Sidney Bechet was born in New Orleans in May 1897 and started pioneering Jazz early on with his great solos. Best remembered for being the first great soprano saxophonist, he was discovered at the age of six, became huge in Europe and yet never forgot his Creole roots.


Bechet died in Paris in 1959 on his 62nd birthday, seven years after returning to France and shortly after completing his autobiography  Treat It Gentle.


There's a wide variety of his music still out there, and the active Sidney Bechet Society still promotes his music to the growing fans of Jazz. If you haven't heard him before, let me introduce you to one of the great soloist that made Jazz what it is today.

It was another sweet Soul Music night on The Stormy Monday Show and while Sybil was away that old raspy rascal Austin Church slipped into her seat spinning sweet grooves and fine tunes that it seems most of the world has forgotten. We heard from greats like Diana Ross, The Tams, Ray Charles, Al Green, Gene Chandler, Marcia Ball and many more. So we invite you to sit back, pull your head phones out and fall back to a time in music when the need to get the latest 45s still ruled our young lives.

And as an added bonus you may want to check out Sybil's latest blog post Vieux Carre Rouge , about how Arron Neville dropped by the house with an unreleased 45 and turned her into a Soul fanatic.

We've put a few of the featured videos below but you can find all the videos of the artists featured on The Stormy Monday Show by visiting Sybil's Stormy Monday Youtube Channel










Podcast produce in conjunction with The Practical Cafe which handles all of Sybil's Practical Social Media Solutions.

I am a little homesick today; nostalgic for the New Orleans I knew as a girl.

I remember I was a budding boogie woogie hound back in old New Orleans. I tracked music down and sniffed it out like it was some rare coin forgotten in the street by revelers too drunk to understand what they had lost. But, the New Orleans I grew up in was nothing like today; there was music everywhere, on every corner, in every club. All the names that are familiar to you now were local cats pumping their hearts out for that big break back then. You could feel the pulse of it as soon as you walked out the door; like some hidden timbre thumping deep within your heart; something which you didn’t quite understand but needed to remedy immediately.

If you couldn't be there, well….

Aaron Neville was a friend of my grandfather's and I remember one night he came knocking on our door with a new 45, asking Glamp to give it a twirl. My grandfather wasn't much into music, probably because of the way they carried on at the bar just two doors down from our house, but he played it as I sat and became enthralled. I fell in love with every incarnation of the Neville Brothers from that moment on; I was hooked on Soul in the worst way. The song was "Tell It Like It Is".



My next memory of Aaron brings me to a hot night club in New Orleans with plenty of room to dance. The Neville Brothers were playing stuff I’d never heard, and yet couldn't live without, like “Vieux Carre Rouge” and “If It Takes All Night.” Everybody was grabbing somebody to dance, and it kept happening night after night after night….

The mixture of the rhythm, the smell of beer and cigarettes, the sweat pouring off Aaron in his signature muscle-adoring tank top, made me a believer. I bought a purple Neville Brother's T shirt off a guy's back that very night ‘cause there were no more and I had to have it to that day. It has a yellow crown atop the Neville name with " Mardi Gras to the World " on the back, and I still have it.

It was a different world back then, my old NOLA; the clubs were small and the Nevilles were very approachable. They would talk to you before returning to the stage to begin another set; stirring that brown rue into their gumbo of seduction for us young lasses.

Do you remember these NOLA nights like I do?

I can tell you this, from that time on, Glamp and " Ma" had a hard time keeping this little puppy on the porch.