[Dixielandjazz] Was Bix's death due to US Government's toxic alcohol? -- More. Norman comments on 1951 Atlanta deaths due to methyl alcohol

[Norman Vickers]

To:  Musicians and Jazzfans, DJML

From: Norman Vickers, Jazz Pensacola

 

This  item from Globe Gazette, Mason City, Iowa is similar to the one which
ran recently in Davenport, Bix’s home city.

 

 

Consensus was that Bix died of pneumonia and this was complicated by his
debilitated state from chronic alcoholism.  This is an interesting
viewpoint, but unfortunately  80+ years later, there’s no way to verify.
So, speculation still continues
..

 

 

From:  Globe Gazette, Mason City, Iowa

 

·          <http://globegazette.com/weather/?weather_zip=50401> 73°THOMAS
GEYER For The Globe Gazette 

*	Aug 4, 2017 Updated 12 hrs ago 

More than 80 years after Leon "Bix" Beiderbecke died at the age of 28, a
theory about the cornetist's controversial end argues Bix was the tragic
victim of an anti-liquor campaign arranged by the federal government.

The indisputable facts: On Thursday, Aug. 6, 1931, at 9:30 p.m. Beiderbecke,
the great Davenport cornetist, died in New York City. According to the front
page article of the Davenport Democrat and Leader, a predecessor of the
Quad-City Times, the cause of death was pneumonia.

But jazz artist Randall Sandke, who plays cornet and trumpet and who is on
the board of the Bix Beiderbecke Museum and Archive, said he has long
wondered about the ultimate cause of Bix’s death. His research has led him
to some fresh conclusions about the case. His findings were laid out in a
2013 essay, "Was Bix Beiderbecke Poisoned by the Federal Government,"
published in the Journal of Jazz Studies, a periodical from the Institute of
Jazz Studies at Rutgers.

“I think Bix has gotten a bad rap,” Sandke said in an interview with the
Quad-City Times on July 27. “He died, and it was related to his alcoholism."

Sandke argues that Bix could have been unlucky enough that night to have
imbibed tainted alcohol, as many had during Prohibition, and it could have
been the federal government that may have, inadvertently, been a factor in
Bix’s untimely death.

That Bix drank alcohol heavily has never been a secret. Prohibition did not
stop people from drinking alcoholic beverages. In fact the 18th Amendment
never prohibited drinking alcohol, just its manufacture, transportation and
sale.

The article as was written: “After one year from the ratification of this
article the manufacture, sale, or transportation of intoxicating liquors
within, the importation thereof into, or the exportation thereof from the
United States and all territory subject to the jurisdiction thereof for
beverage purposes is hereby prohibited.”

Bix did not just one day contract pneumonia and die. He had been in
declining health since he had a reaction to alcohol the evening of Nov. 30,
1928, Sandke said.

Sandke said that he has been interested in Bix since he was a boy of 11 or
12 in Chicago, both reading about him and listening to his music.

“In that era, plenty of his contemporaries were hard drinkers, and they
managed to avoid the kind of tragic end he had,” Sandke said of Bix.

What Sandke thinks is that in Bix's final days, the musician was unlucky
enough to have consumed alcohol that was tainted, possibly with methanol,
such as wood alcohol, or some other substance.

In his article, Sandke turns to the writing of Deborah Blum, whose 2010
story, “The Chemist’s War: The little-told story of how the U.S. Government
poisoned alcohol during Prohibition with deadly consequences,” published by
Slate, explains the government’s role in fighting bootleggers.

While consumable alcohol was banned during Prohibition, there remained a
need for industrial alcohol.

The industrial alcohol, as Blum points out, often was stolen by bootleggers
and “resold as drinkable spirits.”

What the government did was order the poisoning of industrial alcohols
produced in the United States in the hopes it would scare people into giving
up illicit drinking. Instead, by the time Prohibition ended in 1933, Blum
says in her essay, “the federal government poisoning program, by some
estimates, had killed at least 10,000 people.”

Blum writes that while Prohibition went into effect on Jan. 1, 1920, people
continued to drink and that by the mid-1920s, the Treasury Department, which
oversaw alcohol enforcement, estimated that approximately 60 million gallons
of industrial alcohol had been stolen annually by bootleggers to supply the
nation’s drinkers.

It was not the government’s intent to kill anyone, Blum points out. The idea
of “denaturing” industrial alcohol was introduced to the United States in
1906, as it had been a practice in Europe.

Chemists employed by the syndicates and bootleggers worked to make the
denatured industrial alcohol potable, which made the government create ways
to make industrial alcohol more poisonous.

As for Bix, a breakdown the night of Nov. 30, 1928, in Cleveland, may have
been the result of bad alcohol, Sandke said.

That night, Sandke believes, Bix passed out onstage while performing with
Paul Whiteman’s orchestra in the New Music Hall in Cleveland. Later, in a
fit of delirium, according to trombonist and friend Bill Rank, Bix cracked
up and broke up a roomful of furniture at the hotel.

Whiteman called for a doctor and nurse and ordered Bix back to Davenport.
Instead, Bix headed to New York, but he was a changed man, Sandke said. The
episode left Bix with severe peripheral neuropathy affecting both of his
legs and feet as well as chronic pneumonia, which eventually killed him. His
kidneys and liver didn’t function properly. He suffered from headaches,
dizziness, blackouts, memory loss and had to use a cane to get around. Bix
was only 26 at the time.

The symptoms are those of someone who has been a victim of alcohol
poisoning.

“It seems to me there was a definite break in his life from the time he had
that breakdown in Cleveland,” Sandke said. “His health never really
recovered from that point on.

"If you listen to his music from that point on, he rallies and he records
some great stuff. He’s not in the studio not nearly as often as he had
before then because of his physical problem."

Despite Bix’s drinking, Sandke said, “He was able to really maintain this
unbelievably high standard of performing all those years until that night."

On Aug. 9, 1931, both WOC and WHO paid tribute to Bix during a broadcast of
the Valley dance, according to the Davenport Democrat and Leader.

During the broadcast, pianist Bert Sloan played Bix’s composition, “In a
Mist,” reminding people that Bix also was an accomplished pianist and
composer.

“I think there is a certain amount of luck of the draw when you’re buying
any kind of unregulated product,” Sandke said. “Some people managed to avoid
being seriously affected.”

                                                            --End—

FYI—  My anecdote follows about 1951 Atlanta deaths due to methyl alcohol.
Not directly related to the Bix story—different  toxins, but still a story
worth remembering.

 

My only tangential encounter with something similar went like this:

Reference:  Atlanta Journal Constitution ( AJC)  Photo Vault:  Tainted
Moonshine killed dozens 64 years ago.  Updated Wed.  Oct 21, 2015. 

Norman writes: 

1951 was the year before I started medical school at Emory U. in Atlanta.
When I worked at Grady Hospital,( this was a couple of years following the
incident)  the charity hospital for Fulton and DeKalb Counties ( Atlanta and
Decatur) the resident and teaching staff recounted the influx of patients
sick and dying from having drunk methyl alcohol ( deadly poison) from a
bootleg supplier, a white man named John “Fats” Hardy,  who had substituted
it for ethyl alcohol to various bars and clubs which sold to black
customers.

Methyl alcohol produces severe acidosis—change in the normal blood pH.
Treatment is large amounts of IV fluids containing sodium bicarbonate.  The
supply of IV sodium bicarbonate was quickly exhausted and the volume of
patients was quite large.  Consequently, medical faculty  passed out boxes
of sodium bicarbonate, measuring spoons and directions for mixing the sodium
bicarbonate powder with bottles of IV fluids such as normal saline or 5%
dextrose solution. Quick action saved many lives.

>From the AJC report:  ..by the end of the night,  38 African-American men
and women were dead after drinking the moonshine and many others were left
blind and paralyzed.”

“ Hardy was convicted on Dec 12 1951 and sentenced to life in prison.

 

“Rumor has it he escaped the death sentence because the 360 pound man was
too big to fit into the electric chair and the state didn’t own ‘an electric
sofa.’ ”

 

                                                            --End--

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

F.Norman Vickers

5429 Dynasty Drive

Pensacola, FL 32504-8583

Home 850-484-9183; cell 850-324-5022

Jazz Society of Pensacola 850-433-8382

www.jazzpensacola.com <http://www.jazzpensacola.com/> 

nvickers1 at cox.net

http://jazzpensacola.com/vickers/

Member Jazz Journalists Association

 

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