Sidney Bechet: Viper Mad

Watching "Finian's Rainbow" for St. Patrick's Day, I was reminded that Don Francks, who played Woody in that movie, was a Canadian Native American who gave up alcohol at the age of 21 and liked to sing a medley of "Smokin' Reefers" and "Viper Mad." 

From what I've been able to uncover, "Viper Mad" is a Sidney Bechet composition that was first recorded as "Pleasure Mad" by the likes of Blossom Seeley, Whitey Kaufman, and Ethel Waters starting in 1924. Bechet's co-author was composer and lyricist Rousseau Simmons. But in 1938, just as the Marijuana Tax Act took effect, Bechet recorded the tune as "Viper Mad" with lyrics like: 

Wrap your chops
'round this stick of tea
Blow this gage
And get high with me
Good tea is my weakness
I know it's bad
It sends me gate and I can't wait
I'm viper mad

Born to a Creole family in New Orleans, Bechet was a saxophonist and clarinetist who played with Josephine Baker and the Revue Negre, and can also be heard playing the soprano sax on his composition "Jack, I'm Mellow" with Trixie Smith, also recorded in 1938 and recently heard as the theme song to the 2017 Netflix series "Disjointed" in which Kathy Bates plays a cannabis dispensary owner. 

I'm so high, and so dry

I'm sailin' in the sky

Smoked some gage
I'm on a rampage

Jack, I'm mellow. 

Filmmaker and clarinetist Woody Allen includes Bechet's "Viper Mad" in his film "Sweet and Lowdown," in which Sean Penn plays the fictional Django-Reinhardt-rival guitarist Emmet Ray. In the scene where the song is played, Emmet skates out on his sweet, mute girlfriend Hattie (Samantha Morton) to join a party of women where he is shown smoking reefers and what looks like an opium pipe. The movie credits the song to Bechet and Clarence Williams, a lifelong collaborator of Bechet's and the grandfather of Mod Squad's Clarence Williams III. Perhaps it was Williams who changed "Pleasure" to "Viper," Harlem slang for a pot smoker? He recorded "Jerry the Junker" in 1934. 

Bechet is considered the first soloist of jazz, even before Louis Armstrong. He spent much of his turbulent life in France, where he did prison time for "accidentally" shooting a woman (while trying to shoot another musician who had insulted his music, as he tells the story). In "Sweet and Lowdown," several versions of Emmett's story are depicted as they have been told through the years, and it seems the same could be said of Bechet's life. 

In his 1960 autobiography "Treat It Gentle," Bechet says he helped get Bessie Smith her start recording. He (or his publisher) seem a little repentant about the drug he extolled in song. He says in his book: 

"Some people hear how you've got to smoke reefers, be hopped up before you can play. How you've got to have a woman or a bottle coaxing you on from the side. But that's not it. That's not it at all.....You can get yourself drunk up to most anything....drunk up, or womanned up, or thrilled up with a lot of dope. You can do that. There's a many who think you have to do that. But the real reason you play...it's just because you're able to play, that's all. 

"Inspiration, that's another thing. The world has to give you that...all that happens to you makes a feeling out of your life and you play that feeling....But drinking and reefers and all that stuff, most times they just mess up all the feeling you got inside yourself and all the feeling the music's got inside itself. When a man goes at the music that way, it's just a sign that there's a lot inside himself he don't know how to answer...." 

Bechet is said to be the inspiration for the character "Pablo" in Hermann Hesse's novel Steppenwolf, described as a saxophone player with dark and beautiful Creole eyes. Pablo gives Harry cocaine and opium. Hesse writes of the character who introduced them, "Hermine told me that Pablo had many such drugs, and that he procured them through secret channels. He offered them to his friends now and then and was a master in the mixing and prescribing of them. He had drugs for stilling pain, for inducing sleep, for begetting beautiful dreams, lively spirits and the passion of love." Pablo takes Harry to a magic theatre, where he confronts his inner Steppenwolf. Pablo takes a "charming cigarette" from his pocket and, "Its sweet and heavy smoke diffused a pleasant aroma." After this, Harry says, "I understood it all." 

Bechet died near Paris on May 14, 1959, his 62nd birthday. Two other marijuana-loving musicians died that year: Billie Holiday and Lester Young. 

Jet Magazine, December 27, 1951

UPDATE 3/28/25: I got ahold of the book Sidney Bechet: The Wizard of Jazz by John Chilton, mainly about Bechet's musical endeavors, with a little of his personal life thrown in. Turns out, Bechet had a brief dalliance with Josephine Baker in 1925, and also had a long-term affair with Tallulah "The Tosspot" Bankhead. The actress frequently came to hear Bechet play starting in the 1930s in Paris, and the their romance "was as durable as it was unpredictable; sometimes years elapsed between their meetings, yet each time they were reunited they picked up the excitement from where they had left off." 

An amusing anecdote about going to visit Tallulah at the Hotel Elysée after a gig, and her answering the door stark naked, is recounted by bandmate Bob Wilber. Later on, "One night Bechet went to a celebrity party [in Philadelphia] thrown by Tallulah. She arranged for him to be introduced as an atomic scientist and, of course, he couldn't discuss any of that because it was classified information. The joke was climaxed by Sidney descending the great hall while playing his soprano saxophone. He then entertained the startled guests with his music."

Bankhead bought Bechet a "giant," "spectacular" emerald ring, and reportedly he would adjust his lighting to highlight it when he played onstage. It's also speculated that to protect the valuable gem he started carrying a switchblade knife. And it's mentioned that Simone de Beauvoir would drop in to see him play at the Vieux Colombier in Paris, around the time that Beauvoir tried cannabis in New York City with other jazz greats. 

Bechet played and recorded with Louis Armstrong, and with his Jewish clarinetist pot dealer Mezz Mezzrow. According to Chilton, Mezzrow idolized Bechet, who inspired him to become a clarinettist. Recordings the two made in November 1938 with a small group of musicians including trumpeter Tommy Ladnier "served to gain Mezz Mezzrow a permanent place in jazz history," and "their wide distribution firmly cemented Bechet's reputation throughout the jazz world." 

In the cut "Really the Blues," which became the title of Mezzrow's classic jazz age memoir, he atakes the lead on "an epic clarinet duet with Bechet." Chilton writes that, "This part of the recording proved to be the main talking point for reviewers, and eventually led to Mezzrow and Bechet being featured in a series of recording duos." 

Mezzrow "moved to New York in the late 1920s and became a well-known figure in both black and white jazz circles, not principally through his musical prowess, but mainly because he could supply copious quantities of top-grade marijuana," Chilton writes. "Had Mezzrow been required to depend solely on his skills as a jazz musician, his life would have been a very lean affair," he opined. "As it was he encountered  hardships because of his staunch belief in the superiority of black jazz. He was quite vociferous on this point, and suffered as a result of his candor. However, he successfully badgered record companies into allowing him to organize sessions featuring black and white musicians playing together, and the results were often superb. Mezzrow had toyed with including Bechet in one such session in 1936."

I could find nothing in Chilton's account about Bechet using marijuana. It's too bad he and Mezz couldn't chill out over a joint; instead both men carried guns and Bechet reportedly got violent when he drank. Bechet became bitter over money he thought Mezzrow owed him after they recorded for a label Mezz ran called King Jazz in the 1940s. After a session, Mezz inexplicably called himself a "genius" player and Bechet used to make fun of his playing. 

A multi-instrumentalist, Bechet played six instruments on his 1941 recording of The Sheik of Araby: soprano & tenor sax, clarinet, piano, string bass, and drums. He did not read music. "Bechet to me was the epitome of jazz...everything he played in his whole life was completely original. I honestly think he was the most unique man ever to be in this music," said Duke Ellington. You can watch Bechet play the soprano sax below: