1959, June 15 - Afternoon - Carnegie Hall
Bechet Memorial Jazz Concert
Will Help Form a Cancer Fund

New York Times June 16, 1959 - Concert Review
by John S. Wilson

A sparse audience dotted Carnegie Hall yesterday afternoon to hear a jazz concert offered as a memorial to Sidney Bechet. It was announced during the concert that proceeds would go toward the establishment of a Sidney Bechet Cancer Fund.
Mr. Bechet died of cancer in Paris May 15.

Most of the three dozen musicians who appeared briefly during the afternoon represented the traditional school of jazz with which Mr. Bechet was associated. Appropriately, since Mr. Bechet was a clarinetist, ten of the musicians played clarinet. For one of the clarinetists, Putte Wickman, the occasion provided an extremely inconspicuous American concert debut. Mr. Wickman, a Swede, has gained a great reputation overseas although he has never played in this country before.
Currently here on a two-week vacation, he was slipped unobtrusively into a group built around four clarinets- his own and those of Tony Scott, Sol Yaged, and Bob Wider. In his single solo opportunity Mr. Wickman showed himself to be a performer of tremendous vitality and agile inventiveness. Mr. Wilder and Mr. Yaged also joined with Gene Sedric, Garvin Bushell, Cecil Scott and Herb Hall to bring the opening selection of the concert, the traditional New Orleans Funeral tune ' Didn't He Ramble' to an unusual and fascinating climax provided by their clarinet sextet.

The others clarinetists who appeared were Toni Parenti who took advantage of an intermission during his regular Sunday afternoon appearance at the Metropole to play one selection, and Omer Simeon who played with Wilbur de Paris' band. During the concert, Edith Piaf, the singer, was introduced as the honorary chairman of the Sidney Bechet Cancer Fund by Sam Price, who was responsible for the production. Mr. Price is an American jazz pianist who had frequently worked with Mr. Bechet in France.

Miss Piaf had served on a committee, made up largely of members of the Franco-American Society, which sponsored the concert. Honorary chairmen of this committee were Mme. Hervé Alphand, wife of the French Ambassador, Mme. Raymond Laporte, wife of the French Consul General in New York, and Noble Sissle, American band leader. - John S. Wilson

Note: Sidney Bechet dead May 14, 1959 ( not May 14) in Paris .