On the Imperfectability of Listening (The Bix Mix)

The Irish poet Ciaran Carson, in Last Night’s Fun, writes that the beauty of lo-fi music

has something to do with the imperfectability of listening or hearing, or the act of recording itself. Where do you put the mikes? What are you looking for? In any session of music, no one will hear the same thing: it will depend on context, on placement, on experience—whether or not you’ve heard the tune before, whether or not the person next to you knows the tune that you might only half-know.

But do we ever fully know a tune, or only versions of it, temporary delineations of the possible?

Carson’s observation inspired the following, a mix of Bix Beiderbecke tunes contextualized by different versions of the same material.

Do we ever really know Bix? Of course, not. But this approach to his music might help.

1.  Davenport Blues – Bix Beiderbecke and His Rhythm Jugglers

Bix Beiderbecke (c), Don Murray (cl), Tommy Dorsey (tb), Paul Mertz (p), Tommy Gargano (dr)

January 26, 1925

This is one of Bix’s earliest recordings. Everybody was a little drunk during the session, and Bix’s composition wasn’t totally worked out. He was improvising and everybody did their best to follow along.

2.  Davenport Blues – Jack Teagarden

Jack Teagarden (tr), Leonard Feather (p), and featuring Jimmy McPartland, Edmond Hall, Walter Page, Jo Jones, Kenny Davern, Kass Malone, Norma Teagarden, Ray Bauduc, Dick Cary

November 12–13, 1954.

Jack Teagarden was a trombonist from Texas. Like Bix, he was an outstanding early jazz player who was white but still friends with and very well respected by many of the best black jazzmen of his day, in particular Louis Armstrong. (Go ahead; untangle all the unpleasant assumptions contained in that one, single but.) Guys like the ones on this (integrated) recording would often play “Davenport Blues” as a tribute to Bix. Jimmy McPartland was very close to Bix and modeled his style after him. Feather was one of the great critics and promoters in the history of jazz, and Jones one of its greatest drummers. Jones is also the hero of Alfred Appel’s exhilarating Jazz Modernism.

3.  My Pretty Girl – Jean Goldkette and His Orchestra

Featuring Bix Beiderbecke (c), Spiegle Willcox (tb), Joe Venuti (v)

February 1, 1927

Jean Goldkette’s band, based in Detroit, was one of the top white jazz bands of the 1920s and toured the entire country. Bix joined not long after getting kicked out of the University of Iowa for brawling. He’d been in Iowa City a week. Then he was fired from Goldkette for not being able to read music well enough. (It was after this particular misadventure that he grabbed some buddies from the band and recorded “Davenport Blues.”) He rejoined Goldkette a year later, a more polished and professional musician and person. After a national tour, the band played New York City’s Roseland Ballroom opposite the venue’s regular star, the Fletcher Henderson Orchestra, then the city’s top black band. A battle of the bands was supposedly won by Goldkette’s boys. In the summer of 1990, I played a bit part in an Italian Bix biopic and we played this number. I was the guy playing those cool violin breaks.

4.  My Pretty Girl – Fletcher Henderson Orchestra

Featuring  Bobby Stark (tp), Rex Stewart (c), Benny Morton (tb), Coleman Hawkins (ts)

February 5, 1931

5.  Jazz Me Blues – Bix Beiderbecke and His Gang

Bix Beiderbecke (c), Bill Rank (tb), Don Murray (cl), Adrian Rollini (bsx), Frank Signorelli (p), Chauncey Morehouse (dr)

October 5, 1927

Bix recorded most of his best stuff in 1927. This is the height of his playing. “Jazz Me Blues” was one of the very early jazz standards (its name derives from the origins of the word jazz as an unmentionable act). Bix’s solo was so definitive, it became difficult for musicians afterward to perform the number without imitating it.

6.  Sorry – Bix Beiderbecke and His Gang

(Same as #5)

7.  Sorry – Marty Grosz & His Honoris Causa Jazz Band

Featuring Marty Grosz (g), Carl Halen (c), and Tut Soper (p)

1957

Marty Grosz is described as one of jazz’s great comedians, in the tradition of Fats Waller and Louis Jordan. Here, though, he keeps his mouth shut and lets the band and his guitar do the talking.

8.  A Good Man Is Hard to Find – Frank Trumbauer and His Orchestra

Bix Beiderbecke (c), Bill Rank (tb), Frank Trumbauer (cms), Pee Wee Russell (cl), Adrian Rollini (bsx), Joe Venuti (v), Eddie Lang (g), Frank Signorelli (p), Chauncey Morehouse (dr)

October 25, 1927

Frankie Trumbauer was a part-Indian saxophone player from Carbondale, Illinois. He befriended Bix, becoming not only a musical collaborator but almost a kind of father figure. He was stable and responsible in ways that Bix could never be. Bix’s musical adventurousness, meanwhile, always brought out the best in Trumbauer. (Trumbauer didn’t have much of a career after Bix died.) Pee Wee Russell was a notoriously eccentric, melancholy, tall & angular, heavy-drinking, squeaky-sounding clarinet player who lived long enough to give a young Billy Crystal lessons. Joe Venuti & Eddie Lang were both Italians from Philly (Lang’s real name: Salvatore Massaro). Lang died very young, in 1933, of a botched tonsillectomy. Venuti was one of the great practical jokers in jazz history. Their collaborations anticipated Stephane Grappelli and Django Reinhardt, who created a famous ensemble called the Hot Club of France. When Goldkette’s band broke up after their NYC gigs, Bix, Trumbauer, Venuti, and Lang formed a band led by Rollini, but it only lasted a week or two. Then Bix & Tram joined the Paul Whiteman Orchestra, the biggest, most famous, best-paying band in the country.

9.  I’m Coming Virginia – Frank Trumbauer and His Orchestra

Bix Beiderbecke (c), Frank Trumbauer (cms), Don Murray (cl), Bill Rank (tb), Doc Ryker (as), Irving Riskin (p), Eddie Lang (g/bj), Chauncey Morehouse (dr, harpophone)

May 13, 1927

This is one of Bix’s longest, most sublime solos. Don Murray, the clarinet player on this record, was a very close friend of Bix’s (they met in the Goldkette band), who traveled to Hollywood with Bix and the Paul Whiteman Orchestra in 1929. One of the movie studios had signed Whiteman’s band to star in the first-ever film musical. They spent the entire summer in Hollywood, but arguments over the script, etc., prevented filming. Meanwhile, each guy in the band got a car from the studio and just drank and drove around, hanging out with movie stars. Murray, who stayed behind after the band returned east, got drunk one day and decided to jump on the running board of a friend’s car. He fell off and died of head injuries. (This story, it should be said, is debated.) A lot of people thought Bix was never quite the same after his death.

10.  I’m Coming Virginia  – Benny Goodman

Featuring Benny Goodman (cl), Bobby Hackett (c), Jess Stacy (p), Gene Krupa (dr)

January 16, 1938

Benny Goodman’s performance at Carnegie Hall was an important event that jazz historians say ushered in the Swing Era. It was also important for being such a high-profile and at the same time integrated performance. (Goodman was famous for touring the first integrated band, hiring Fletcher Henderson as his arranger after the latter’s band broke up.) A mentor of Kate’s at Columbia produced the reissue of this album. “I’m Coming Virginia” was part of a history of jazz sequence in the concert and was performed in homage to Bix. Bobby Hackett plays Bix’s solo. Early in his career, Hackett was known as “the new Bix.” (Reminds me of how everybody and their brother is the new Dylan; if Dylan is really Dylan, and Bix is really Bix, then nobody is going to be the new Dylan or Bix.) Goodman had played with Bix many times early in his career, including a series of gigs on a Lake Michigan excursion boat.

11.  Way Down Yonder in New Orleans – Frank Trumbauer and His Orchestra

(Same as #9)

Another one of Bix’s longer solos. I met a guy in Davenport a couple years ago—Flemming Thorbye, a Dane—who courted his wife with this song. Oops, no, it wasn’t. It was the song above: “I’m Coming Virginia.”

12.  Way Down Yonder in New Orleans – Sidney Bechet

Sidney Bechet (cl), Wild Bill Davison (c), Art Hodes (p), Pops Foster (b), Fred Moore (dr)

October 12, 1945

Sidney Bechet of New Orleans was the first real jazz soloist. He was a dark guy and mean from what I understand. He was once jailed in Paris for wounding a passerby in a pistol duel.

13.  Singin’ the Blues – Frank Trumbauer and His Orchestra

Bix Beiderbecke (c), Frank Trumbauer (cms), Jimmy Dorsey (cl/as), Paul Mertz (p), Chauncey Morehouse (dr), Eddie Lang (g), Miff Mole (tb)

February 4, 1927

Bix’s most famous and important recording. His solo, though improvised, feels like a perfectly finished composition. Trumbauer’s sax solo is great, too (Trumbauer directly influenced the great, unbelievably cool tenor saxophonist Lester Young). “Singin’ the Blues” is considered the first jazz ballad, and it shows how Bix invented the “cool” style of jazz playing that contrasted sharply with Louis Armstrong’s more dominant and flamboyant style. (In many ways, they were on different planets stylistically, but all evidence suggests that Bix & Louis really respected and liked each other.) Bix always stayed in the middle register occupied by the human voice, playing the minimum notes necessary.

14.  Singing the Blues – Sol Ho‘opi‘i’s Novelty Trio

March 27, 1928

Ho‘opi‘i (1902–1953) was born in Honolulu, the youngest of 21 children. He was known as the master of the Hawaiian guitar, and his trio often adapted blues and jazz standards of the day.

15.  Singing the Blues (Till My Daddy Comes Home) – Fletcher Henderson Orchestra

Featuring  Bobby Stark (tp), Rex Stewart (c), Benny Morton (tb), Coleman Hawkins (ts)

October 15, 1931

Rex Stewart was a black cornet player (later, he became a very good writer) whose style split the difference between Bix and Louis. This recording is important because a black player pays direct homage to the influence of a white player by copying Bix’s solo nearly note for note. The recording date was only two months after Bix’s death.

16.  Singin’ the Blues – George Gershwin

Gershwin recorded this (and many other popular tunes) on a piano roll in the 1920s.

17.  Singin’ the Blues – Geoff Muldaur’s Futuristic Ensemble

2003

Geoff Muldaur is an important folk and blues singer who grew up listening to Bix records. Here, he arranges a version of “Singin’ the Blues” that dispenses with Bix’s solos, but adds vocals courtesy Martha Wainwright (daughter of Loudon Wainwright III, one of the many “next Dylans”).

18.  Borneo – Frank Trumbauer and His Orchestra

Bix Beiderbecke (c), Charlie Margulis (tp), Bill Rank (tb), Frank Trumbauer (cms), Irving Friedman (cl/as), Chet Hazlett (as), Matty Malneck (vln), Lennie Hayton (pa), Eddie Lang (g), Min Leibrook (bsx), Hal McDonald (dm), Harold “Scrappy” Lambert (voc)

April 10, 1928

This tune features what’s called a “chase chorus,” which means that Bix and Trumbauer trade off solos. Really cool. Plus it’s such a great, corny old tune.

19.  In a Mist – Bix Beiderbecke

Bix Beiderbecke (p)

September 8, 1927

Bix was playing tunes on piano even as an infant. As a professional cornetist, he continued noodling, putting together unpredictable chord combinations. The result was several piano pieces, but “In a Mist” was the only one he recorded. (The others were transcribed by his friend, Bill Challis, but are less often performed.) If Bix helped invent “cool” jazz, he was also one of the first to combine jazz and classical music. He was particularly interested in Impressionists like Debussy and Ravel.

20.  In a Mist – Michel Legrand

June 1958

Featuring Art Farmer (tp), Donald Byrd (tp), Phil Woods (as)

Michel Legrand was a Frenchman who mostly wrote music for films, but in the ’50s and ’60s produced a couple jazz albums using big bands populated by all-star musicians like John Coltrane and Miles Davis. This number features Art Farmer, who was from Council Bluffs, Iowa.

21.  In a Mist – Geoff Muldauer’s Futuristic Ensemble

2003

Bix’s version seems hurried to me. The old 78 records had a limit of three minutes, so to fit it all in, he had to rush a bit. Muldauer slows it down here, and it does the music a lot more justice.

22.  Royal Garden Blues – Bix Beiderbecke and His Gang

October 5, 1927

Bix Beiderbecke (c), Bill Rank (tb), Don Murray (cl), Adrian Rollini (bsx), Frank Signorelli (p), Chauncey Morehouse (dr)

23.  Dear Bix – Dave Frishberg

1977

ADDITIONALLY: Download the complete mix in a zip file.

PREVIOUSLY: The International Mix of Action and My Sweet Hunk o’ Trash

IMAGE: From the cover of an Italian collection of Bix 78s; in fact, this was the first attempt to arrange all of the 78s, including alternate takes, in chronological order. It didn’t appear until 1973.

Comments

[TJ]

I don't know this much about anything. Impressive.

This mix will be my introduction to Bix after all these years. Thanks!

[Michael Cole]

Can someone please clear up who the arranger was on the Tram/Bix February 1927 version of "Singin' the Blues"?

I have seen the arrangement attributed to Bill Challis (with Paul Mertz on piano), to Irving Riskin (also playing piano) and to Fud Livingston (unspecified piano).

So who was it?

Michael Cole
London

[Brendan Wolfe]

Michael, Thanks for the question. I forwarded it on to someone better in the know, and you'll find the answer posted above.

[drfeelgoed]

Thank you very much, I just bought Geoff Muldaur's Private Astronomy: A Vision of the Music of Bix Be, so this selection is very worthwhile, since I don't know much about Bix (shame on me).