[Dixielandjazz] Bix Beiderbecke - birthday March 10

[Robert Ringwald]

Happy Birthday, Bix Beiderbecke! Bix is featured in the new exhibit at the Michael
Feinstein Great American Songbook Initiative in Carmel, IN.
Bix Beiderbecke: A Brief Life; An Enduring Legacy
Many musicians capture our imagination because of their artistry, their musical contributions
and their life stories. Leon Bismark "Bix" Beiderbecke, one of the most influential
jazz soloists of the 1920s, is such an individual. A cornetist without peer, Beiderbecke
lived only 28 years, but in that time he inspired musicians and songwriters, and
left a musical legacy still heard in modern jazz.
Indeed, his "beautiful tone on the cornet made him a legend among musicians during
his life and the legend... grew even larger after he died," according to
http://redhotjazz.com/bix.html
. The German Midwest and European classical influences, including Maurice Ravel
and Claude Debussy, produced "a different type of player... lyrical, linear and pure
in tone," states
http://www.jazz-music-history.com/Bix-Beiderbecke.html
Beiderbecke is one of the artists featured in the current exhibit, "Blast from the
Past: Roaring Hot '20s Jazz," at the Michael Feinstein Great American Songbook Initiative
at The Center for the Performing Arts in Carmel, Indiana. The exhibit showcases the
high spirits and brash music of the decade following the end of World War I and places
it in the context of the major social and cultural upheavals of the time. Beiderbecke
was born March 10, 1903, in Davenport, Iowa. According to
http://jazz.about.com/od/classicjazzartists/p/BixBeiderbecke.htm?p=1
, he was raised in a comfortable middle class family and developed piano skill at
any early age. "His knack for learning pieces by ear allowed him to forego intensive
training, which would have required him to learn to read music." This lack of knowledge
would bedevil him later. In 1925, for example, he lost a job with Jean Goldkette's
Orchestra because of his inability to read music.
"His poor grades in school resulted from lack of interest in everything but music,
but in an effort to remedy this, his parents sent him to Lake Forest Academy, a boarding
school in Illinois. There, he continued to ignore his studies in favor of sneaking
off to Chicago to hear jazz in speakeasies. He began to perform more and more in
Chicago, and when he was expelled from the academy in 1922, he decided to pursue
a career in music. He soaked up the early jazz sounds of Louis Armstrong, King Oliver,
and Freddie Keppard."
>From late 1923 until October 1924, Beiderbecke played cornet with the Wolverine Orchestra
throughout the Midwest, where he first befriended Hoosier Hoagy Carmichael
http://redhotjazz.com/hoagy.html
. Carmichael later credited Beiderbecke with inspiring him to begin his songwriting
career. The two friends made several stellar recordings together, first at Gennett
Studios
http://riverwalkjazz.stanford.edu/program/gennett-records-little-studio-could
in Richmond, Indiana, and later in New York City.
In 1927, Beiderbecke became featured soloist with the Paul Whiteman Orchestra, the
most well-known band of the time. There, he enjoyed the prestige and financial rewards
of playing with such a popular group. However, it didn't change his hard-drinking
ways; by 1929, his drinking had affected his ability to play and he left Whiteman's
orchestra.
Whiteman kept him on the payroll and told him his chair would always be there for
him, but Beiderbecke never rejoined the band. Instead, he returned to New York in
1930 and made a few more records with his friend, Hoagy Carmichael.
But mainly, according to
http://redhotjazz.com/bix.html
, he "holed himself up in a rooming house in Queens, where he drank a lot and worked
on his beautiful solo piano pieces, 'Candlelight,' 'Flashes,' and 'In the Dark.'"
He never recorded them and died at age 28 in August 1931 during an alcoholic seizure.
"The official cause of death was lobar pneumonia and edema of the brain."
Beiderbecke's best-known recordings include "Oh Baby!," "Tiger Rag," "Big Boy," "My
Pretty Girl" and "Singin' the Blues Away." One of his most famous is "Riverboat Shuffle,"
written by Hoagy Carmichael. Here is a YouTube recording
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=pvl9LYNdkpM
of that song, performed with the Wolverine Orchestra. Many of Beiderbecke's recordings
are available on YouTube and iTunes.
Although brief, Beiderbecke's accomplished life and work has had an enduring influence
on jazz and jazz musicians, including Eddie Condon, who said Bix sounded "like a
girl saying yes" and Louis Armstrong, who said of his music, "I'm telling you, those
pretty notes go right through me."
The style of Beiderbecke also influenced jazz artists Rex Stewart (cornetist who
played with the Duke Ellington Orchestra); Benny Carter (alto saxophonist); Johnny
Hodges (alto saxophonist who also played with Ellington), and Roy Eldridge (trumpeter).
Lester Young (tenor saxophonist and clarinetist) carried "Singin' the Blues" with
him in his sax case. And it's said their devotion to Beiderbecke was at work in the
ways in which these individuals influenced Miles Davis and the West Coast cool jazz
of the 1950s.
Next time, we'll look at another jazz artist featured in "Blast from the Past: Roaring
Hot '20s Jazz." In the meantime, be cool; come on over to see the exhibit in person
at The Palladium-One Center Green, Carmel, Indiana.
Chris Lewis
Michael Feinstein Initiative
-30-


-Bob Ringwald
www.ringwald.com
Amateur (ham) Radio Operator K6YBV
916/ 806-9551

"My choice early in life was either to be a piano player in a whorehouse or a politician. And to tell the truth, there's hardly any difference.” 
Harry S. Truman, 33rd President B: 5/8/1884 – d: 12/26/1972.