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142-461: Schuller briefly discusses some earlier histories of jazz and explains why recorded performance will be the object of study. He indicates where the separation lies between the present book and the projected second volume on the next period of jazz, the Swing Era. This chapter briefly covers the sociological and musical backgrounds of jazz. It then goes into detail regarding what Schuller takes to be

284-404: A Romantic hero, the " Young Man with a Horn " (a novel, later made into a movie starring Kirk Douglas , Lauren Bacall , Doris Day , and his friend Hoagy Carmichael ). His life has often been portrayed as that of a jazz musician who had to compromise his art for the sake of commercialism. Beiderbecke remains the subject of scholarly controversy regarding his full name, the cause of his death and

426-574: A "Battle of the Bands" in the local press and, on October 12, after a night of furious playing, Goldkette's men were declared the winners. "We […] were amazed, angry, morose, and bewildered," Rex Stewart, Fletcher's lead trumpeter, said of listening to Beiderbecke and his colleagues play. He called the experience "most humiliating". On October 15, 1931, a few months after Beiderbecke's death, the Fletcher Henderson Orchestra recorded

568-438: A "pulse-group" that corresponds to the poetic foot . Normally such pulse-groups are defined by taking the most accented beat as the first and counting the pulses until the next accent. Scholes 1977b A rhythm that accents another beat and de-emphasises the downbeat as established or assumed from the melody or from a preceding rhythm is called syncopated rhythm. Normally, even the most complex of meters may be broken down into

710-404: A Mist " (1927) is the best known of Beiderbecke's published piano compositions and the only one that he recorded. His piano style reflects both jazz and classical (mainly impressionist) influences. All five of his piano compositions were published by Robbins Music during his lifetime. A native of Davenport , Iowa, Beiderbecke taught himself to play the cornet largely by ear , leading him to adopt

852-728: A Mist ." A subsequent gig at Doyle's Dance Academy in Cincinnati became the occasion for a series of band and individual photographs that resulted in the image of Beiderbecke—sitting fresh-faced, his hair perfectly combed and his cornet resting on his right knee. On February 18, 1924, the Wolverines made their first recordings. Two sides were waxed that day at the Gennett Records studios in Richmond, Indiana : " Fidgety Feet ", written by Nick LaRocca and Larry Shields from

994-437: A basic pulse but a freer rhythm, like the rhythm of prose compared to that of verse. See Free time (music) . Finally some music, such as some graphically scored works since the 1950s and non-European music such as Honkyoku repertoire for shakuhachi , may be considered ametric . Senza misura is an Italian musical term for "without meter", meaning to play without a beat, using time to measure how long it will take to play

1136-473: A bell”. His solos on seminal recordings such as "Singin' the Blues" and " I'm Coming, Virginia " (both 1927) demonstrate a gift for extended improvisation that heralded the jazz ballad style, in which jazz solos are an integral part of the composition. Moreover, his use of extended chords and an ability to improvise freely along harmonic as well as melodic lines are echoed in post-WWII developments in jazz. " In

1278-520: A boarding school would provide their son with both the faculty attention and discipline required to improve his academic performance, necessitated by the fact that Bix had failed most courses in high school, remaining a junior in 1921 despite turning 18 in March of that year. His interests, however, remained limited to music and sports. In pursuit of the former, Beiderbecke often visited Chicago to listen to jazz bands at night clubs and speakeasies , including

1420-430: A chain of duple and triple pulses either by addition or division . According to Pierre Boulez , beat structures beyond four, in western music, are "simply not natural". The tempo of the piece is the speed or frequency of the tactus , a measure of how quickly the beat flows. This is often measured in 'beats per minute' ( bpm ): 60 bpm means a speed of one beat per second, a frequency of 1 Hz. A rhythmic unit

1562-413: A change in rhythm, which implies an inadequate perception of musical meaning. The study of rhythm, stress, and pitch in speech is called prosody (see also: prosody (music) ): it is a topic in linguistics and poetics , where it means the number of lines in a verse , the number of syllables in each line and the arrangement of those syllables as long or short, accented or unaccented. Music inherited

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1704-523: A characteristic tempo and measure. The Imperial Society of Teachers of Dancing defines the tango , for example, as to be danced in 4 time at approximately 66 beats per minute. The basic slow step forwards or backwards, lasting for one beat, is called a "slow", so that a full "right–left" step is equal to one 4 measure. ( See Rhythm and dance .) The general classifications of metrical rhythm , measured rhythm , and free rhythm may be distinguished. Metrical or divisive rhythm, by far

1846-700: A classic jazz number, recorded by musicians ranging from Bunny Berigan to Ry Cooder and Geoff Muldaur . An arrangement of "Davenport Blues" as a piano solo was published by Robbins Music in 1927. In February 1925, Beiderbecke enrolled at the University of Iowa in Iowa City. His stint in academia was even briefer than his time in Detroit, however. When he attempted to pack his course schedule with music, his guidance counselor forced him instead to take religion, ethics, physical education, and military training. It

1988-469: A day after the alleged incident, that they had seen Beiderbecke take the girl into the garage. The surviving official documents concerning the arrest and its aftermath – including two police entries and Preston Ivens' grand jury testimony – were first made available in 2001 by Professor Albert Haim on the Bixography website. Jean Pierre Lion in his 2005 biography discussed the incident briefly and printed

2130-469: A double tempo (denoted as R012 = repeat from 0, one time, twice faster): However, the motive with this rhythm in the Moussorgsky's piece is rather perceived as a repeat This context-dependent perception of rhythm is explained by the principle of correlative perception, according to which data are perceived in the simplest way. From the viewpoint of Kolmogorov 's complexity theory, this means such

2272-575: A fellow musician, Frankie Cush. The cornetist spent the rest of the year at home in Davenport and then, in February 1931, he returned to New York one last time. Beiderbecke died in his apartment, No. 1G, 43–30 46th Street, in Sunnyside, Queens , New York, on August 6, 1931. The week had been stiflingly hot, making sleep difficult. Suffering from insomnia, Beiderbecke played the piano late into

2414-658: A few weeks, Beiderbecke and Goldkette agreed to part company, but to keep in touch, with Goldkette advising Beiderbecke to brush up on his reading and learn more about music. Some six weeks after leaving the band, Bix arranged a Gennett recording session back in Richmond with some of the Goldkette band members, under the name Bix and His Rhythm Jugglers. On January 26, 1925, they set two tunes to wax: "Toddlin' Blues", another number by LaRocca and Shields, and Beiderbecke's own composition, " Davenport Blues ", which subsequently became

2556-654: A freelance basis with the Goldkette Orchestra. Another newcomer was Sylvester Ahola , a schooled trumpeter who could play improvised jazz solos and read complex scores. When Ahola introduced himself, Beiderbecke famously stated "Hell, I'm only a musical degenerate". When that job ended sooner than expected, in October 1927, Beiderbecke and Trumbauer signed on with Whiteman. They joined his orchestra in Indianapolis on October 27. The Paul Whiteman Orchestra

2698-496: A fundamental characteristic of jazz melody: the use of blue notes . An additional African influence is the way that melody in predecessors of jazz followed speech characteristics. A brief section on timbre again emphasizes the African roots of an emphasis on the individuality of a performer's tone color. Schuller notes that "African instrumentation reflects the vocal quality of African speech." He cites various jazz performers for

2840-597: A guardian to Beiderbecke. When Trumbauer organized a band for an extended run at the Arcadia Ballroom in St. Louis, Beiderbecke joined him. There he also played alongside the clarinetist Pee Wee Russell , who praised Beiderbecke's ability to drive the band. "He more or less made you play whether you wanted to or not," Russell said. "If you had any talent at all he made you play better." In the spring of 1926, Bix and Trumbauer joined Goldkette's main dance band, splitting

2982-480: A mere "mediocre vaudeville act", and suggesting that "today we only tolerate the horrors of Whiteman's recordings at all in the hope that here and there a Bixian fragment will redeem the mess." Richard Sudhalter has responded by suggesting that Beiderbecke saw the Whiteman band as an opportunity to pursue musical ambitions that did not stop at jazz: Colleagues have testified that, far from feeling bound or stifled by

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3124-413: A move towards jazz orchestras, the big bands, by the end of the 1920s. Schuller then considers two sites of big band activity: New York and Kansas City. The New York musical personalities that he considers at some length are James Reese Europe , who prefigured jazz developments but died in 1919 at the height of his influence; as well as Fletcher Henderson and Don Redman , the prime mover and arranger in

3266-534: A non-standard fingering technique that informed his unique style. He first recorded with Midwestern jazz ensemble The Wolverines in 1924, after which he played briefly for the Detroit-based Jean Goldkette Orchestra before joining Frankie "Tram" Trumbauer for an extended engagement at the Arcadia Ballroom in St. Louis, also under the auspices of Goldkette's organisation. Beiderbecke and Trumbauer joined Goldkette's main band at

3408-492: A pattern that is short enough to memorize. The alternation of the strong and weak beat is fundamental to the ancient language of poetry, dance and music. The common poetic term "foot" refers, as in dance, to the lifting and tapping of the foot in time. In a similar way musicians speak of an upbeat and a downbeat and of the "on" and "off" beat . These contrasts naturally facilitate a dual hierarchy of rhythm and depend on repeating patterns of duration, accent and rest forming

3550-558: A piano-roll recording contains tempo deviations within [REDACTED] . = 19/119, a span of 5.5 times. Such tempo deviations are strictly prohibited, for example, in Bulgarian or Turkish music based on so-called additive rhythms with complex duration ratios, which can also be explained by the principle of correlativity of perception. If a rhythm is not structurally redundant, then even minor tempo deviations are not perceived as accelerando or ritardando but rather given an impression of

3692-576: A precipitous decline in his health due to his increasing use of alcohol. Treatment for alcoholism in rehabilitation centers, with the support of Whiteman and the Beiderbecke family, failed to stop his decline. He left the Whiteman band in 1929 and in the summer of 1931 died aged 28 in his Sunnyside, Queens , New York apartment. His death, in turn, gave rise to one of the original legends of jazz. In magazine articles, musicians' memoirs, novels, and Hollywood films, Beiderbecke has been envisaged as

3834-425: A representation of the data that minimizes the amount of memory. The example considered suggests two alternative representations of the same rhythm: as it is, and as the rhythm-tempo interaction – a two-level representation in terms of a generative rhythmic pattern and a "tempo curve". Table 1 displays these possibilities both with and without pitch, assuming that one duration requires one byte of information, one byte

3976-690: A respite from playing. In some respects, Beiderbecke's playing was sui generis , but he nevertheless listened to, and learned from, the music around him: from the Dixieland jazz as exemplified by the Original Dixieland Jazz Band ; to the hotter Chicago style of the New Orleans Rhythm Kings and the south-side bands of King Oliver and other black artists; to the classical compositions of Claude Debussy and Maurice Ravel . Louis Armstrong also provided

4118-581: A review of The New Grove Dictionary of American Music in Music and Letters , Peter Dickinson wrote: "Gunther Schuller set standards in his Early Jazz: its Roots and Musical Development in 1968." Rhythm Rhythm (from Greek ῥυθμός , rhythmos , "any regular recurring motion, symmetry " ) generally means a " movement marked by the regulated succession of strong and weak elements, or of opposite or different conditions". This general meaning of regular recurrence or pattern in time can apply to

4260-532: A roomful of furniture in the hotel." In February 1929, Beiderbecke returned home to Davenport to convalesce and was hailed by the local press as "the world's hottest cornetist". He then spent the summer with Whiteman's band in Hollywood in preparation for the shooting of a new talking picture, The King of Jazz . Production delays prevented any real work from being done on the film, leaving Beiderbecke and his pals plenty of time to drink heavily. By September, he

4402-561: A selected discography and an index. There are no endnotes, as footnotes appear throughout. Reviewers in both the popular and academic press acclaimed Early Jazz at the time of its publication. In the New York Times Book Review , Frank Conroy wrote: "Here, at last, is the definitive work." In the Music Library Association publication, Notes , Frank Tirro wrote: "Gunther Schuller's work

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4544-419: A series of beats that we abstract from the rhythm surface of the music as it unfolds in time". The "perception" and "abstraction" of rhythmic measure is the foundation of human instinctive musical participation, as when we divide a series of identical clock-ticks into "tick-tock-tick-tock". Joseph Jordania recently suggested that the sense of rhythm was developed in the early stages of hominid evolution by

4686-517: A shape and structure of their own, also function as integral parts of a larger ["architectonic"] rhythmic organization. Most music, dance and oral poetry establishes and maintains an underlying "metric level", a basic unit of time that may be audible or implied, the pulse or tactus of the mensural level , or beat level , sometimes simply called the beat . This consists of a (repeating) series of identical yet distinct periodic short-duration stimuli perceived as points in time. The "beat" pulse

4828-410: A single, accented (strong) beat and either one or two unaccented (weak) beats. In the performance arts , rhythm is the timing of events on a human scale; of musical sounds and silences that occur over time, of the steps of a dance, or the meter of spoken language and poetry. In some performing arts, such as hip hop music , the rhythmic delivery of the lyrics is one of the most important elements of

4970-439: A source of inspiration, though Beiderbecke's style was very different from that of Armstrong, according to The Oxford Companion to Jazz : Where Armstrong's playing was bravura, regularly optimistic, and openly emotional, Beiderbecke's conveyed a range of intellectual alternatives. Where Armstrong, at the head of an ensemble, played it hard, straight, and true, Beiderbecke, like a shadowboxer, invented his own way of phrasing "around

5112-414: A strong pulse are strong , on a weak pulse, weak and those that end on a strong or weak upbeat are upbeat . Rhythm is marked by the regulated succession of opposite elements: the dynamics of the strong and weak beat, the played beat and the inaudible but implied rest beat , or the long and short note. As well as perceiving rhythm humans must be able to anticipate it. This depends on repetition of

5254-460: A union executive, Beiderbecke was forced to sight read and failed. He did not earn his card. On April 22, 1921, a month after he turned 18, Beiderbecke was arrested by two Davenport police officers on an accusation that he had taken a five-year-old girl named Sarah Ivens into a neighbor's garage and committed a lewd and lascivious act with her—a statutory felony in Iowa. According to the police ledger,

5396-410: A version of "Singin' the Blues" that included Rex Stewart performing a nearly note-for-note homage to Beiderbecke's most famous solo. Although the Goldkette Orchestra recorded numerous sides for Victor during this period, none of them showcases Beiderbecke's most famous solos. The band found itself subjected to the commercial considerations of the popular music sector that Victor deliberately targeted

5538-403: A wide variety of cyclical natural phenomena having a periodicity or frequency of anything from microseconds to several seconds (as with the riff in a rock music song); to several minutes or hours, or, at the most extreme, even over many years. The Oxford English Dictionary defines rhythm as "The measured flow of words or phrases in verse, forming various patterns of sound as determined by

5680-722: Is a contentious point. Whiteman's violinist Matty Malneck said "The work was so hard, you almost had to drink" adding "He didn't get to play the things he loved with the Whiteman band because we were a symphonic band and we played the same thing every night, and it got to be tiresome." On November 30, 1928, whilst on tour in Cleveland, Beiderbecke suffered what Lion terms "a severe nervous crisis" and Sudhalter and Evans suggest "was in all probability an acute attack of delirium tremens ", presumably triggered by Beiderbecke's attempt to curb his alcohol intake. "He cracked up, that's all", trombonist Bill Rank said. "Just went to pieces; broke up

5822-405: Is a durational pattern that has a period equivalent to a pulse or several pulses. The duration of any such unit is inversely related to its tempo. Musical sound may be analyzed on five different time scales, which Moravscik has arranged in order of increasing duration. Curtis Roads takes a wider view by distinguishing nine-time scales, this time in order of decreasing duration. The first two,

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5964-466: Is a pioneer record, introducing a musician of great originality with a pace-setting band. And it astonished even the Wolverines themselves. The Wolverines recorded 15 sides for Gennett Records between February and October 1924. The titles revealed a strong and well-formed cornet talent. His lip had strengthened from earlier, more tentative years; on nine of the Wolverines' recorded titles he proceeds commandingly from lead to opening solo without any need for

6106-570: Is a subject of particular interest to outsiders while African scholars from Kyagambiddwa to Kongo have, for the most part, accepted the conventions and limitations of staff notation, and produced transcriptions to inform and enable discussion and debate. John Miller has argued that West African music is based on the tension between rhythms, polyrhythms created by the simultaneous sounding of two or more different rhythms, generally one dominant rhythm interacting with one or more independent competing rhythms. These often oppose or complement each other and

6248-448: Is any durational pattern that, in contrast to the rhythmic unit, does not occupy a period of time equivalent to a pulse or pulses on an underlying metric level. It may be described according to its beginning and ending or by the rhythmic units it contains. Rhythms that begin on a strong pulse are thetic , those beginning on a weak pulse are anacrustic and those beginning after a rest or tied-over note are called initial rest . Endings on

6390-649: Is at pains to emphasize that jazz arose in the period immediately after 1900 in many places in the United States, even while other African-American music that may have incorporated some jazz characteristics was simultaneously taking shape without actually being jazz. He asserts that the varied kinds of music that soon fused as jazz had the blues in common. For both the varied locations and the commonality of blues, Schuller details as examples developments in Denver and Springfield, Ohio , as well as New Orleans. Some of

6532-550: Is fundamental, so that a person's sense of rhythm cannot be lost (e.g. by stroke). "There is not a single report of an animal being trained to tap, peck, or move in synchrony with an auditory beat", Sacks write, "No doubt many pet lovers will dispute this notion, and indeed many animals, from the Lipizzaner horses of the Spanish Riding School of Vienna to performing circus animals appear to 'dance' to music. It

6674-402: Is needed for the pitch of one tone, and invoking the repeat algorithm with its parameters R012 takes four bytes. As shown in the bottom row of the table, the rhythm without pitch requires fewer bytes if it is "perceived" as it is, without repetitions and tempo leaps. On the contrary, its melodic version requires fewer bytes if the rhythm is "perceived" as being repeated at a double tempo. Thus,

6816-515: Is not a common word or phrase in the English Language, appearing approximately 0.01 times per million words in modern written English. Counter Rhythm has been on a steady decrease in usage since its conception, with the exception of a spike in usage in the 1970s. Previous definitions that have been phased out include, "The musical counter-rhythms which Marlowe introduced" and "Splashes of counter-rhythms, flashing tremolos" (OED ).   In

6958-434: Is not clear whether they are doing so or are responding to subtle visual or tactile cues from the humans around them." Human rhythmic arts are possibly to some extent rooted in courtship ritual. The establishment of a basic beat requires the perception of a regular sequence of distinct short-duration pulses and, as a subjective perception of loudness is relative to background noise levels, a pulse must decay to silence before

7100-468: Is not necessarily the fastest or the slowest component of the rhythm but the one that is perceived as fundamental: it has a tempo to which listeners entrain as they tap their foot or dance to a piece of music. It is currently most often designated as a crotchet or quarter note in western notation (see time signature ). Faster levels are division levels , and slower levels are multiple levels . Maury Yeston clarified "Rhythms of recurrence" arise from

7242-499: Is one of the three aspects of prosody , along with stress and intonation . Languages can be categorized according to whether they are syllable-timed, mora-timed, or stress-timed. Speakers of syllable-timed languages such as Spanish and Cantonese put roughly equal time on each syllable; in contrast, speakers of stressed-timed languages such as English and Mandarin Chinese put roughly equal time lags between stressed syllables, with

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7384-475: Is related to the effectiveness of their upholding community values. Indian music has also been passed on orally. Tabla players would learn to speak complex rhythm patterns and phrases before attempting to play them. Sheila Chandra , an English pop singer of Indian descent, made performances based on her singing these patterns. In Indian classical music , the Tala of a composition is the rhythmic pattern over which

7526-663: Is the best musical account of jazz through the early 1930s yet published." In a review in Journal of the American Musicological Society , William W. Austin wrote: "Schuller knows his subject as probably no one else does." In a review in The American Historical Review , George A. Boeck wrote: "Gunther Schuller's history of early jazz is the most scholarly and perceptive work on the subject to date." Some twenty years later, in

7668-591: Is the book's subject. The section on form covers African elements, European influences, and forms developed by African-Americans in the South . Schuller concludes that the blues "left enough room to preserve a number of African rhythmic-melodic characteristics." In a brief discussion of the role of harmony in the origins of jazz, the book notes that African and European systems of harmony overlapped sufficiently to allow their synthesis without "profound problems." The section on melody again finds African characteristics in

7810-400: Is the dependence of its perception on tempo, and, conversely, the dependence of tempo perception on rhythm. Furthermore, the rhythm–tempo interaction is context dependent, as explained by Andranik Tangian using an example of the leading rhythm of "Promenade" from Moussorgsky 's Pictures at an Exhibition :( This rhythm is perceived as it is rather than as the first three events repeated at

7952-459: The Grammy Hall of Fame . Beiderbecke's playing had an influence on Carmichael as a composer. One of his compositions, " Stardust ", was inspired by Beiderbecke's improvisations, with a cornet phrase reworked by Carmichael into the song's central theme. Bing Crosby, who sang with Whiteman, also cited Beiderbecke as an important influence. "Bix and all the rest would play and exchange ideas on

8094-472: The Griot tradition of Africa everything related to music has been passed on orally. Babatunde Olatunji (1927–2003) developed a simple series of spoken sounds for teaching the rhythms of the hand-drum, using six vocal sounds, "Goon, Doon, Go, Do, Pa, Ta", for three basic sounds on the drum, each played with either the left or the right hand. The debate about the appropriateness of staff notation for African music

8236-711: The gamelan . For information on rhythm in Indian music see Tala (music) . For other Asian approaches to rhythm see Rhythm in Persian music , Rhythm in Arabic music and Usul —Rhythm in Turkish music and Dumbek rhythms . As a piece of music unfolds, its rhythmic structure is perceived not as a series of discrete independent units strung together in a mechanical, additive, way like beads [or "pulses"], but as an organic process in which smaller rhythmic motives, whole possessing

8378-567: The infinite and the supra musical, encompass natural periodicities of months, years, decades, centuries, and greater, while the last three, the sample and subsample, which take account of digital and electronic rates "too brief to be properly recorded or perceived", measured in millionths of seconds ( microseconds ), and finally the infinitesimal or infinitely brief, are again in the extra-musical domain. Roads' Macro level, encompassing "overall musical architecture or form " roughly corresponds to Moravcsik's "very long" division while his Meso level,

8520-400: The 1920s, from a music-analytic view. Sandwiched between opening and closing titled sections on Bix Beiderbecke and Bessie Smith are treatments of clarinetists, brass players, and Harlem pianists. A prefatory opening section discusses the earliest white jazz bands, particularly the Original Dixieland Jazz Band (ODJB), and a little about the New Orleans Rhythm Kings . Some discussion of

8662-718: The Blues", recorded on February 4, 1927. Again with Trumbauer, Beiderbecke re-recorded Carmichael's "Riverboat Shuffle" in May and delivered two further seminal solos a few days later on "I'm Coming, Virginia" and " Way Down Yonder in New Orleans ". Beiderbecke earned co-writing credit with Trumbauer on " For No Reason at All in C ", recorded under the name Tram, Bix and Eddie (in their Three Piece Band). Beiderbecke switched between cornet and piano on that number, and then in September played only piano for his recording of " In A Mist ". This

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8804-579: The Cy-Bix Orchestra with drummer Walter "Cy" Welge and almost immediately got into trouble with the Lake Forest headmaster for performing indecorously at a school dance. Beiderbecke often failed to return to his dormitory before curfew, and sometimes stayed off-campus the next day. In the early morning hours of May 20, 1922, he was caught on the fire escape to his dormitory, attempting to climb back into his room. The faculty voted to expel him

8946-485: The Denver violinist and band leader George Morrison. Morrison describes playing jazz in Denver before 1920, employing figures who became important later, such as Andy Kirk and Jimmie Lunceford . The interview backs up Schuller's contention that early jazz was widespread, beyond just the urban centers often associated with its beginnings. A glossary of pertinent music terms from both jazz and classical music follows, then

9088-958: The Graystone Ballroom in Detroit in 1926. The band toured widely and famously played a set opposite Fletcher Henderson at the Roseland Ballroom in New York City in October 1926 . He made his greatest recordings in 1927. The Goldkette band folded in September 1927 and, after briefly joining bass saxophone player Adrian Rollini 's band in New York, Trumbauer and Beiderbecke joined America's most popular dance band: Paul Whiteman and his Orchestra. Beiderbecke's most influential recordings date from his time with Goldkette and Whiteman, although he also recorded under his own name and that of Trumbauer's. The Whiteman period marked

9230-555: The Henderson band. Henderson's band was preeminent, but other leaders were forming their own big bands competing with Henderson. The chapter discusses these bands and musicians more briefly, including McKinney's Cotton Pickers , Charlie Johnson's Paradise Ten, and the Missourians. In the discussion of Kansas City jazz in the 1920s, Schuller observes that the region was the birthplace of ragtime , an important popular music in

9372-630: The Original Dixieland Jazz Band, and "Jazz Me Blues", written by Tom Delaney . Beiderbecke's solo on the latter heralded something new and significant in jazz, according to biographers Richard M. Sudhalter and Philip R. Evans: Both qualities—complementary or "correlated" phrasing and cultivation of the vocal, "singing" middle-range of the cornet—are on display in Bix's "Jazz Me Blues" solo, along with an already discernible inclination for unusual accidentals and inner chordal voices. It

9514-460: The States, for that matter, as the greatest trumpet player of all time". The magazine's editor, Edgar Jackson, was equally fulsome in his praise: "Bix has a heart as big as your head, which shines through his playing with the warmth of the sun's rays" (September 1927 issue); "The next sixteen bars are a trumpet solo by Bix, and if this doesn't get you right in the heart, you'd better see a vet…." At

9656-749: The Whiteman orchestra, as Green and others have suggested, Bix often felt a sense of exhilaration. It was like attending a music school, learning and broadening: formal music, especially the synthesis of the American vernacular idiom with a more classical orientation, so much sought-after in the 1920s, were calling out to him. Beiderbecke is featured on a number of Whiteman recordings, including "From Monday On", " Back In Your Own Back Yard ", " You Took Advantage Of Me ", "Sugar", "Changes" and "When". These feature specially written arrangements that emphasize Beiderbecke's improvisational skills. Bill Challis, an arranger who had also worked in this capacity for Jean Goldkette,

9798-664: The Wolverines to play at the Bloomington campus of Indiana University in the spring of 1924. On May 6, 1924, the Wolverines recorded a tune Carmichael had written especially for Beiderbecke and his colleagues: " Riverboat Shuffle ". During an engagement at the Cinderella Ballroom in New York during September–October 1924, Bix tendered his resignation with the Wolverines, leaving to join Jean Goldkette and his Orchestra in Detroit, but Beiderbecke's tenure with

9940-541: The already leading jazz musicians rapidly came to wider public notice when they made their first issued recordings, in 1923. This group included King Oliver , Freddie Keppard , Louis Armstrong , Jelly Roll Morton , Sidney Bechet and Bennie Moten . (The blues singer Bessie Smith also began recording that year.) Despite having these recordings in hand, Schuller is unwilling to extrapolate historically back to what earlier jazz would have sounded like, preferring to rely on written and verbal reports. This chapter focuses on

10082-418: The area. Concert bands like John Philip Sousa 's were also very popular there. These currents provide a background for understanding the music of Bennie Moten , which gets some detailed analysis. Other regionally prominent bands from the region that Schuller treats include Jesse Stone 's Blues Serenaders, Troy Floyd's orchestra, Walter Page 's Blue Devils , and Alphonso Trent 's orchestra. Additionally,

10224-515: The band proved to be short-lived. Goldkette recorded for the Victor Talking Machine Company , whose musical director, Eddie King, objected to Beiderbecke's modernistic style of jazz playing. Moreover, despite the fact that Beiderbecke's position within the Goldkette band was "third trumpet", a less taxing role than 1st or 2nd trumpet, he struggled with the complex ensemble passages due to his limited reading abilities. After

10366-421: The band took its name from one of its most frequent numbers, Jelly Roll Morton 's " Wolverine Blues ." During this time, Beiderbecke also took piano lessons from a young woman who introduced him to the works of Eastwood Lane . Lane's piano suites and orchestral arrangements were self-consciously American whilst also having French Impressionist allusions, and influenced Beiderbecke's style, especially on " In

10508-496: The band's recordings at. The few exceptions to the policy include "My Pretty Girl" and "Clementine", the latter being one of the band's final recordings and its effective swan song. In addition to these commercial sessions with Goldkette, Beiderbecke and Trumbauer also recorded under their own names for the OKeh label; Bix waxed some of his best solos as a member of Trumbauer's recording band, starting with "Clarinet Marmalade" and "Singin'

10650-423: The bar. A composite rhythm is the durations and patterns (rhythm) produced by amalgamating all sounding parts of a musical texture . In music of the common practice period , the composite rhythm usually confirms the meter , often in metric or even-note patterns identical to the pulse on a specific metric level. White defines composite rhythm as, "the resultant overall rhythmic articulation among all

10792-519: The bed and when I rose to assure him there was no one hiding there, he staggered and fell, a dead weight, in my arms. I ran across the hall and called in a woman doctor, Dr. Haberski, to examine him. She pronounced him dead. Historians have disagreed over the identity of the doctor who pronounced Beiderbecke dead, with several sources stating that it was Dr. John Haberski (the husband of the woman Kraslow identified) who pronounced Beiderbecke dead in his apartment. The official cause of death, as indicated on

10934-663: The chapter offers analyses of some of the tiny number of recordings available from other regional figures, Schuller commenting on the large number of "excellent orchestras" playing there at the time. Schuller concludes his discussion by analyzing Moten's 1932 Camden recording session, which puts the listener "in the world of the Basie band of later years," and "produced a rhythmic revolution comparable to Armstrong's earlier one." This final chapter begins with some biographical material on Duke Ellington . It then provides an extended treatment of his orchestra: Ellington's early compositions, and

11076-440: The chapter, on Bessie Smith, devotes considerable attention to her vocal methods. Schuller provides additional discussion regarding her recorded interaction with various outstanding collaborators such as Johnson and Armstrong, among others. This chapter begins by pointing out the way that technological developments (radio and recordings), and the economic lift they provided to musicians, generated crosscurrents in jazz, resulting in

11218-496: The concept of transformation . Bix Beiderbecke Leon Bismark " Bix " Beiderbecke ( / ˈ b aɪ d ər b ɛ k / BY -dər-bek ; March 10, 1903 – August 6, 1931) was an American jazz cornetist , pianist and composer. Beiderbecke was one of the most influential jazz soloists of the 1920s, a cornet player noted for an inventive lyrical approach and purity of tone, with such clarity of sound that one contemporary famously described it like "shooting bullets at

11360-414: The country". Perhaps "Bixie's" death at the age of twenty-eight also is symbolical of the futility of the "jazz-mad generation's" quest for self-expression. However that may be, if it is true, as some critics contend, that "jazz" music is establishing foundations on which a distinctive and thoroughly legitimate American music eventually will be built, Bix Beiderbecke has left his mark on the future culture of

11502-435: The death certificate, was lobar pneumonia . Unofficially, edema of the brain, coupled with the effects of long-term alcoholism, have been cited as contributory factors. Beiderbecke's mother and brother took the train to New York and arranged for his body to be taken home to Davenport. He was buried there on August 11, 1931, in the family plot at Oakdale Cemetery . Critical analysis of Beiderbecke's work during his lifetime

11644-625: The development of the effective defense system of early hominids. Rhythmic war cry , rhythmic drumming by shamans , rhythmic drilling of the soldiers and contemporary professional combat forces listening to the heavy rhythmic rock music all use the ability of rhythm to unite human individuals into a shared collective identity where group members put the interests of the group above their individual interests and safety. Some types of parrots can know rhythm. Neurologist Oliver Sacks states that chimpanzees and other animals show no similar appreciation of rhythm yet posits that human affinity for rhythm

11786-428: The dominant rhythm. Moral values underpin a musical system based on repetition of relatively simple patterns that meet at distant cross-rhythmic intervals and on call-and-response form . Collective utterances such as proverbs or lineages appear either in phrases translated into "drum talk" or in the words of songs. People expect musicians to stimulate participation by reacting to people dancing. Appreciation of musicians

11928-498: The evenings, to both the annoyance and the delight of his neighbors. On the evening of August 6, at about 9:30 pm, his rental agent, George Kraslow, heard noises coming from across the hallway. "His hysterical shouts brought me to his apartment on the run," Kraslow told Philip Evans in 1959, continuing: He pulled me in and pointed to the bed. His whole body was trembling violently. He was screaming there were two Mexicans hiding under his bed with long daggers. To humor him, I looked under

12070-405: The forces of natural selection . Plenty of animals walk rhythmically and hear the sounds of the heartbeat in the womb, but only humans have the ability to be engaged ( entrained ) in rhythmically coordinated vocalizations and other activities. According to Jordania, development of the sense of rhythm was central for the achievement of the specific neurological state of the battle trance, crucial for

12212-416: The girl accused Beiderbecke of "putting his hands on her person outside of her dress." The ledger went on to state that Beiderbecke and the girl "were in an auto in the garage and he closed the door on the girl and she hollered," attracting the attention of two young men who were across the street. The young men "went over [to the garage] and the girl went home." Beiderbecke was released after a $ 1,500 bail bond

12354-428: The importance of his contributions to jazz. He composed or played on recordings that are jazz classics and standards such as " Davenport Blues ", " In a Mist ", " Copenhagen ", " Riverboat Shuffle ", " Singin' the Blues ", and " Georgia on My Mind ". The son of Bismark Herman Beiderbecke and Agatha Jane Hilton, Bix Beiderbecke was born on March 10, 1903, in Davenport, Iowa. There is disagreement over whether Beiderbecke

12496-426: The infamous Friar's Inn , where he sometimes sat in with the New Orleans Rhythm Kings . He also traveled to the predominantly African-American South Side to listen to classic black jazz bands such as King Oliver 's Creole Jazz Band, which featured Louis Armstrong on second cornet. "Don't think I'm getting hard, Burnie," he wrote to his brother, "but I'd go to hell to hear a good band." On campus, he helped organize

12638-454: The interaction of two levels of motion, the faster providing the pulse and the slower organizing the beats into repetitive groups. "Once a metric hierarchy has been established, we, as listeners, will maintain that organization as long as minimal evidence is present". A durational pattern that synchronises with a pulse or pulses on the underlying metric level may be called a rhythmic unit . These may be classified as: A rhythmic gesture

12780-543: 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. Armstrong tended to accentuate showmanship and virtuosity, whereas Beiderbecke emphasized melody, even when improvising, and rarely strayed into the upper reaches of the register. Mezz Mezzrow recounted in his autobiography driving 53 miles to Hudson Lake, Indiana, with Frank Teschemacher in order to play Armstrong's "Heebie Jeebies" for Beiderbecke when it

12922-581: The level of "divisions of form" including movements , sections , phrases taking seconds or minutes, is likewise similar to Moravcsik's "long" category. Roads' Sound object : "a basic unit of musical structure" and a generalization of note ( Xenakis' mini structural time scale); fraction of a second to several seconds, and his Microsound (see granular synthesis ) down to the threshold of audible perception; thousandths to millionths of seconds, are similarly comparable to Moravcsik's "short" and "supershort" levels of duration. One difficulty in defining rhythm

13064-504: The lights came on he rushed home to duplicate the melodies the accompanist had played. When Burnie returned to Davenport at the end of 1918 after serving stateside during World War I, he brought with him a Victrola phonograph and several records, including " Tiger Rag " and "Skeleton Jangle" by the Original Dixieland Jazz Band . From these records, Beiderbecke learned to love hot jazz; he taught himself to play cornet by listening to Nick LaRocca 's horn lines. He also listened to jazz from

13206-400: The lilting melody of youth that formed a smooth background for his fantastic caricatures in sound. Hundreds of young collegians who couldn't recall a strain of Beethoven or Wagner could whistle Bix Beiderbecke choruses. In the world of professional popular music, "Bixie" was an artist comparable to Kreisler in the field of conventional music. Paul Whiteman called him "the finest trumpet player in

13348-449: The loop of interdependence of rhythm and tempo is overcome due to the simplicity criterion, which "optimally" distributes the complexity of perception between rhythm and tempo. In the above example, the repetition is recognized because of additional repetition of the melodic contour, which results in a certain redundancy of the musical structure, making the recognition of the rhythmic pattern "robust" under tempo deviations. Generally speaking,

13490-405: The major elements of jazz. In the section on rhythm , the book describes swing technically, while first admitting that "a definition of swing has about the same sketchy relationship to swing itself as jazz notation has to performed jazz." The section includes observations made in the ante-bellum and Civil War periods, as well as references to African rhythms and the jazz of the period that

13632-534: The more redundant the "musical support" of a rhythmic pattern, the better its recognizability under augmentations and diminutions, that is, its distortions are perceived as tempo variations rather than rhythmic changes: By taking into account melodic context, homogeneity of accompaniment, harmonic pulsation, and other cues, the range of admissible tempo deviations can be extended further, yet still not preventing musically normal perception. For example, Skrjabin 's own performance of his Poem op. 32 no. 1 transcribed from

13774-544: The most common in Western music calculates each time value as a multiple or fraction of the beat. Normal accents re-occur regularly providing systematical grouping (measures). Measured rhythm ( additive rhythm ) also calculates each time value as a multiple or fraction of a specified time unit but the accents do not recur regularly within the cycle. Free rhythm is where there is neither, such as in Christian chant , which has

13916-450: The musical innovations that Louis Armstrong created. Although it includes some biographical information about Armstrong, its emphasis is quite firmly on Armstrong's recording sessions and recorded performances of the 1920s, and his interactions with other musicians and musical organizations. Armstrong's associates on these record dates, such as Johnny Dodds and Earl Hines , also come in for some musical analysis. After some reflections on

14058-576: The natural quality of their sound production, sound that makes each performer readily identifiable. A final brief section in this chapter, on improvisation , states that group improvisation, a hallmark of early jazz, is a distinctively African practice. Schuller counters a variety of other theories of the historical basis of jazz improvisation. He summarizes the "Origins" chapter by observing, "Many more aspects of jazz derive directly from African musical-social traditions than has been assumed." While focusing with considerable detail on New Orleans , Schuller

14200-493: The next day, due both to his academic failings and his extracurricular activities, which included drinking. The headmaster informed Beiderbecke's parents by letter that following his expulsion school officials confirmed that Beiderbecke "was drinking himself and was responsible, in part at least, in having liquor brought into the School." Soon after, Beiderbecke began pursuing a career in music. He returned to Davenport briefly in

14342-422: The next occurs if it is to be really distinct. For this reason, the fast-transient sounds of percussion instruments lend themselves to the definition of rhythm. Musical cultures that rely upon such instruments may develop multi-layered polyrhythm and simultaneous rhythms in more than one time signature, called polymeter . Such are the cross-rhythms of Sub-Saharan Africa and the interlocking kotekan rhythms of

14484-450: The once-booming music industry contracted and work became more difficult to find. For a while, Beiderbecke's only regular income came from his work as a member of Nat Shilkret's orchestra on The Camel Pleasure Hour NBC radio show. However, during a live broadcast on October 8, 1930, Beiderbecke's seemingly limitless gift for improvisation finally failed him: "He stood up to take his solo, but his mind went blank and nothing happened", recalled

14626-425: The opportunities he deserved as a jazz musician. James complains that, after Beiderbecke joined the band, "Whiteman moved farther and farther away from the easy-going, rhythmically inclined style of his earlier days", becoming "more subservient to his business sense". He goes on to suggest that this artistically compromised Beiderbecke, in part causing his death. Benny Green, in particular, derided Whiteman for being

14768-458: The orchestra's performance opportunities, its personnel and their varied playing styles, and analyses of their recordings during the period. As usual, Schuller points out both effects that work well and those that are less well conceived or executed. As he notes, Ellington used the idiosyncrasies of his players' styles to fashion a sound that was unique to his orchestra. The book closes with the transcript of an interview that Schuller conducted with

14910-413: The orchestrator of that piece, Ferde Grofé , continued to be an important part of the band throughout the 1920s. Whiteman was large physically and important culturally —"a man flabby, virile, quick, coarse, untidy and sleek, with a hard core of shrewdness in an envelope of sentimentalism", according to a 1926 New Yorker profile. A number of Beiderbecke partisans have criticised Whiteman for not giving Bix

15052-413: The original recording of Hoagy Carmichael's new song, " Georgia on My Mind ", with Carmichael doing the vocals, Eddie Lang on guitar, Joe Venuti on violin, Jimmy Dorsey on clarinet and alto saxophone, Jack Teagarden on trombone, and Bud Freeman on tenor saxophone. The song would go on to become a jazz and popular music standard . In 2014, the 1930 recording of "Georgia on My Mind" was inducted into

15194-476: The piano", he said. With all the noise [of a New York pub] going on, I don't know how they heard themselves, but they did. I didn't contribute anything, but I listened and learned […] I was now being influenced by these musicians, particularly horn men. I could hum and sing all of the jazz choruses from the recordings made by Bix, Phil Napoleon, and the rest. Following the Wall Street Crash of 1929 ,

15336-557: The regularity with which we walk and the heartbeat. Other research suggests that it does not relate to the heartbeat directly, but rather the speed of emotional affect, which also influences heartbeat. Yet other researchers suggest that since certain features of human music are widespread, it is "reasonable to suspect that beat-based rhythmic processing has ancient evolutionary roots". Justin London writes that musical metre "involves our initial perception as well as subsequent anticipation of

15478-460: The relation of long and short or stressed and unstressed syllables in a metrical foot or line; an instance of this" . Rhythm is related to and distinguished from pulse, meter, and beats: Rhythm may be defined as the way in which one or more unaccented beats are grouped in relation to an accented one. ... A rhythmic group can be apprehended only when its elements are distinguished from one another, rhythm...always involves an interrelationship between

15620-448: The riverboats that docked in downtown Davenport. Louis Armstrong and the drummer Baby Dodds claimed to have met Beiderbecke when their excursion boat stopped in Davenport. Historians disagree over whether such an event occurred. Beiderbecke attended Davenport High School from 1918 to 1921. During this time, he sat in and played professionally with various bands, including those of Wilbur Hatch , Floyd Bean , and Carlisle Evans. In

15762-440: The role of composition in what is most often an improviser's art, Schuller examines the life and work of "the legendary Ferdinand Joseph ('Jelly Roll') Morton... the first of that precious jazz elite: composer." After a discussion of Morton's life and reputation, which finds his contemporaries confirming some of his various boasts, this chapter, like the previous one, delves into Morton's recording sessions and recorded performances of

15904-426: The sense of a regular beat is absent because the music consists only of long sustained tones ( drones ). In the 1930s, Henry Cowell wrote music involving multiple simultaneous periodic rhythms and collaborated with Leon Theremin to invent the rhythmicon , the first electronic rhythm machine , in order to perform them. Similarly, Conlon Nancarrow wrote for the player piano . In linguistics , rhythm or isochrony

16046-636: The spring of 1920 he performed for the school's Vaudeville Night, singing in a vocal quintet called the Black Jazz Babies and playing his cornet. At the invitation of his friend Fritz Putzier, he subsequently joined Neal Buckley's Novelty Orchestra. The group was hired for a gig in December 1920, but a complaint was lodged with the American Federation of Musicians, Local 67, that the boys did not have union cards. In an audition before

16188-757: The style. Rhythm may also refer to visual presentation, as "timed movement through space" and a common language of pattern unites rhythm with geometry. For example, architects often speak of the rhythm of a building, referring to patterns in the spacing of windows, columns, and other elements of the façade . In recent years, rhythm and meter have become an important area of research among music scholars. Recent work in these areas includes books by Maury Yeston , Fred Lerdahl and Ray Jackendoff , Jonathan Kramer , Christopher Hasty, Godfried Toussaint , William Rothstein, Joel Lester, Guerino Mazzola and Steffen Krebber . In his television series How Music Works , Howard Goodall presents theories that human rhythm recalls

16330-652: The summer of 1922, then moved to Chicago to join the Cascades Band, working that summer on Lake Michigan excursion boats. He gigged around Chicago until the fall of 1923, at times returning to Davenport to work for his father. Beiderbecke joined the Wolverine Orchestra late in 1923, and the seven-man group first played a speakeasy called the Stockton Club near Hamilton, Ohio . Specializing in hot jazz and recoiling from so-called sweet music,

16472-516: The term " meter or metre " from the terminology of poetry. ) The metric structure of music includes meter, tempo and all other rhythmic aspects that produce temporal regularity against which the foreground details or durational patterns of the music are projected. The terminology of western music is notoriously imprecise in this area. MacPherson preferred to speak of "time" and "rhythmic shape", Imogen Holst of "measured rhythm". Dance music has instantly recognizable patterns of beats built upon

16614-609: The texts of the documents. Earlier biographies had not reported the alleged incident. In September 1921, Beiderbecke enrolled at the Lake Forest Academy , a boarding school north of Chicago in Lake Forest, Illinois . While historians have traditionally suggested that his parents sent him to Lake Forest to discourage his interest in jazz, others believe that he may have been sent away in response to his arrest. Regardless, Mr. and Mrs. Beiderbecke apparently felt that

16756-409: The three that Schuller terms the greatest in that city's early jazz tradition: Sidney Bechet , Johnny Dodds and Jimmy Noone . The section on brass players, while mentioning some half dozen who became prominent in the big bands that began in this or the following period, is concerned primarily with three players who recorded outstanding work but did not follow this with successful careers. They are

16898-471: The time of his death, Beiderbecke was still little known by the public at large, though his appreciation among fellow musicians and the collegiate set is indicated by contemporary news reports: To a large circle of those boys and girls of high school and college age whom a staid world likes to label "the jazz-mad generation," the news that Leon Bix Beiderbecke is dead will mean something, however lacking in significance it might be to their critical elders. "Bixie"

17040-534: The timing of the unstressed syllables in between them being adjusted to accommodate the stress timing. Narmour describes three categories of prosodic rules that create rhythmic successions that are additive (same duration repeated), cumulative (short-long), or countercumulative (long-short). Cumulation is associated with closure or relaxation, countercumulation with openness or tension, while additive rhythms are open-ended and repetitive. Richard Middleton points out this method cannot account for syncopation and suggests

17182-501: The trombonist Jimmy Harrison and the trumpeters Johnny Dunn and Jabbo Smith , especially the latter. As an indication of the latter's virtuosic creativity, a transcription of his improvised duet with the clarinetist Omer Simeon occupies 32 bars spread over two full pages. The section on Harlem pianists is mostly devoted to the musical interests and stride piano style of James P. Johnson . A briefer portion follows, concerning Johnson's disciple Fats Waller . The final section in

17324-585: The two joined a local band and played in town for three months. Beiderbecke apparently spent time with them, but it is difficult to discern the degree to which Hardy's style influenced Beiderbecke's—especially since there is no publicly known recording of a Hardy performance. Beiderbecke certainly found a kindred musical spirit in Hoagy Carmichael , whose amusingly unconventional personality he also appreciated. The two became firm friends. A law student and aspiring pianist and songwriter, Carmichael invited

17466-412: The unusual career of ODJB is followed by an analysis of their musical background and style. The section on Beiderbecke discusses the various musical groupings in which he functioned during his brief recording career, and provides some musical analysis of his work in these groups. After naming a half dozen noteworthy New Orleans clarinetists, the clarinetists section gives a few pages of analysis to each of

17608-399: The voices of a contrapuntal texture". This concept was concurrently defined as "attack point rhythm" by Maury Yeston in 1976 as "the extreme rhythmic foreground of a composition – the absolute surface of articulated movement". From 1927 and forward the recognized definition of "Counter Rhythm " is "A subordinate rhythm acting as a counterbalance to the main rhythm" (OED ). Counter Rhythm

17750-409: The whole piece is structured. In the 20th century, composers like Igor Stravinsky , Béla Bartók , Philip Glass , and Steve Reich wrote more rhythmically complex music using odd meters , and techniques such as phasing and additive rhythm . At the same time, modernists such as Olivier Messiaen and his pupils used increased complexity to disrupt the sense of a regular beat, leading eventually to

17892-466: The widespread use of irrational rhythms in New Complexity . This use may be explained by a comment of John Cage 's where he notes that regular rhythms cause sounds to be heard as a group rather than individually; the irregular rhythms highlight the rapidly changing pitch relationships that would otherwise be subsumed into irrelevant rhythmic groupings. La Monte Young also wrote music in which

18034-494: The year between playing a Summer season at a Goldkette-owned resort on Lake Hudson, Indiana, and headlining at Detroit's Graystone Ballroom , which was also owned by Goldkette. In October 1926, Goldkette's "Famous Fourteen", as they came to be called, opened at the Roseland Ballroom in New York City opposite the Fletcher Henderson Orchestra, one of the East Coast's outstanding African American big bands . The Roseland promoted

18176-470: Was a symbol of that jazz generation, expressing its wistful, restless temperament through the medium of the unconventional dance music which constitutes its theme song. In his mind were conceived the wild, strange contortions of rhythm and harmony which established the basic motif of the popular music of a year ago. ....To most youngsters in college, however, the weird flourishes that "Bixie's" fingers executed on trumpet and piano were expressive. They could hear

18318-463: Was an institutional blunder that Benny Green described as being, in retrospect, "comical," "fatuous," and "a parody." Beiderbecke promptly began to skip classes, and after he participated in a drunken incident in a local bar, he was expelled. According to Lion, he was not expelled, but quit. That summer he played with his friends Don Murray and Howdy Quicksell at a lake resort in Michigan. The band

18460-613: Was back in Davenport, where his parents helped him to seek treatment. He spent a month, from October 14 until November 18, at the Keeley Institute in Dwight, Illinois. According to Lion, an examination by Keeley physicians confirmed the damaging effects of Bix's long-term reliance on alcohol: "Bix admitted to having used liquor 'in excess' for the past nine years, his daily dose over the last three years amounting to three pints of 'whiskey' and twenty cigarettes.....A Hepatic dullness

18602-407: Was christened Leon Bix or Leon Bismark and nicknamed "Bix". His father was nicknamed "Bix", as was his older brother, Charles Burnette "Burnie" Beiderbecke. Burnie Beiderbecke claimed that the boy was named Leon Bix and biographers have reproduced birth certificates that agree. More recent research — which takes into account church and school records in addition to the will of a relative — suggests he

18744-433: Was named Leon Bismark. Regardless, his parents called him Bix, which seems to have been his preference. In a letter to his mother when he was nine years old, Beiderbecke signed off, "frome your Leon Bix Beiderbecke not Bismark Remeber [ sic ]". The son of German immigrants, Beiderbecke's father was a well-to-do coal and lumber merchant named after Otto von Bismarck of his native Germany. Beiderbecke's mother

18886-578: Was obvious, 'knee jerk could not be obtained' – which confirmed the spread of the polyneuritis, and Bix was 'swaying in Romberg position' – standing up with his eyes closed". While he was away, Whiteman famously kept his chair open in Beiderbecke's honor, in the hope that he would occupy it again. However, when he returned to New York at the end of January 1930, Beiderbecke did not rejoin Whiteman and performed only sparingly. On his last recording session, in New York, on September 15, 1930, Beiderbecke played on

19028-467: Was particularly sympathetic in writing scores with Beiderbecke in mind, sometimes arranging entire ensemble passages based on solos that Bix played. Beiderbecke also played on several notable hit records recorded by Whiteman, such as " Together ", " Ramona " and " Ol' Man River ", the latter featuring Bing Crosby on vocals. The heavy touring and recording schedule with Whiteman's orchestra may have exacerbated Beiderbecke's long-term alcoholism, though this

19170-579: Was perhaps the most fruitful year of his short career. Under financial pressure, Goldkette folded his premier band in September 1927 in New York. Paul Whiteman hoped to snatch up Goldkette's best musicians for his traveling orchestra, but Beiderbecke, Trumbauer, Murray, Bill Rank , Chauncey Morehouse , and Frank Signorelli instead joined the bass saxophone player Adrian Rollini at the Club New Yorker. The band also included guitarist Eddie Lang and violinist Joe Venuti, who had often recorded on

19312-572: Was posted. Sarah's father, Preston Ivens, requested that the Scott County grand jury drop the charge to avoid "harm that would result to her in going over this case," and in September 1921, the grand jury returned no indictment, whereupon the County Attorney filed a dismissal of the case. It is not clear from the official documents if Sarah herself had identified Beiderbecke, but the two young men had told her father, when he questioned them

19454-579: Was released. In addition to listening to Armstrong's records, Beiderbecke and other white musicians patronized the Sunset Café on Fridays to listen to Armstrong and his band. Paul Mares of the New Orleans Rhythm Kings insisted that Beiderbecke's chief influence was the New Orleans cornetist Emmett Hardy , who died in 1925 at the age of 23. Indeed, Beiderbecke had met Hardy and the clarinetist Leon Roppolo in Davenport in 1921 when

19596-495: Was run by Goldkette, and it put Beiderbecke in touch with another musician he had met before: the C-melody saxophone player Frankie Trumbauer . The two hit it off, both personally and musically, despite Trumbauer having been warned by other musicians: "Look out, he's trouble. He drinks and you'll have a hard time handling him." They were inseparable for much of the rest of Beiderbecke's career, with Trumbauer acting as something of

19738-488: Was sparse. His innovative playing initially received greater attention and appreciation among European critics than those in the country of his birth. The British music trade magazine "Melody Maker" published a number of reviews of his recordings and assessments of his cornet playing. In the April 1927 issue, bandleader Fred Elizalde stated: "Bix Bidlebeck (sic) is considered by Red Nichols himself and every other trumpet player in

19880-457: Was the daughter of a Mississippi riverboat captain. She played the organ at Davenport's First Presbyterian Church and encouraged young Beiderbecke's interest in the piano. Beiderbecke was the youngest of three children. His brother, Burnie, was born in 1895, and his sister, Mary Louise, in 1898. He began playing piano at age two or three. His sister recalls that he stood on the floor and played it with his hands over his head. Five years later, he

20022-486: Was the most popular and highest paid dance band of the day. In spite of Whiteman's appellation "The King of Jazz", his band was not a jazz ensemble as such, but a popular music outfit that drew from both jazz and classical music repertoires, according to the demands of its record-buying and concert-going audience. Whiteman was perhaps best known for having premiered George Gershwin 's Rhapsody in Blue in New York in 1924, and

20164-572: Was the subject of an admiring article in the Davenport Daily Democrat that proclaimed, "Seven-year-old boy musical wonder! Little Bickie Beiderbecke plays any selection he hears." Burnie recalled that he stopped coming home for supper to hurry to the riverfront, slip aboard an excursion boat, and play the calliope . A friend remembered that Beiderbecke showed little interest in the Saturday matinees they attended, but as soon as

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