Jazz experts discuss Bix Beiderbecke’s life

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By Mary Louise Speer | Friday, July 25, 2008 11:29 PM CDT | () comments

Through his music, immortal jazz cornetist Bix Beiderbecke comes alive.

Five jazz experts highlighted the man behind the legend and collecting beyond records Friday during Bix Seminars at the Davenport Clarion Hotel. The series is part of the 37th annual Bix Beiderbecke Memorial Jazz Festival that runs through Sunday.

“My image of Bix, I think, is he was modest. He had a good sense of humor. He had a physical addiction to alcohol. He was a musical genius,” Dr. Albert Haim, founder of the Bixography Web site, told listeners.

Bix died in 1931 at the age of 28. Haim’s interest in Bix dates back five decades when he began collecting Bix recordings. He put his collection on Bix into a Web site that is accessible to lovers of Bix’s music and life. Haim also published his findings in jazz journals and received a “best article award” from the International Association of Jazz Record Collectors.

Some historians regard Bix as a person who needed swaddling in a protective cocoon, he said. However, Bix’s letters to friends and family and newspaper clippings show a friendly individual who appeared in hundreds of venues around the United States.

In one newspaper article, Bix is described as one of the dirtiest trumpet players, in style, not physically, Haim said.

Some historians have claimed that Bix’s parents, Bismark and Agatha Beiderbecke of Davenport, strongly disproved of their son’s career as a jazz musician, he said. Their son never completed Davenport High School and spent most of his time in venues on the East Coast playing his cornet. And it might have seemed as if he couldn’t keep a steady gig as he moved from orchestra to orchestra.

But Bix’s letters are affectionately addressed to “Dearest Dad and Ma,” or “Dearest Folks.” A letter sent to his father after his grandmother’s death says, “I

didn’t realize how much Oma meant in my young life until she died.”

In a 1928 interview with the Davenport Democrat and Leader, his mother talked about listening to Bix perform. “We can always tell when Bix comes in,” she said. Historian Rich Johnson, who died Thursday, discovered that article in March 2001, Haim said.

Bix made himself known with a blare of sound and unexpected trills, a language that Agatha, an organist at Davenport First Presbyterian Church, evidently understood and appreciated.

The Bix Beiderbecke Memorial Society appreciates the interest visitors from all over the globe have in Bix’s music and persona, and they are working to ensure that new generations of jazz enthusiasts continue to love Davenport’s jazz roots.

“If you look out over our audience, you see a lot of gray hair. We think it’s important to get young audiences involved,” said Ray Voss, president of the Bix Beiderbecke Memorial Society.

The society is working to accomplish that goal through presentations and school visits as funding permits and the Bix Beiderbecke Youth Jazz Band, he said.

Young musicians are welcome to participate in a fun program at Modern Woodmen Park today and Sunday during the afternoon concerts, he said. The event features kazoo playing, jazz bingo and inflatables.

The city desk can be contacted at (563) 383-2245 or newsroom@qctimes.com.