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| Why not go with the famous photo? |
With an eye to future chapters, this post drags music back to the jazz of the 1920s - specifically to one of the genre's great innovators, Bix Beiderbecke. Even though he was born miles, and arguably worlds, away from the cities where jazz was born, Beiderbecke’s name moved in the same circles as the legends. That respect went both ways too, as noted on a Stanford University site called Riverwalk Jazz:
“Later, both Bix and Louis avowed that the other was ‘the best horn player he had ever heard.’”
I saw comparisons between Louis Armstrong and Bix Beiderbecke over and over as I dug into the latter’s legend - and it is a very much a legend. Some of those comparisons read differently today than the would have two, three decades ago. For example:
“Where Armstrong's playing was bravura, regularly optimistic, and openly emotional, Beiderbecke's contained a range of intellectual alternatives. Where Armstrong, at the head of an ensemble, played it hard, straight and true, Beiderbecke, like a shadow-boxer, invented his own way of phrasing 'around the lead.' Where Armstrong's superior strength delighted in the sheer power of what a cornet could produce, Beiderbecke's cool approach invited rather than commanded you to listen.”
Fans of American football should hear a faint echo from conversations about, say, wide receivers in that...
Leon Bismark “Bix” Beiderbecke was born into a well-to-do family in Davenport, Iowa in 1903; a lively, if pointless, dispute surrounds whether his middle name was actually Bismark or Bix, but he clearly preferred the latter and never went by anything else (as he signed off in a letter to his mother, written when he was 9-years-old, “frome your Leon Bix Beiderbecke not Bismark Remember”). His father trafficked in coal and lumber and his mother’s father was a steamboat pilot, but Beiderbecke must have fallen in love with music the second he heard it. His sister recalls him playing piano by age three - he played with his hands over his head - and, when the local press caught wind of him, they hailed him as a seven-year-old boy musical wonder,” and under headlines reading, “Little Bickie Beiderbecke plays any selection he hears.” He learned how to play a couple instruments, but he would latch onto the cornet and never let go.
“Later, both Bix and Louis avowed that the other was ‘the best horn player he had ever heard.’”
I saw comparisons between Louis Armstrong and Bix Beiderbecke over and over as I dug into the latter’s legend - and it is a very much a legend. Some of those comparisons read differently today than the would have two, three decades ago. For example:
“Where Armstrong's playing was bravura, regularly optimistic, and openly emotional, Beiderbecke's contained a range of intellectual alternatives. Where Armstrong, at the head of an ensemble, played it hard, straight and true, Beiderbecke, like a shadow-boxer, invented his own way of phrasing 'around the lead.' Where Armstrong's superior strength delighted in the sheer power of what a cornet could produce, Beiderbecke's cool approach invited rather than commanded you to listen.”
Fans of American football should hear a faint echo from conversations about, say, wide receivers in that...
Leon Bismark “Bix” Beiderbecke was born into a well-to-do family in Davenport, Iowa in 1903; a lively, if pointless, dispute surrounds whether his middle name was actually Bismark or Bix, but he clearly preferred the latter and never went by anything else (as he signed off in a letter to his mother, written when he was 9-years-old, “frome your Leon Bix Beiderbecke not Bismark Remember”). His father trafficked in coal and lumber and his mother’s father was a steamboat pilot, but Beiderbecke must have fallen in love with music the second he heard it. His sister recalls him playing piano by age three - he played with his hands over his head - and, when the local press caught wind of him, they hailed him as a seven-year-old boy musical wonder,” and under headlines reading, “Little Bickie Beiderbecke plays any selection he hears.” He learned how to play a couple instruments, but he would latch onto the cornet and never let go.
