This is about musical genius, disability, and the Cradle of RecordedJazz. Bix was an enigma. He never finished high school; he never properly learned to read music. Yet he was, by all accounts, an outstanding musician.

In 1903, Leon Bix Beiderbecke was born in Davenport, Iowa, to a middle class family. Bix was a musical prodigy at seven, champion tennis player as a teenager, but an underachiever academically. His mother was a church organist and his first music teacher. Bix was the poster boy for the Roaring Twenties, a time of fast cars, bootleg alcohol, and hot music, a time when marijuana was legal and alcohol was not. Bix had self-doubt, probably a learning disorder, and eventually a drinking problem. His passion was music, and gin was his ruin.

As a teenager, Bix met Louis Armstrong on a riverboat in Davenport. Soon thereafter, his parents sent him to Lake Forest Academy outside Chicago. Bix was soon a regular at the jazz joints on Chicago's south side where the music and gin came together. He was dismissed from the academy in the spring; formal education could wait.

Bix formed his own band and began touring the college scene. He met Hoagy Carmichael at Indiana University. Hoagy knew immediately that Bix had something special, a lyricism and talent that were far superior, so this law student and fledgling song writer teamed with the high school drop-out and cornet virtuoso. Bix renamed the song "Riverboat Shuffle" for Hoagy. With Bix as a collaborator, writing music was so much easier, Hoagy later recounted. To our everlasting thankfulness, Hoagy told Bix of the recording studio in Richmond, Indiana.

In 1924, before he was twenty-one, Bix was recording at the Gennett studio in Richmond. A year later he was back in Richmond and recorded "Davenport Blues" for Gennett. For the next five years, Bix played with the best. He eventually got to New York where he played with the Paul Whiteman Orchestra, which included Frank Trumbauer and singer Bing Crosby. But the drinking was taking its toll on Bix. The disease process of alcoholism was well underway. He became less responsible, chronically late, and dead at age twenty-eight. The year was 1931.

This is the tragic story of the Jazz Age, the addiction that killed the genius. Bix was greatly admired by Louis Armstrong and Hoagy Carmichael. To quote Armstrong, "I've heard a lot of cats try to play like Bix, but ain't nobody play like him yet." For the past thirty-five years, the people of Davenport have honored his memory with a Bix Beiderbecke Memorial Jazz Festival. And in Richmond, on the corner of 9th and South A streets, you can see Bix Beiderbecke (second from right) and his Rhythm Jugglers as they appeared in Richmond when they recorded "Davenport Blues." Richmond has honored Gennett and the great musicians who made Richmond the Cradle of Recorded Jazz.

Contributed by Bob Jacobsen, Starr-Gennett Foundation Board Member

Top