Bix history buff, Q-C musician dies

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By Bill Wundram | Saturday, July 26, 2008 |

Play it again, Rich. Somewhere in the heavens of jazzy sharps and flats, Rich Johnson will be checking on Bix Beiderbecke.

Johnson — nicknamed Dr. Jazz — died Thursday afternoon at the age of 86. He was the premiere world authority on Bix, whom he never knew, and had a passion for learning all there was to know about Davenport’s young man with a horn.

To Johnson, Bix was like a son.

Johnson had been fighting the odds of cancer for 18 months, and held out hopes that he would live to attend one last Bix Beiderbecke Memorial Jazz Festival this weekend, said his widow, Gail.

Services will be Monday. He will be buried wearing a Bix Beiderbecke Memorial Society T-shirt. Three Bix recordings will be played at the funeral, all specifically requested by Johnson. At the reception, three jazz bands will play, among them the New Wolverines.

When Johnson was fading earlier this week, Josh Duffee, band leader and close friend, hastily gathered Spats Langham and his Rhythm Boys to play at his hospice bedside.

“I truly believe that he could hear the music,” Gail Johnson said. “A good friend sat at bedside, holding his hand, and together they moved his arm and hand back and forth to the jazz.”

One of the songs played was a version of a noted Bix recording, “I’ll Be a Friend with Pleasure.”

Duffee said Johnson was aware that death was near but was talkative until recent days. “I know that he would have liked to have gone on the same day that Bix died, Aug. 6. I joked with him that it might not be possible because Bix had a few gigs left to play. He smiled at that.”

Friends and family remotely thought Johnson might possibly be in the Bix Bash audience this weekend. As recently as June 8, he played guitar with Ron Madow’s Society Jazz Band at the Radisson Quad-City Plaza in Davenport. He played dates with Al Hathaway’s band, and Hathaway called him “a great guitarist, one of the best in these parts — and what a fine, gentle guy.”

He never missed a night at old Hunter’s in Rock Island, anchoring the rhythm section of the Riverboaters.

A year ago on this day, Johnson was presented the first-ever Bix Memorial Award, a 14-inch bronze statue of Bix. His family worried that his health would not allow him to accept, but Johnson showed up, perky. He had prepared a speech and returned to the jazz concert audience disappointed.

“They just leaned over from the stage and handed it to me. I wanted to get up there and say something,” he said afterward. He stayed for the concert, tapping his feet. “I’ll Be a Friend with Pleasure” was dedicated to him.

Johnson, an Augustana College graduate, was a musical scholar and author on most anything concerning Bix’s brief life. A soft-spoken, articulate man, he would offer as much time to a high school kid as to a jazz scholar. It could be on obscure subjects ranging from what dates Bix played at the Blue Bird Inn in Milan to details on where he stayed when he performed a piano solo at Carnegie Hall in New York City.

“If there was anything to be known about Bix, Rich knew it,” said Jim Arpy, a friend who accompanied Johnson on many of his explorations to places where Bix had performed around the country.

Bill Wundram can be contacted at (563) 383-2249 or bwundram@qctimes.com.