Colombier

As jazz legends go, they don’t come much bigger than the master clarinettist and soprano saxophonist, Sidney Bechet. Bechet’s story is, of course, well known to all jazz fans, born in New Orleans, recording with Clarence Williams in 1923, even before the great Louis Armstrong, playing with all the greats including Freddie Keppard, Bunk Johnson and King Oliver. Arrested in the UK for assault, returned to the States, left again for a world tour which included Russia before settling in France (where he also served 11 months for assault). And all the while making outstanding music and largely on his own, often very forceful terms. By the time the LP’s and EP’s on this second AVID set were recorded, Bechet had become something of an icon in France, his fame having spread far beyond the coterie of jazz lovers who were his core fans…

The Sitar Beat series was built with the DJ in mind - collecting some of the wildest, heaviest and most psychedelic Indian Funk recorded and presenting it loud on wax, ready for the turntable.

Aldo Romano: "In 1959, the "Living Theater", co-directed by Judith Malina and Julian Beck, created the Jack Gelber play "The Connection". This is a play within a play; the producer Jim Dunn, and the writer Jaybird, want to show the unseen of the life of the addicts to hard drugs. They have one thing in common: the expectation of "the connection", we would say the dealer today, which should give them the powder. This is a camera in a slum rented by a crazy man, Leach. There's four or five clueless in need and a jazz quartet that plays waiting for their dealer "Cowboy".
The play, which will become a film directed by Shirley Clarke in 1961, will be performed in New York, London, Los Angeles, Italy, Germany, Scandinavia, the Living Theater and a jazz quartet led by pianist Freddie Redd and Jackie McLean on alto sax…