Novel about Bix - anyone know it?

Subject: Novel about Bix - anyone know it?
From: Big Al Whittle
Date: 08 Jun 13 - 06:32 AM

Just took delivery of a book called 1929 from Amazon.You can't get it on Kindle. But it was only a penny plus post and packing. Its all about Bix Beiderbeck. Does anyone know it?

Book is by Frederick Turner.

Subject: RE: Novel about Bix - anyone know it?
From: GUEST,gillymor
Date: 08 Jun 13 - 09:33 AM

Judging from the reviews at Amazon it sounds interesting and the price is right. Thanks for the heads up.

Subject: RE: Novel about Bix - anyone know it?
From: Will Fly
Date: 08 Jun 13 - 09:36 AM

That's a new one to me, Al. The only - fictionalised - story of a Bix-like character I've read was the rather overblown (no pun intended) "Young Man With A Horn".

I believe there was a biography written in the late '60s, but I can't recall its name.

Subject: RE: Novel about Bix - anyone know it?
From: GUEST,gillymor
Date: 08 Jun 13 - 09:42 AM

Will, I seem to recall an excellent bio of Bix by Dick Sudhalter and a memoir called Me and Bix by Gene (?) Berton, brother of Vic Berton, which was not so excellent and didn't have a lot of Bix in it.

Subject: RE: Novel about Bix - anyone know it?
From: Will Fly
Date: 08 Jun 13 - 09:48 AM

Yes - and I've just remembered a 1959 biography by James Burnett in the "Kings of Jazz" series.

There's a hugely expensive but definitive bio by Evans and Linda from 1998.

Dick Sudhalter was a great cornet player - do you remember his re-creation of the Paul Whiteman Orchestra in London around 1974-75? They did a one-off concert at the Roundhouse and one at the Fairfield Halls in Croydon - both superb! I believe Dick dies not that long ago.

Subject: RE: Novel about Bix - anyone know it?
From: GUEST,gillymor
Date: 08 Jun 13 - 10:18 AM

I wasn't aware of The New Paul Whiteman Orchestra ,I came late to early jazz. Sudhalter could really play and apparently didn't pass on until 2008. I used to have a beloved LP featuring him on cornet (with The Red Onion Jazz Band?).

Subject: RE: Novel about Bix - anyone know it?
From: Vic Smith
Date: 08 Jun 13 - 10:47 AM

On my bookshelves I have Bix Biederbecke by Burnett James which is Volume 4 (of 10) in the "Kings of Jazz" series published by Cassell of London. I have all the series and I bought this one in (gulp) 1959 when it was first published and I was still at school. It is written in a succinct and unsentimental style and remains the best book that I have ever read on one of my favourite musicians. It attempts a complete discography in the back but I know that there are many tracks missing from it.

In 2003 I was in the Museum of Jazz in New Orleans and I came across Bix's cornet in a glass case. I nearly went wild with delight! I was taking photos of it and whilst I was taking them, I was approached by a curator. I expected to be told off for taking photos but no, he asked me if I would like to handle it!

Would I!!!

Subject: RE: Novel about Bix - anyone know it?
From: Vic Smith
Date: 08 Jun 13 - 10:50 AM

Will Fly wrote
" James Burnett "
... and although that seems more likely, I'm looking at the book and the names are the other way round.

Subject: RE: Novel about Bix - anyone know it?
From: GUEST,gillymor
Date: 09 Jun 13 - 07:33 AM

Hoisting Bix' cornet. That's very cool, Vic.

Subject: RE: Novel about Bix - anyone know it?
From: Big Al Whittle
Date: 09 Jun 13 - 07:50 AM

bookshelf wise:-

on the subject, i'm currently hosting

We called it Music by Eddie Condon
Really the Blues by Mezz Mezzrow
Remembering Bix by Ralph Berton
Bix: Man and Legend by Sudhalter and Evans
Bix: the definitive biography of a jazz legend by Jean-Pierre Lion

Plus I've read much of what Artie Shaw said about him on the Bix website. And I'm aware I'd like to get hold of Hoagy Carmichael's biog.
Strangely enough the more takes you get on the man - the more he demystifies.

Subject: RE: Novel about Bix - anyone know it?
From: Vic Smith
Date: 09 Jun 13 - 08:31 AM

OK then. What is everyone's favourite track of Bix? Mine tends to change from time to time, but usually it is JAZZ ME BLUES by Bix and his Gang .

An aside.
When I first started going to jazz clubs when I was about 15, I remember a jazz pub somewhere near Southampton where they had photos of all the famous jazzers who had played there. One was Adrian Rollini, who was the bass sax player on Jazz Me Blues. However, the photo showed a man playing a xylophone (or was it a vibraphone?) Could this be the same man? Well, a local expert told me that Adrian had played on transatlantic liners up until his death in 1956 and that when the liners had a stop over in Southampton, he used to do gigs at this pub! I was also told that if I loved his contribution to Bix records, I would have hated his smooth cocktail jazz that he played later in life.

Subject: RE: Novel about Bix - anyone know it?
From: GUEST,gillymor
Date: 09 Jun 13 - 08:56 AM

Hear Me Talkin' to Ya an oral history a la Studs Terkel edited by Nat Henthof is one of my favorites and contains a chapter on Bix.
Remembering Bix, that's the one I was thing of. Spaghetti strainer for a memory these days.

Subject: RE: Novel about Bix - anyone know it?
From: GUEST,gillymor
Date: 09 Jun 13 - 09:20 AM

Singin' the Blues

Subject: RE: Novel about Bix - anyone know it?
From: Will Fly
Date: 09 Jun 13 - 10:50 AM

It has to be "Singin The Blues" - the ultimate Bix and Tram experience. :-)

Subject: RE: Novel about Bix - anyone know it?
From: Big Al Whittle
Date: 09 Jun 13 - 11:46 PM

And Eddy Laing of course.

I think the thing that emerges from reading about him is that the recordings weren't the real deal, Apparently he just got better and better as the choruses progressed and the risks got greater and the music more inventive. Songs generally going on from twenty minutes to half an hour.

When things got more structured and the arrangements more claustrophobic - that was really the start of his troubles.   Music fashions changed. And whilst people like Miles davis in another generation revered Bix and sought the company of musos who had worked with him - he himself was crossing a long lonely plain in his lifetime.

Cant really pick a favourite - but maybe Royal garden Blues (cos I wrote some words to it). Jazz Me Blues because Humph used to play it a lot on BBC's jazz club when I was a kid. The one I love playing on the guitar is Mississppi Mud - though the words have to changed to make it more PC!

Subject: RE: Novel about Bix - anyone know it?
From: Will Fly
Date: 10 Jun 13 - 08:26 AM

Coincidentally, one of the chaps at my session last night sang "There Ain't No Sweet Man That's Worth The Salt Of My Tears" - lovely song.

Subject: RE: Novel about Bix - anyone know it?
From: Big Al Whittle
Date: 10 Jun 13 - 08:56 AM

Very popular since Norma Waterson did it. It seems that somehow one of the eminence gris of the folk world has to hold a geiger counter up every kind of music - before it is declared safe for the rest of us to sing.


the bix/bing Crosby version is very lightweight.

Subject: RE: Novel about Bix - anyone know it?
From: GUEST,gillymor
Date: 10 Jun 13 - 09:03 AM

I'm Comlng Virginia
Bix' response to Trumbauer's beautiful melancholy solo always blows me away. Eddie Lang comps brilliantly .

Subject: RE: Novel about Bix - anyone know it?
From: Will Fly
Date: 10 Jun 13 - 09:06 AM

Heh - check out this wild version...

Diana Krall ' There Ain't No Sweet Man..."

Subject: RE: Novel about Bix - anyone know it?
From: Newport Boy
Date: 10 Jun 13 - 10:43 AM

If we're talking about fiction, you couldn't get better than Alan Plater's Bix Beiderbecke Affair, broadcast on BBC in 1985. From a review:

With as little plot as its creator Alan Plater could get away with and as much jazz as he could manage, the 1985 television drama The Beiderbecke Affair had a far-reaching impact, inspiring sequels, novels, albums and even jazz tours. Much like its Bix Beiderbecke-style soundtrack, Plater's quietly joyous drama was unconventional, free: its narrative following the lives and relationships of its leading characters – teachers-turned-amateur detectives Trevor Chaplin (James Bolam) and Jill Swinburne (Barbara Flynn) – with a gentle, whimsical humour.

I remember it well.

Phil

Subject: RE: Novel about Bix - anyone know it?
From: Big Al Whittle
Date: 10 Jun 13 - 11:17 AM

Barbara Flynn - the yearning Belinda in Season's Greetings by Ayckbourn , and Fitz's wife in Cracker.A flower of Irish womanhood!

Subject: RE: Novel about Bix - anyone know it?
From: Newport Boy
Date: 11 Jun 13 - 04:52 AM

I tried posting this 3 times yesterday, but it just disappeared into the ether.

The Beiderbecke Affair was the first of a trilogy - The Beiderbecke Affair, The Beiderbecke Tapes, and The Beiderbecke Connection. Google throws up a number of DVDs and spin-off books.

Phil

Subject: RE: Novel about Bix - anyone know it?
From: John J
Date: 11 Jun 13 - 06:01 AM

The Beiderbecke trilogy was surely one of British television's masterpieces - understated humour with just enough intrigue. Excellent stuff!

JJ

Subject: RE: Novel about Bix - anyone know it?
From: Big Al Whittle
Date: 11 Jun 13 - 07:17 AM

I never watched it. Perhaps because it was about teachers, and I was a teacher at the time. By the time the bell rang at 3.3o - I'd had a bellyful of teachers.

Life began and the night was for folk clubs.

Anyway that's the way I remember it. I suppose there must have been staff meetings and god know what -but I have erased them from my mind.

Subject: RE: Novel about Bix - anyone know it?
From: Will Fly
Date: 11 Jun 13 - 07:27 AM

I append a little tribute to the spirit of Bix and Whiteman...

Dardanella

Subject: RE: Novel about Bix - anyone know it?
From: Newport Boy
Date: 11 Jun 13 - 09:20 AM

Big Al - now's your chance. Search 'Beiderbecke Affair' on YouTube. All the episodes are there - the music starts at the beginning and goes all the way through (like Blackpool & rock).

Phil

Subject: RE: Novel about Bix - anyone know it?
From: GUEST,gillymor
Date: 11 Jun 13 - 10:04 AM

Sweet playing, Will and such lovely tone.

Subject: RE: Novel about Bix - anyone know it?
From: GUEST,gillymor
Date: 11 Jun 13 - 10:42 AM

Clementine
with Jean Goldkette. Nice fiddle break by Joe Venuti.

Subject: RE: Novel about Bix - anyone know it?
From: Ross Campbell
Date: 11 Jun 13 - 11:48 AM

Al - I think you would enjoy the teachers portrayed by James Bolam (I like everything he's done) and Barbara Flynn (followed her whatever she's played in since then).

I'm still living in hopes to see The Beiderbecke CDs, the Beiderbecke MP3s and the Beiderbecke Bootlegs. Sadly Alan Plater died a few years ago so I may just have to imagine them.

Ross