Always a man about town, the debonair Bechet could be a honey-voiced, soft-spoken charmer, but he also had a fiery temper and a suspicious streak that bordered on paranoia. And he usually carried a gun. Chilton vividly recounts Bechet's tempestuous life and the vibrant music he created. He describes his childhood in New Orleans, and his first jobs in Chicago and New York...his trip to London with the Southern Syncopated Orchestra, where he played at the Philharmonic Hall and Buckingham Palace, and was later deported for brawling with two prostitutes...his early great recordings, including the remarkable sessions with Louis Armstrong and Clarence Williams...his return to France and his friendship with the colorful pilot Eugene Bullard, called the Black Sparrow of Death for his exploits in World War I...his gunfight with Mike McKendrick on a Paris street, for which he was imprisoned and again deported...his classic recordings for Blue Note Records...his brief affair and friendship with Tallulah Bankhead...and his triumphant return to Paris in the late 1940s, where he was lionized by the French public.
