Bix Beiderbecke

At 28 years old, Bix Beiderbecke has this physical status:

Leon Bismark "Bix" Beiderbecke (March 10, 1903-1931) was an American jazz cornetist, pianist, and composer. Beiderbecke was one of the twentieth century's most influential jazz soloists, with an innovative lyrical style and a strong sense of tone.

His solos on seminal recordings "Singin' the Blues" and "I'm Coming, Virginia" (both 1927) show a gift for extended improvisation in which jazz solos are a central component of the piece.

In addition, his use of extended chords and his ability to improvise freely along musical and melodic lines are also echoed in post-WWII jazz's.

"In a Mist" (1927), the best known of Beiderbecke's published piano works, and the only one that was recorded.

His piano style reflects both jazz and classical (largely impressionist) influences.

Robbins Music released all five of his piano works during his lifetime. Beiderbecke, a native of Davenport, Iowa, learned the cornet largely by ear, resulting in him adopting a non-standard fingering method that influenced his distinctive style.

Early life

Bix Beiderbecke and Bismark Herman Beiderbecke were born in Davenport, Iowa, on March 10, 1903. There's disagreement about whether Beiderbecke was named Leon Bix or Leon Bismark and given the code "Bix" (Bit). His father, Charles Burnette "Burnie" Beiderbecke, was named "Bix" by his older brother, as well as his older brother, John Burnette "Burnie" Beiderbecke. Leon Bix was named on the boy's birth certificate, according to Burnie Beiderbecke, who confirmed it. Biographers also published birth certificates that match. Leon Bismark was the subject of more recent studies, which takes into account church and school records in lieu of a relative's will. Nonetheless, his parents named him Bix, which seems to have been his favorite. "Frome your Leon Bix Beiderbecke not Bismark Remeber [sic]," Beiderbecke wrote in a letter to his mother when he was nine years old.

After Otto von Bismarck of his native Germany, the son of German immigrants Beiderbecke's father was a well-to-do coal and lumber merchant named after him. The daughter of a Mississippi riverboat captain was Beiderbecke's mother. She performed the organ at First Presbyterian Church in Davenport and encouraged young Beiderbecke's interest in the piano.

Beiderbecke was the youngest of three children. Burnie's brother was born in 1895, and Mary Louise was born in 1898. He started playing piano at age two or three. His sister recalls that he stood on the ground and ran it with his hands over his head. He was the subject of an adoring article in the Davenport Daily Democrat that declared, "Seven-year-old boy musical wonder!" five years later. Little Bickie Beiderbecke makes any selection he hears.

Burnie recalled that he would not return home for supper to rush to the riverfront, slip aboard an excursion boat, and play the calliope. A friend remembered that Beiderbecke showed no interest in the Saturday matinees they attended, but as the lights came on, he rushed home to imitate the accompanist's melodies.

Burnie returned to Davenport at the end of 1918 after being stationside during World War I, including "Reality Rag" and "Skeleton Jangle" by the Original Dixieland Jazz Band, "Tiger Rag" and "Skeleton Jangle" were among his songs. Beiderbecke learned to love hot jazz from these recordings; he taught himself how to play cornet by listening to Nick LaRocca's horn lines. He also listened to jazz from the riverboats that docked in downtown Davenport. When their excursion boat stopped in Davenport, Louis Armstrong and the drummer Baby Dodds said to have encountered Beiderbecke. Historians disagree over whether such an event occurred.

From 1918 to 1921, Beiderbecke attended Davenport High School. During this time, he sat in and performed with various bands, including Wilbur Hatch, Floyd Bean, and Carlisle Evans. He appeared at Valiantville Night in the spring of 1920, performing in a vocal quintet named the Black Jazz Babies and playing his cornet. He later joined Neal Buckley's Novelty Orchestra at the behest of his friend Fritz Putzier. The company was hired for a gig in December 1920, but an allegation was lodged with the American Federation of Musicians, Local 67, that the boys did not have union cards. Beiderbecke was required to sight read and failed in an audition before a union executive. He did not get his card.

Two Davenport police officers arrested Sarah Ivens, a five-year-old girl who had stolen her from a neighbor's garage and committed a lewd and lascivious act with her on April 22, 1921, a criminal charge in Iowa. The teen accused Beiderbecke of "putting her hands on her person outside of her costume," according to the police ledger. The leadger went on to state that Beiderbecke and the child "were in a parking lot, and he stubbed her and she hollered," drawing the interest of two young men from across the street. "The young men went [to the garage] and the girl went home," the young man said. After a $1,500 bail bond was posted, Beiderbecke was released. Preston Ivens, Sarah's father, requested that the Scott County grand jury dismiss the charge to avoid "harm that might come to her if she were in jail" if the conviction was dismissed in September 1921, whereupon the County Attorney filed a dismissal of the lawsuit. It's not clear from official records if Sarah herself had identified Beiderbecke, but the two young men's told her mother a day after the alleged incident that they had seen Beiderbecke take the child into the garage. The surviving official papers regarding the detention and aftermath, which include two police entries and Preston Ivens' grand jury testimony, were first published on the Bixography website in 2001 by Professor Albert Haim. Jean Pierre Lion's 2005 biography briefly discussed the incident and then printed the documents' text. The incident was unknown to previous biographies.

Beiderbecke enrolled at the Lake Forest Academy, a boarding school north of Chicago in Lake Forest, Illinois, in September 1921. Although historians have generally stated that his parents sent him to Lake Forest to discourage his interest in jazz, others suspect he may have been sent away in reaction to his detention. However, Mr. and Mrs. Beiderbecke argued that a boarding school would provide their son with both the faculty interest and discipline required to improve their academic results, which was ostensible because Bix had failed most classes in high school, remaining a junior in 1921 despite turning 18 in March of that year. His passions, on the other hand, remained limited to music and sports. Beiderbecke often travelled to Chicago to listen to jazz bands at night clubs and speakeasies, including the legendary Friar's Inn, where he often sat in with the New Orleans Rhythm Kings. He also travelled to the predominantly African-American South Side to listen to classic black jazz bands such as King Oliver's Creole Jazz Band, which featured Louis Armstrong on second cornet. "Don't think I'm getting tough," Burnie told his brother, "I'd go to hell to hear a good band." He helped organise the Cy-Bix Orchestra with drummer Walter "Cy" Welge, and immediately found himself in hot water for appearing indecorously at a school dance.

Beiderbecke often failed to return to his dormitory before curfew, and there were instances that stayed off-campus the next day. He was caught on the fire escape to his dormitory in the early mornings of May 20, 1922, and attempting to climb into his room. Due to his academic mishaps and extracurricular activities, which included alcohol consumption, the faculty voted to expel him the next day. Following his dismissal, the headmaster informed Beiderbecke's parents by letter that Beiderbecke "was partying himself and was accountable for some degree in having alcohol in the Academy." Beiderbecke began studying for a career in music a few years ago.

In the summer of 1922, he returned to Davenport briefly and then moved to Chicago to join the Cascades Band, spending the summer on Lake Michigan excursion boats. He worked in Chicago until 1923, with occasional trips to Davenport to work for his father.

Source

Career

Beiderbecke joined the Wolverine Orchestra in 1923, and the seven-man crew first appeared at the Stockton Club in Hamilton, Ohio. The band, which specializes in hot jazz and recoiling from so-called sweet music, derived its name from one of Jelly Roll Morton's "Wolverine Blues" specializing in hot jazz and recoiling from so-called sweet music. Beiderbecke took piano lessons from a young lady who introduced him to the work of Eastwood Lane during this period. Lane's piano suites and orchestral arrangements were explicitly American, though they weren't also having French Impressionist allusions, and they inspired Beiderbecke's style, particularly on "In a Mist." A new appearance at Doyle's Dance Academy in Cincinnati brought about a series of band and individual photos that culminated in the image of Beiderbecke: freshly born, his hair perfectly cohes, and his cornet resting on his right knee.

The Wolverines made their first recordings on February 18, 1924. The two teams were waxed at the Gennett Records studios in Richmond, Indiana: Nick LaRocca and Larry Shields of the Original Dixieland Jazz Band wrote "Fidgety Feet" by Nick LaRocca and Larry Shields of the Original Dixieland Jazz Band, and "Jazz Me Blues" by Tom Delaney. According to biographer Richard M. Sudhalter and Philip R. Evans, Beiderbecke's solo on the latter heralded something new and significant in jazz.

Between February and October 1924, the Wolverines appeared on Gennett Records as 15 players on both directions. The titles highlighted a strong and well-formed cornet talent. His lip had grown stronger from earlier, more tentative years; on nine of the Wolverines' national titles he went from lead to opener solo, without having to wait.

Beiderbecke's playing was sui generis in some respects, but he also listened to, and learned from, the music around him, from the Dixieland jazz exemplified by the Original Dixieland Jazz Band to the New Orleans Rhythm Kings' hottest Chicago style, to King Oliver's south-side bands and other black artists; to Claude Debussy and Maurice Ravel's classical compositions.

According to The Oxford Companion to Jazz, Louis Armstrong was another source of inspiration, although Beiderbecke's style was very different from Armstrong's.

Armstrong and virtuosity tended to exacerbating showmanship and virtuosity, while Beiderbecke emphasized melody even when improvising, and seldom ventured into the upper reaches of the register. Mezz Mezzrow narrated in his autobiography, traveling 53 miles to Hudson Lake, Indiana, with Frank Teschemacher in order to play Armstrong's "Heebie Jeebies" for Beiderbecke when it was announced. Beiderbecke and other white musicians patronized the Sunset Café on Fridays to listen to Armstrong and his band in addition to listening to Armstrong's records. Beiderbecke's chief influence, according to Paul Mares of the New Orleans Rhythm Kings, was born in 1925 at the age of 23. In fact, Beiderbecke had encountered Hardy and Leon Roppolo in Davenport in 1921, when the two joined a local band and performed in town for three months. Beiderbecke spent time with them, but it's impossible to tell the degree to which Hardy's style influenced Beiderbecke's, particularly because there is no official recording of a Hardy performance.

Beiderbecke exemplified a certain musical spirit in Hoagy Carmichael, whose amusingly eccentric appearance he also adored. The two became close friends. Carmichael, a law student and aspiring pianist and songwriter, invited the Wolverines to perform at Indiana University's Bloomington campus in 1924. The Wolverines recorded a song written specifically for Beiderbecke and his coworkers on May 6, 1924: "Riverboat Shuffle."

Bix resigned with the Wolverines in September-October 1924, deciding to join Jean Goldkette and his Orchestra in Detroit, but Beiderbecke's tenure with the band was short-lived. Goldkette performed for the Victor Talking Machine Company, whose musical director, Eddie King, was outraged by Beiderbecke's modernistic style of jazz playing. Moreover, despite the fact that Beiderbecke's position within the Goldkette family was a "third trumpeter," a less taxing position than 1st or 2nd trumpeter, he had trouble dealing with the difficult ensemble passages due to his poor reading skills. Beiderbecke and Goldkette decided to leave the business but wanted to stay in touch, with Goldkette advising Beiderbecke to read more about music and get more information about it. Bix and His Rhythm Jugglers formed a Gennett recording session in Richmond, California, six weeks after leaving the band. They set two tunes to wax on January 26, 1925: "Toddlin' Blues," another number from LaRocca and Shields, and Beiderbecke's own composition, "Davenport Blues," which has since been a classic jazz number and was performed by musicians ranging from Bunny Berigan to Ry Cooder and Geoff Muldaur. In 1927, Robbins Music released "Davenport Blues" as a piano solo.

Beiderbecke enrolled at the University of Iowa in Iowa City in February 1925. However, his time in academia was much shorter than that in Detroit. His guidance counselor encouraged him instead to study religion, ethics, physical education, and military education as he tried to fit his course schedule with music. It was a cultural blunder that Benny Green described as being "comical," "fatuous," and "a parody." Beiderbecke began to skip classes immediately, and after being involved in a drunken encounter in a local bar, he was banned. He was not fired, but quit, not expelled, according to Lion, but not fired (pp. ). 94–95; 1994–95. Don Murray and Howdy Quicksell were at a lake resort in Michigan this summer. Goldkette was the band's manager, and it brought Beiderbecke in touch with another artist he had never seen before: the C-melody saxophone player Frankie Trumbauer. Despite Trumbauer's being warned by other musicians, the two hit it off: "Look out, he's dead." He drinks, so handling him will be a challenge." They were inseparable for a large portion of Beiderbecke's career, with Trumbauer playing as something like a guardian to Beiderbecke. Beiderbecke joined Trumbauer when he formed a band for a long time at St. Louis' Arcadia Ballroom. He also performed alongside clarinetist Pee Wee Russell, who praised Beiderbecke's ability to drive the band. Russell said, "He more or less made you play whether you wanted to or not." "If you had any talent at all," the boy said, "he made you play better."

Bix and Trumbauer joined Goldkette's top dance band in the spring of 1926, splitting the year between playing a Summer season at a Goldkette-owned resort on Lake Hudson, Indiana, and headlining at Detroit's Graystone Ballroom, which was also owned by Goldkette. The Goldkette "Famous Fourteen," as they were dubbed in New York City, opened against the Fletcher Henderson Orchestra, one of the East Coast's best African big bands, in October 1926. The Roseland proclaimed the winners of a "Battle of the Bands" in the local press, and the men of Goldkette were proclaimed the winners on October 12, following a night of tense playing. "We were amazed, rage, morose, and bewildered," Rex Stewart, Fletcher's lead trumpeter, said of listening to Beiderbecke and his colleagues perform. The experience, he said, was "most humiliating." The Fletcher Henderson Orchestra recorded a version of "Singin' the Blues" on October 15, 1931, just months after Beiderbecke's death, with Rex Stewart performing a barely note-for-note tribute to Beiderbecke's most popular solo.

Despite the fact that the Goldkette Orchestra appeared on various sides for Victory during this period, none of them features Beiderbecke's most famous solos. Victor intentionally targeted the band's albums, which the band later discovered was subjected to the band's commercial needs. There are two notable exceptions to the policy, including "My Pretty Girl" and "Clementine," the latter being two of the band's last recordings and its popular swan song. In addition to these commercial sessions with Goldkette, Beiderbecke, and Trumbauer, who also recorded under their own names for the OKeh brand, Bix waxed some of his best solos as a member of Trumbauer's band, beginning with "Clarinet Marmalade" and "Singin' the Blues," which were released on February 4, 1927. In May, Trumbauer re-recorded Carmichael's "Riverboat Shuffle" on May and two more seminal solos followed in New Orleans, with "I'm Coming, Virginia" and "Way Down Yonder." Beberbecke received co-writing credit on "For No Reason at All in C" by Trumbauer, which was released under the name Tram, Bix, and Eddie, the Three Piece Band's trademark). On that number, Beiderbecke switched from cornet to piano, and then on September, he played only piano for his album "In A Mist." This year was perhaps his most fruitful year of his short career.

Goldkette formed his premier band in New York in September 1927, under financial stress. Paul Whiteman had hoped to capture Goldkette's best musicians for his touring band, but Beiderbecke, Trumbauer, Murray, Bill Rank, Chauncey Morehouse, and Frank Signorelli replaced him with bass saxophone player Adrian Rollini at the Club New Yorker. Joe Venuti, a guitarist, and guitarist Eddie Lang, who had often performed on a freelance basis with the Goldkette Orchestra, were also present in the band. Sylvester Ahola, a schooled trumpeter who could play improvised jazz solos and read complicated scores, was another newcomer. Beiderbecke said "Hell, I'm just a musical degenerate" when Ahola introduced himself. Beiderbecke and Trumbauer decided on with Whiteman when the job came sooner than expected, in October 1927. On October 27, they arrived in Indianapolis, Indiana, with his orchestra playing.

The Paul Whiteman Orchestra was the day's most popular and highest paid dance band. Despite Whiteman's remark "The King of Jazz," his band was not a jazz ensemble as such, but rather a popular music ensemble that pulled from both jazz and classical music collections, according to the demands of its record-buying and concert-going audience. Whiteman was perhaps best known for premiering George Gershwin's Rhapsody in Blue in 1924, and Ferde Grofé, the orchestrator of that work, remained a vital component of the band throughout the 1920s. According to a 1926 New Yorker biography, Whiteman was both physically and culturally significant — "a man flabby, coarse, untidy, and sleek, with a hard core of shrewdness in an envelope of sentimentalism." A number of Beiderbecke partisans have chastised Whiteman for failing to give Bix the opportunities he so richly deserved as a jazz artist. "Whiteman moved farther and farther away from the band's easy-going, rhythmically inclined style," James claims, becoming "more subordinate to his company sense." He goes on to state that this artistically compromised Beiderbecke was partly responsible for his death.

Benny Green, in particular, slammed Whiteman for being a "mediocre vain act," and she added that "today we only tolerate the horrors of Whiteman's recordings in the hopes that a Bixian fragment will help resolve the mess." Richard Sudhalter has responded by saying that Beiderbecke saw the Whiteman band as an opportunity to pursue musical ambitions that did not exist in jazz: he's been criticized at jazz.

"From Monday On," "Back In Your Own Back Yard," "You Took Advantage Of Me," "Changes," and "When" are among Whiteman's songs. These are specially arranged collections that emphasize Beiderbecke's improvisational abilities. Bill Challis, an arranger who had previously worked in this capacity for Jean Goldkette, was especially helpful in composing scores with Beiderbecke in mind, often arranging entire ensemble passages based on Bix's solos. Beiderbecke appeared on several hit songs by Whiteman, including "Together," "Ramona" and "Ol' Man River," the latter featuring Bing Crosby on vocals.

However, Beiderbecke's long-term alcoholism may have exacerbated the composer's hectic tour and recording schedule, although this is a contentious point. Matty Malneck, the Whiteman's violinist, said, "He didn't get to play the things he loved with the Whiteman band because we were a symphonic band and we did the same thing every night, and it was exhausting."

While on tour in Cleveland, Beiderbecke suffered what Lion terms "a serious nerve disorder" and Sudhalter and Evans suggest "was in all likelihood an acute attack of delirium tremens," presumably caused by Beiderbecke's attempt to reduce his alcohol intake." Bill Rank, a trombonist, said, "He cracked up, that's all." "Just went to pieces; broke up a roomful of furniture in the hotel."

Beiderbecke returned home to Davenport, California, in February 1929, and was lauded by local newspapers as "the world's hottest correspondent." In preparation for the shooting of a new talking picture, The King of Jazz, he spent the summer with Whiteman's band in Hollywood. Any true work was prevented from being shot on the film, but production delays meant Beiderbecke and his pals had a lot of time to drink heavily. He was back in Davenport, where his parents encouraged him to seek medical attention by September. He spent a month at the Keeley Institute in Dwight, Illinois, from October 14 to November 18. According to Lion, an examination by Keeley doctors revealed the detrimental effects of Bix's long-term dependency on alcohol: "Bix confessed to using alcohol 'in excess' for the past nine years, his daily dose increased to three pints of 'whiskey' and twenty cigarettes, and Bix's swaying in Romberg.'

Although he was away, Whiteman kept his chair open in Beiderbecke's honor, in the hopes that he'll occupy it again. However, Beiderbecke did not return to New York at the end of January 1930 and only sparingly. Beiderbecke performed on the original recording of Hoagy Carmichael's "Georgia on My Mind," with Carmichael on guitar, Joe Venuti on clarinet and alto saxophone, John Teagarden on trombone, and Bud Freeman on tenor saxophone on the trombone. The album will continue to be a jazz and popular music standard. The 1930 recording of "Georgia on My Mind" was inducted into the Grammy Hall of Fame in 2014.

Beiderbecke's performance had a huge influence on Carmichael's as a composer. "Stardust," one of his compositions, was inspired by Beiderbecke's experiments, with a cornet word reworked by Carmichael to reflect the song's central theme. Bing Crosby, a member of Whiteman, also mentioned Beiderbecke as a significant figure. "Bix and the rest of the quartet will experiment and discuss ideas on the piano," he said.

Following the 1929 Wall Street Crash, the once-burgeoning music industry has dwindled, and jobs became more difficult to locate. On the Camel Pleasure Hour NBC radio show, Beiderbecke's only regular income came from his work as a member of Nat Shilkret's orchestra. However, Beiderbecke's seemingly limitless gift for improvisation finally fell short of him on October 8, 1930: "He stood up to take his solo, but his mind went blank, and nothing happened," recalled Frankie Cush, a fellow performer. The cornetist spent the remainder of the year at home in Davenport and then, in February 1931, he returned to New York for the last time.

Source