Leon Bismark "Bix" Beiderbecke (March 10, 1903 –
August 6, 1931) was a notable jazz
cornet player, as well as a very talented classical and jazz
pianist.
Early life
Beiderbecke was born in Davenport, Iowa to a middle-class family of German origins. As a teenager he would sneak off to the banks of the Mississippi to listen to bands play on the riverboats coming up
from the south.
Illness often kept Beiderbecke out of school and his grades suffered. He attended Davenport High
School briefly, but his parents felt that sending him to the exclusive Lake Forest
Academy just north of Chicago in Lake Forest, Illinois, as a boarding student would provide him with both the necessary faculty
attention and discipline to improve his academic schooling.
The change of scenery however did not improve Beiderbecke's academic record, as the only subjects in which he showed avid
interest were music and sports. Bix soon began going into Chicago as often as possible to catch the hot jazz bands of the day at
the clubs and speakeasies around Chicago, although all too often he did not return to his
dormitory before curfew or was still found off-campus the next day.
Beiderbecke was soon asked to leave the academy due to his academic failings and extracurricular activities in Chicago which
caused him to continue to violate the student life-on-campus codes, and thus with his time now completely free he began his
musical career in earnest.
Influences
Bix Beiderbecke in a
Gennett recording session with his Rhythm Jugglers, a pickup band
formed -- and dissolved -- in 1925. From left to right,
Howdy Quicksell
(banjo), Tom Gargano (drums), Paul Mertz (piano),
Don Murray (clarinet),
Beiderbecke (cornet), and
Tommy Dorsey (trombone).
Beiderbecke's early influences were mostly New Orleans jazz cornetists. His
first big influence was Nick LaRocca of the Original Dixieland Jass Band; the LaRocca influence is evident in a number of Beiderbecke's
recordings (especially the covers of O.D.J.B. songs.) Other influences included
Joe "King" Oliver, Louis Armstrong,
and clarinetist Leon Roppolo. The influence of older New
Orleans players such as Freddie Keppard shows up on Beiderbecke's famous two note
interjection on "Goose Pimples."
According to many contemporaries Beiderbecke's single biggest influence was Emmett
Hardy, a highly regarded New Orleans cornetist of whom there are no extant recordings; several fellow musicians said that
Hardy's influence is very evident in Beiderbecke's early recordings with The Wolverines. New Orleans drummer
Ray Bauduc heard Hardy playing in the early 1920s and said that he was even more inspired
than Beiderbecke.
Bix was also influenced by music that had hitherto been far removed from jazz, such as the compositions of Claude Debussy, Maurice Ravel, and the American Impressionists, notably Eastwood Lane.
Career
Beiderbecke first recorded with his band the Wolverine Orchestra (usually called just The Wolverines, named for "Wolverine
Blues" by Jelly Roll Morton because they played it so often) in 1924, then became a
sought-after musician in Chicago and New York City. He made innovative and influential
recordings with Frankie Trumbauer ("Tram") and the Jean Goldkette Orchestra. When the Goldkette Orchestra disbanded after their last recording ("Clementine
(From New Orleans)"), in September 1927, Bix and Trumbauer, a 'C' Melody and alto saxophone player, briefly joined Adrian
Rollini's band at the Club New Yorker, New York, before moving on to the Paul Whiteman
Orchestra, the most popular and highest paid band of the day.
Beiderbecke also played piano, sometimes switching from cornet for a chorus or two during a
song (e.g., "For No Reason at All in C", 1927). He wrote several compositions for the piano, and recorded one of them, "In
a Mist", (after it was transcribed from his improvisations by the Goldkette/Whiteman arranger Bill Challis). His piano
compositions include "In A Mist", "Flashes", "In The Dark" and "Candlelights." These were later recorded by (amongst others) Jess
Stacy, Bunny Berigan, Jimmy and Marion McPartland, Dill Jones and Ralph Sutton.
Death
Beiderbecke had suffered health problems from an early age and his health declined further in his adult years. He toured
relentlessly, and drank too much alcohol much of it very low quality, poor grade, and often somewhat poison Prohibition Era
alcohol.
His spirits also suffered as the result of declining work around the New York City area. It's a myth that his morale suffered
when his parents disapproved of his choice of career. It may be true that in 1929 bandleader Paul Whiteman sent Beiderbecke back
home to Davenport, Iowa, to recover from a breakdown (caused by alcoholism, related physical problems and the stress of extensive
touring).
Bix's family were actually quite supportive of his playing career. Having said that, Bix was cutting an increasingly sad
figure, and while he played intermittently over the next two years, when he was well enough to travel, neither he nor his playing
was ever the same.
In late July or early August 1931, he took up residence at 43-30 46th Street, Sunnyside, Queens, New York City, where he went on his last drinking binge. It was there that Bix Beiderbecke died alone on
August 6, 1931. He was just 28 years old. While the official
cause of his death was "lobar pneumonia" and "brain
edema", Beiderbecke died of an alcoholic seizure during delirium
tremens.
The production of bathtub gin was tremendous during Prohibition and continued widely until the Repeal of Prohibition some 18 months after Bix's death (or until practical enforcement of
Prohibition laws stopped some time before the official time that the 21st Amendment went into effect), so leading up to and
including the time that Bix went on his final bender he very likely drank large
quantities of bathtub gin with Rotgut properties, since most easily available and plentiful
quantities of illegal hard-alcohol at that time were illegally distilled spirits as opposed to industrially controlled and
created spirits that were simply illegally imported.
Beiderbecke is buried in a family plot in Oakdale Cemetery in Davenport, Iowa. Although his penchant for imbibing was
legendary in his time, tales of the coroner who examined his body getting drunk off of the alcohol fumes and that the mortician
who prepared the body for burial didn't have to do anything since the alcohol did all the preservation work for him are all
apocryphal. They are certainly false rumours with no basis in scientific fact even, and there has been speculation that they were
circulated to further discredit Bix's reputation by White Supremacists at the time who
felt that Bix was betraying his race by focusing his musical talents on, "the musical form of the Blacks and the Jews", as jazz
was described by Ku Klux Klan leaders and members during the musical style's rise to
popularity in mainstream American culture. There is limited evidence to support the charges of who started the rumours, but
certainly the attitudes of such groups towards jazz remains well documented, and was in fact international in its scope such as
the Nazi persecution of jazz and swing performers and fans.
Later influence
Louis Armstrong once remarked that he never played the tune "Singin' the Blues"
because he thought Beiderbecke's classic recording of the song should not be touched. As he later said, "Lots of cats tried to
play like Bix; ain't none of them play like him yet".
The character Rick Martin in the novel Young Man With A Horn
(1938) by Dorothy Baker is partly based on Beiderbecke's life. It was later made into a
movie (1950) starring Kirk Douglas as Martin (with horn playing dubbed by Harry James after first choice Bobby Hackett -- according to some
sources -- blew the job because of unreliability. It was later parodied in the BBC radio series
Round The Horne as "Young Horne With a Man", featuring "Bix Spiderthrust".
The most obviously Bix-influenced follower was cornetist Jimmy McPartland, who
replaced Bix in the 'Wolverine' Orchestra in late 1924, and continued to pay tribute to Bix throughout his long career
(McPartland died in 1991). Bix's influence was most noticeable amongst white musicians, but there were also black players who
fell under his spell, notably trumpeters and cornetists John Nesbitt (of McKinney's Cotton Pickers), Rex Stewart (Fletcher Henderson's Orchestra, Duke Ellington's Orchestra),
and Doc Cheatham (Cab Calloway's Orchestra).
In the 1930s Bobby Hackett was widely billed as the "new Bix", especially after he
reprised Bix's "I'm Coming Virginia" solo at Benny Goodman's famous 1938 Carnegie Hall concert.
Later Bix-influenced trumpet/cornet players have included: Ruby Braff, Dick Sudhalter, Warren Vache, Randy
Sandke, Ralph Norton and (perhaps the closest to capturing Bix's elusive tone and
phrasing), Tom Pletcher.
Miles Davis was fascinated by Bix's playing, and sought out people who had known and
played with him. Miles's silvery tone and understated, "cool" phrasing clearly hark back to one aspect of Bix's playing.
Beiderbecke's music features heavily in three British comedy-drama television series,
all written by Alan Plater: The Beiderbecke
Affair (1984), The Beiderbecke Tapes (1987) and The Beiderbecke Connection (1988).
His name
There has been much debate regarding the full name of Bix Beiderbecke: was he baptized Leon Bix or Leon Bismark (Bix being
simply a shortened form of the latter; a name that also his father had). At least from the early 1960s onwards, Bix's living
relatives (noticeably his brother Charles "Burnie" Beiderbecke) forcefully claimed that his actual name had always been Leon Bix,
and this was accepted as a fact by Bix researchers Phil and Linda Evans. Other researchers, including Rich Johnson, have,
however, presented several documents showing the real name to be Leon Bismark. These documents include church records from the
Early First Presbyterian Church to which the Beiderbecke family belonged, as well as
records from Tyler School which Bix attended. There is also the will of a relative, Mary Hill, which included young Bix as a
beneficiary and which his mother signed for him writing "Leon Bismark Beiderbecke". There are, however, also several indications
that Bix himself already at an early age did not like the name Bismark. For example: in a letter to his mother written when he
was nine (1912) he signs it "frome [sic] your Leon Bix Beiderbecke not Bismark Remeber [sic]" (this letter is re-printed in Evans
& Evans pp 28-29). Also, the German name may have been regarded a bit uncomfortably during and after World War I, which might explain the wish of the Beiderbecke family to claim Bix as the real name. (This
question has recently been discussed in the Bixography Discussion Group)
References
- Bix: Man and Legend by Richard M. Sudhalter & Philip R. Evens (Quartet; 1974).
- Bix: The Definitive Biography of a Jazz Legend by Jean Pierre Lion with the assistance of Gabriella Page-Fort, Michael
B. Heckman and Norman Field (Continuum, New York / London; 2004).
- Red Hot Jazz.com
External links
This entry is from Wikipedia, the leading user-contributed encyclopedia. It may not have been reviewed by professional editors (see full disclaimer)
