‘And always there is a piercing sadness to it’
Clive James on Bix Beiderbecke:
I listened to most of Beiderbecke’s Jean Goldkette and Paul Whiteman sides before I left Sydney, but it wasn’t until I was down and out in London in the early 1960s that I first heard “I’m Coming, Virginia.” An Australian homosexual ballet buff persuaded me to sit down and listen to a piece of music that he held to be the most beautiful thing in his life: better even than Swan Lake.
For a while “I’m Coming, Virginia” became the most beautiful thing in my life too. The coherence of its long Bix solo still provides me with a measure of what popular art should be like: a generosity of effects on a simple frame. The melodic line is particularly ravishing at its points of transition: there are moments when even a silent pause is a perfect note, and always there is a piercing sadness to it, as if the natural tone of the cornet, the instrument of reveille, were the first sob before weeping.
IN ADDITION: Courtesy of my friend Elliot, a moment from Bob Dylan’s radio show this week. Dylan reminds his listeners that the jazz standard “Skylark” was originally called “Bix Lix” in honor of composer Hoagy Carmichael’s old friend. In this version from 1941, Anita O’Day accompanies Gene Krupa’s big band.
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