Happy 100th -- Bix Beiderbecke Today! (1903-1931)

Subject: Happy 100th -- Bix Beiderbecke Today!
From: GUEST,Peter T.
Date: 10 Mar 03 - 09:51 AM

The man who turned me on to jazz, Bix Beiderbecke, was born 100 years ago today. His insight, tone, and sheer innovative musicality (listen to "In A Mist" sometime) remain out of this world. I can think of countless musicians, from Hoagy Carmichael to Bill Evans to Louis himself who have doffed their caps in his direction. Oh that he had had a few more years, and a few more decent recordings.

yours, Peter T.

Subject: RE: Happy 100th -- Bix Beiderbecke Today!
From: GUEST,Gern
Date: 10 Mar 03 - 10:36 AM

Nice to remind us. He was a monster, and his music still speaks clearly today.

Subject: RE: Happy 100th -- Bix Beiderbecke Today!
From: Rick Fielding
Date: 10 Mar 03 - 10:43 AM

My hero! Not, you Peter...Bix.

Please..... Go to my favourite website (next to Mudcat), RED HOT JAZZ

BIX

Click on Frankie Trumbauer's Orchestra's version of "Singin' The Blues" (make sure it's the 1927 version with Bix)

Listen to WHY even the black inventors of this music loved Bix's playing!

Play it about a dozen times....loud!

Then go to Riverboat Shuffle.

BLISS!

Rick (thanks Peter)

One 'discouraging word' Though. Had Bix lived longer, he would have had the chance to embarrass himself like many did. He was getting ready to be married, so he may have been forced to take a gig with Sam or Lester Lanin (society Orchestras) or even go back to Whiteman.

Subject: RE: Happy 100th -- Bix Beiderbecke Today!
From: Mark Clark
Date: 10 Mar 03 - 11:03 AM

Bix's home town was Davenport, Iowa, and a big jazz festival is held there each year in his honor. Here is a link to Bix Festival information for 2003. The festival is all over town but the stage is down on the levee on the banks of the Mississippi. Be there or be square.

      - Mark

Subject: RE: Happy 100th -- Bix Beiderbecke Today!
From: Blues=Life
Date: 10 Mar 03 - 08:37 PM

Mark, you beat me to the plug on the Bix Fest. But since it's in my home town, let me jump in and help. Great music, a world class 7 mile road race, the Mighty Mississippi, cold beer, cool breezes off the water at night, red hot Dixieland jazz, and on Sunday morning, an amazing Jazz service at First Presbyterian Church (where Bix went as a child), heathans welcome.*G*
Come one, come all, I'll see you there!
Blues

Subject: RE: Happy 100th -- Bix Beiderbecke Today!
From: Frankham
Date: 10 Mar 03 - 08:40 PM

Bix's influence can be felt in the playing oddly enough of Miles Davis. Bix employed the French Impressionist sounds of Debussey with suggestions of whole tone scales such as in "In A Mist". The birth of the cool used much of this kind of harmony that came from "classical" modern music. Chet Baker is another who might have indirectly been affected by Bix. Bix's ability as a composer is like Django in that it was there but not continued. Bix was ahead of his time harmonically in jazz. One of the best jazz guitar accompanists that ever lived played behind him Salvatore Mansano otherwise known as Eddie Lang. It's significant that Lang was the innovator of the jazz guitar in those days ahead of Django or anyone because nobody did what he did before him. That had to influence Bix too. He too died young of a botched operation. (Tonsils I believe). "I'm Coming Virginia" and "Singing the Blues" sounds as fresh today as it did when it was recorded by Gennett. Bix lives!

Frank Hamilton

Subject: RE: Happy 100th -- Bix Beiderbecke Today!
From: Brian Hoskin
Date: 11 Mar 03 - 03:21 AM

Thanks Rick, that's a great site!

Subject: RE: Happy 100th -- Bix Beiderbecke Today!
From: Rick Fielding
Date: 11 Mar 03 - 10:04 AM

It is GLORIOUS BRIAN! When I discovered 'Red Hot Jazz', the internet became worthwhile as more than just a tool.

Not only the songs, the musicians and the index....but the essays...they're actually written by OTHER fanatics!

Luv it!

Rick

Subject: RE: Happy 100th -- Bix Beiderbecke Today!
From: greg stephens
Date: 11 Mar 03 - 10:39 AM

Thanks for this thread. Inspired me to get out the old LP(remember them) and play "I'm coming Virginia". Bix and Eddie Lang, two heroes on an immaculate record. Bliss!!

Subject: RE: Happy 100th -- Bix Beiderbecke Today!
From: Rick Fielding
Date: 11 Mar 03 - 11:58 AM

Well I just took your advice, went to REDHOTJAZZ and listened to "I'm Coming Virginia", RiverBoat Shuffle and "Singin' The Blues" for the millionth time. Oh Lord, could he DRIVE a band!

Went to the "Fives" and played "My Heart". Then "Savoy Blues"...oh man, WHAT a band! Listen to Johnnie St Cyr backin' up Lonnie Johnson.....if that's not where I got my ideas about bass lines I'd be surprised (My mum had the 'Hot Five' album at home) Listen to that BEAT....it's like Leadbelly...It's Lillian and St Cyr playin together and they just CRUNCH it!

Ya know, I love Rachmaninov, Huddie, Pete, The Weavers (so glad yer here Frank) Ewan, and all the blues guys..... but if I could be SOMEWHERE for one night.....

It would be one of those nights that Bix and Louis jammed together for hours.

I'll stop burbling now!

Rick

Subject: bix beiderbecke film
From: The Sandman
Date: 18 Oct 22 - 04:10 PM

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=OpbGK8RC4EY good music even if its fictional rather than entirely factual

Subject: RE: Happy 100th -- Bix Beiderbecke Today! (1903-1931)
From: The Sandman
Date: 20 Oct 22 - 04:57 PM

this movie they make Frank Trumbauer into a BAD guy! Trumbauer was Bix's protector all during the years they were together, trying to keep him from drinking.
As for Joe Venuti, great violinist but hardly Bix protector, in later life he too suffered from alcoholism

Subject: RE: Happy 100th -- Bix Beiderbecke Today! (1903-1931)
From: gillymor
Date: 20 Oct 22 - 05:10 PM

Happy Birthday, Bix wherever you are. I'm going to break out some LP's tonight.

Subject: RE: Happy 100th -- Bix Beiderbecke Today! (1903-1931)
From: Big Al Whittle
Date: 25 Oct 22 - 06:44 PM

Dreaming of a Song Kindle Edition
by Rob Eddy (Author) Format: Kindle Edition
See all formats and editions
Kindle Edition
£2.98
Read with Our Free App

Hoagy Carmichael, composer of his century’s most recorded song, Stardust, stands under the massive atrium dome of the West Baden Springs Resort Hotel, remembering... He recalls jazz alligators and slit-skirted flappers leaning close to the ballroom stage to hear every note of Bix Beiderbecke’s incredible 32-bar cornet improvisations. Though he couldn’t read music, Bix was mythologized for his lyricism and gifted tone, “like a girl saying Yes,” even before his early death by bottle.

D.C. Stephenson is an Indianapolis coal businessman with a secret identity, the Grand Dragon of the Northern Realm of the Ku Klux Klan. He realizes the political power to be wielded if his Secret Order could be domesticated, and so conceives of a ladies auxiliary, the Ladies of the Golden Mask, who distribute Christmas baskets to the poor and feed thousands at his summer evening patriotism rallies. The elaborate parties he throws with jazz band entertainment, including Bix’s own rag-tag Wolverine Orchestra, provide him prey of young women to drug. Both he and his organization’s brutality peak on the eve of the 1924 elections.

Margaret Stellar is the daughter of a wealthy piano maker and recording studio owner, whose mother is Queen Klady in the Golden Mask. Margaret can identify any piano model by ear from twenty paces, and her wit often wilts Hoagy and Bix. She struggles to understand the enigmatic Bix, afloat and unkempt, but in whose improvisations she hears the influence of Ravel and Stravinsky. She, Hoagy and Bix are drawn into the violence and political swirl in a way that changes their lives and perhaps the course of American music. As the story resolves at West Baden’s renovation reception, a gift from Margaret relieves the melody haunting Hoagy’s reverie for fifty-one years.
Read less