s most influential figures. Bechet is not usually considered a writer in the traditional sense, but perhaps he should be.