The Case of Duke Ellington’s “The Sheik of Araby” : Complexities of Musical Borrowing in Sidney Bechet’s and Johnny Hodges’s Solos

Abstract

New Orleans jazz musicians often composed their own jazz solos by ear over time, which came off as improvised to their audiences. As asserted by Bob Wilber, New Orleans clarinetist and saxophonist Sidney Bechet gave his students his “improvised” solos on popular jazz standards as a pedagogical tool. The most famous manifestation of Bechet’s gifting occurs in the standard, “The Sheik of Araby,” recorded by the Duke Ellington Orchestra in 1932 and Sidney Bechet’s One-Man Band in 1941. In the former case, Ellington hired former band member and rising star Bechet as an arranger for this standard. Instead of sending in manuscripts, however, Bechet arrived in-person to teach the band and their soloist, Johnny Hodges, his arrangement, leaving trombonist Juan Tizol and others to quickly transcribe what he taught. Using archival evidence from the Smithsonian Institution from this session in 1932 and my own transcriptions of recordings from 1932 and 1941, I argue that Bechet taught Hodges his own improvised soprano saxophone solo, allowing him, as his former student, to embody Bechet’s persona while injecting moments of his own individuality. With the 1932 recording in mind, Bechet’s own recording of the solo in 1941 offered him the opportunity to recreate and recontextualize his musical creation. These two recordings are remarkable in their own right, but this relationship reveals essential musical and historical context for both pieces.