They met when Louis was 11 and Sidney 14, and Sidney remembers being so impressed by Louis’s musical talent that he invited him home for dinner. He did give Louis credit on rare occasions, as when he spoke of Louis playing the clarinet solo from High Society on the cornet. Having dispatched the local pikes, it was amazing that the Bechet shark allowed the musical tadpole that was Mezz Mezzrow to wriggle about in his aquarium. Mezzrow followed Bechet by settling in Paris in 1950, where he stayed until his death on 5 August 1972. Photo: Mezz Mezzrow (left) and his biographer Bernard Wolfe.