An early classic jazz performer: Leon “Bix” Beiderbecke
November 22nd, 2008 | by Tom |Leon “Bix” Beiderbecke grew up in a middle-class family in Davenport, Iowa, where he heard the bands on passing riverboats - no doubt including Marable’s, because legend has it that he met the young Louis Armstrong during his time in the “floating academy”. He was a self-taught cornetist and pianist, and although his formal education seems to have been a series of disastrous escapades with frequent episodes of truancy and misbehavior, he developed a keen interest in twentieth-century classical music.
“He had a love of the great composers of the day such as Ravel, Holst, Schoenberg and Debussy”, wrote saxophonist Bud Freeman, who met him in 1925 and was treated by Bix to an impromptu piano recital of Debussy and Eastwood Lane compositions.
“There came out some new records on Gennett by the Wolverines. When we heard Bix on those we did another flip. How could it be so good? … What a beautiful tone, sense of melody, great drive, poise, everything! He just played lovely jazz and knew how to lead a band”.
In his mature solo’s, the choice of notes veers less toward the the flattened tones of the African-American blues scale than to whole-tone scales or ninth and thirteenth intervals, played wit a clear, bell-like cornet tone. He also adopted an unhurried timing that frequently played key notes or accents slightly behind the beat.
Beiderbecke made a tremendous impression on everyone who heard him in the flesh from the beginning of 1924 onward, when he began working throughout the Midwest with the Chicago-based Wolverines. Eddie Condon, for example, initially heard him playing piano; “For the first time I realized that music isn’t all the same”, he wrote. When he finally heard Beidersbeck’s cornet, “The sound came out like a girl saying yes”.
It was not until Beiderbecke reached the ranks of Jean Goldkette’s big band in late 1924 that the modern jazz listener can hear with any clarity his fresh ideas and confident personality in his first recorded cornet solo with the group, “I didn’t Know”.
The Wolverines in Copenhagen - 1924
Just as Armstrong’s playing matured during the time he was a featured soloist with Henderson, Beiderbecke’s made a similar leap forward in the larger band of Goldkette, with the difference that he was never entirely comfortable as a big-band ensemble player, apparently never mastering the art of sight-reading and, for the most part, relying on his quick and ability as a soloist, while those around him diligently played their parts from the sheet music.
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