Sidney Bechet ranks among the greatest of the early masters of Jazz, up there with Louis Armstrong, Duke Ellington and Dizzy Gillespie. Born of a Creole family in New Orleans, and very conscious of the evils of slavery, his genius flowered at an early age. He is acknowledged as the greatest player ever ...
Rhodes grants the truth of appearances to the clichés of the Jazz Age - the lost generation of writers, the era of mass consumption and the silver screen - while revealing their roots in a conservative ideology which sustained Republican rule.
