In 1928 Paris, Sidney Bechet pulled a gun on a fellow musician over a chord change, missed, wounded a bystander, and served 11 months in prison before being deported. This deep dive explores how the man who was arguably the first great jazz soloist, recording "Wild Cat Blues" and "Kansas City Man Blues" in July 1923, months before Louis Armstrong's recording debut, ended up less famous than his peers. Born in New Orleans in 1897 to a Creole of color family, he performed publicly at six, never learned to read music, and learned by ear from Bunk Johnson and King Oliver.

The episode follows his 1919 trip to London with Will Marion Cook's orchestra, where he discovered the straight soprano saxophone and earned a landmark essay from Swiss conductor Ernest Ansermet comparing him to Bach, his tours with Josephine Baker's Revue Negre, his Depressio ...