Bix was simply ‘the best’

Who was the greatest jazz trumpeter or cornetist of all time? Louis Armstrong? Harry James? Maybe Dizzy Gillespie?

Wrong. Try Bix Beiderbecke.

Who?

Leon Bismarck “Bix” Beiderbecke was a legend in his own time for his all-too-brief career, playing his “golden horn” from the early 1920s to August in 1931. He died then, worn out at age 28, the victim of too much booze, too much self-neglect, and as some of his friends might have said, from being not quite “of this world.”

Say “1920s jazz” and many people probably have a mental picture of black musicians, playing the night away in New Orleans, or perhaps in Chicago, where thousands of blacks migrated in the early years of the 20th Century. But Bix wasn’t black, or Southern; he was a German-American boy born and raised in Davenport, Iowa.

Bix showed immense musical talent — well, let’s just call it genius — from a very early age, picking out tunes perfectly on the family’s piano after hearing them one time. His older brother brought home a victrola and a recording of the Original Dixieland Jazz Band, a group of white New Orleans jazz musicians, when Bix was 15. He listened to the record, then listened again, and again, and again … And finally persuaded his parents to buy him a cornet. His brother said later that Bix practiced, totally untutored, with the cornet day after day, often sounding terrible. Until one day, “he seemed to have solved it,” according to his brother. After that, Bix made phenomenal progress toward becoming a jazz legend.

In the early 1920s Bix and some like-minded friends of his age formed a jazz ensemble called the Wolverines. The group remains a legend among jazz aficionados, world-wide, based on a number of phonograph records they cut for Gennett, an Indiana company. Later, Bix performed in the Jean Goldkette Orchestra, and finally, in what was then the “big time”: Paul Whiteman’s widely popular, multi-membered group that played a grueling schedule of personal appearances and recording sessions, from coast to coast.

What made Bix such a phenomenon? Well, a combination of things. Many jazzmen who played with him and heard him perform said his beautiful golden tone was the sweetest thing this side of heaven — to paraphrase from a slogan of the Guy Lombardo Orchestra of those days. His attack was a strike on a golden bell with a mallet, according to the Hoosier jazz immortal Hoagy Carmichael, who was a good friend of Bix. His attack — that is, the first split-second you heard of a note — was very precise — hardly ever a slurred phrase until alcohol and fatigue began to get the best of him in his last two or three years. His flexibility at fingering was marvelous (self taught, he never used “proper fingering”, but did things his own way); and his solos were things of awe-inspiring improvisation, even for jazzmen, who are musicians for whom ”spur of the moment” is just part of the job.

Other jazzmen liked Bix personally — he was said to be a kind, generous friend, not overly talkative, especially when listening to a jazz or classical record he hadn’t heard before, but overall excellent company. And while in any skilled calling professional jealousy may lurk behind any comment, those fellow musicians uniformly praised Bix as a cornetist who was a little above and beyond everyone else in what he could do with that horn, and do it with such seeming effortlessness. But, it was like he was also a being apart — a person at the margins.

Once in January 1922 Bix and his friend Don Murray, a jazz clarinetist a year his junior, happened across a Gypsy fortuneteller while roaming around town on an off day. They asked her to tell them what lay in store for them. The Gypsy read their palms, regarded them somberly for some time, and refused to divulge what she had seen. After they begged and cajoled, she finally told them: “I see short lives for both of you.”

As young men will, the two laughed it off, joked and teased each other about it.

The great jazz trumpeter Louis Armstrong came to know Bix well. The black jazzman once recalled how, after Bix’s band had finished its live gig that particular evening, Bix and three of his bandmates came over to the venue where Armstrong and his group were playing. It was closing time, and when all the customers had left and the doors were locked, Armstrong, Beiderbecke, and all the other musicians, white and black, had a jam session to end all jam sessions.

A recording of that jam session, if one existed, would be worth everything he owns to most jazz buffs nowadays. Bix and Satchmo, playing together. The mind boggles.

Bix’s best year was 1927, playing with the Goldkette orchestra, cutting some wonderful jazz sides which can still be heard on YouTube if you simply search for “Bix Beiderbecke.” Late that year, he joined the Whiteman band. In that larger, less jazz-oriented outfit, Bix’s incomparable solos stood out less. The band’s incessant traveling to gigs wore him down. His drinking, already excessive, became more so. In late 1928 Bix had a total breakdown from too much impure, bootleg booze, inadequate nourishment, and other unhealthy practices. He was in and out of hospitals and sanitariums several times; tried to play and record again with Whiteman; found that prolonged absence from practicing had weakened his lip, and rendered his work less magical. To Bix, music, and especially HIS music, was the primary thing that mattered in the world. Ailing, unable to perform adequately or to really enjoy others’ music the way he previously had, Bix may well have just given up.

In August 1931 Bix contracted lobar pneumonia while living in an apartment in New York City. He refused to be hospitalized, and lay, sick and delirious in his room, with friends and a resident nurse trying to ease his suffering. One evening a friend who was in another room of Bix’s apartment heard Bix scream in terror from his bedroom. Running in, the friend found him standing, shaking like a leaf, by his bed. “There are two Mexicans with knives under there! They want to kill me!” Beiderbecke screamed.

The friend checked under the bed to humor the sick cornetist, stood and announced that he had seen no one — and Bix collapsed into his arms; “dead weight,” as the man later recalled sadly. The nurse who lived in the building was called, and she confirmed his fears: Bix Beiderbecke, age 28 years and a few months, was dead.

His friend Don Murray had fallen off the running board of a car while drunk one night in 1929 and fractured his skull. He died two days later in a hospital. The Gypsy fortuneteller unfortunately knew what she was talking about.

To those really in the know about jazz, Bix Beiderbecke and his body of work remain a collective Holy Grail. Louis Armstrong was also a great trumpet player, but he lived into his 70s, was interviewed many times, appeared on TV, left a very clear trail. It’s almost certain that there is no one still alive who heard Bix play, in person. Numerous jazzmen said in later years that his tone was inimitable — that recordings just do not do justice to it. His attack, phrasing, brilliant improvisations (he once said he never played a particular solo the same way twice), all put him on a different plane from his fellows in the world of jazz.

As a professional musician, of course Bix had his photo taken many times. You can look at a selection from the photos made in his short adulthood and see the physical deterioration, which came very fast.

The photo appearing with this article was snapped in January 1924 when Bix was not quite 21 and still in the bloom of his youth. It is both moving and disturbing. Bix sits in a straight-backed chair, clad in a neat tuxedo, his cornet held upright on one knee. He looks straight into the camera, which is placed just a tad off-center to his right.

Bix wears a very slight smile. His eyes seem to gaze into your soul. In them one can read it all: His kindness; a sensitivity which of course was linked to his musical genius; wistfulness; and, unmistakably, a certain sadness, as if he knew his time would be short.

That photo sums it all up. Bix was the brightest comet in the jazz sky, and like most bright comets, he burned out too soon.

The YouTube video clip above is primarily in homage to Bix, but also gives one an idea of why they called his era “The Roaring 20s.” The YouTube audio clip below features Bix playing lead on the rousing 1920s jazz piece, “Clarinet Marmalade.” Click on the “sound” icon at left of the time line and move the sound button next to it up to hear the full sound.