Sandy Brown Jazz

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Many of us will remember the first time we heard a Bix Beiderbecke recording. For me it was Jazz Me Blues by Bix and his Gang on an old 78 rpm record. It immediately registered as 'something special'. As a reminder of, or as an introduction to the cornet player's music, Lionel King has sent us this brief summary with the chance to listen to some of the recordings again:

"Finally Beiderbecke took out a silver cornet. He put it to his lips and blew a phrase. The sound came out like a girl saying 'yes'." (Eddie Condon)

Louis Armstrong remembers Bix in this 3 minute conversation:

Leon Bismark 'Bix' Beiderbecke was born in Davenport, Iowa, on March 10th, 1903. He is a major figure in jazz history. His first encounter with live jazz came when he was a teenager - and he might well have heard bands on the Mississippi river boats which steamed all the way north from New Orleans to his home town.

By 1927, Bix had just turned 24 years old and was at the peak of his creativity. Listen to Royal Garden Blues with Bill Rank on trombone, Don Murray on clarinet, Adrian Rollini on bass sax, Frank Signorelli on piano and Chauncey Moorehouse on drums:

Bix had an incredible ear for music. He could pick out melodies of the classic composers on the piano when he was three. When he picked up the cornet in his early teens he was entirely self-taught. He did eventually learn to read music but was never a good sight reader. He began to play professionally with a group of local musicians who called themselves The Wolverines and their records were bought by the growing ranks of jazz enthusiasts, particularly college and university students. It was before the days of electronic recording when everything was recorded acoustically on pretty crude equipment.

Here are the Wolverines playing Copenhagen:

But jazz musicians were moving to Chicago and Bix joined Jean Goldkette's Orchestra in 1926 along with reedsman Frankie Trumbauer. There he developed as a musician and became well known to the record buying public through his solo work on Goldkette recordings.

Listen to Clarinet Marmalade with

Bix was also interested in classical music. Perhaps the influence of Debussy and Ravel is there in this recording of his own piano composition In A Mist?

Despite its success, the Goldkette Orchestra became expensive to maintain and it broke up in late 1927. Bix and Tram were snapped up by Paul Whiteman, leader of perhaps the most successful orchestra of the time. Whiteman led what we would call a showband which toured, appeared on radio and made plenty of recordings - usually of popular songs of the day. Besides the prospect of being well paid, Bix soon tired of the endless rehearsals, travel and the stiff, tightly written arrangements which gave him little opportunity to play spontaneous jazz solos. He became more and more dependent on alcohol.

There is not a happy ending to Bix's story. Despite taking time out for treatment, his playing deteriorated and he became unreliable for engagements. Andy Secrest, Whiteman's second cornet had to step in at times to cover for Bix.

In this video, there are reflections on the problems Bix was experiencing:

Bix Beiderbecke died in 1931. He was 28. America was in the depths of economic depression. Wikipedia tells the story: 'Beiderbecke died in his apartment, No. 1G, 43–30 46th Street, in Sunnyside, Queens, New York, on August 6, 1931. The week had been stiflingly hot, making sleep difficult. Suffering from insomnia, Beiderbecke played the piano late into the evenings, to both the annoyance and the delight of his neighbors. On the evening of August 6, at about 9.30 pm, his rental agent, George Kraslow, heard noises coming from across the hallway. "His hysterical shouts brought me to his apartment on the run," Kraslow told Philip Evans in 1959, continuing: "He pulled me in and pointed to the bed. His whole body was trembling violently. He was screaming there were two Mexicans hiding under his bed with long daggers. To humor him, I looked under the bed and when I rose to assure him there was no one hiding there, he staggered and fell, a dead weight, in my arms. I ran across the hall and called in a woman doctor, Dr. Haberski, to examine him. She pronounced him dead."

Many Bix enthusiasts nominate Bix's 1927 recording of Singing The Blues as the perfect example of his work. His solo on this track apparently had a strong influence on other musicians including Rex Stewart who recorded his own cover version. In fact it is argued that Bix's playing has influenced jazz cornet and trumpet players for years after his death.

There is very little video to remind us of Bix as a person or as a player. There is this quite fuzzy video of him with Jean Goldkette's orchestra:

Fortunately we have his audio recordings to remind us of his substantial contribution. There are many compilations of Bix Beiderbecke recordings on CD or download, and many of them are on YouTube to drop into from time to time.

Here's I'm Coming Virgina to play us out:

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