INFORMATION OF
RELATED INTEREST
INFORMATION OF
A
Book
of Caricatures.
Yo Bix, tu Bix, el Bix
by Hermenegildo Sabat, Editorial Airene, Buenos Aires, Argentina, 1972.
The title of the book translates as I Bix, You Bix, He Bix, of course,
a tongue in cheek conjugation of the word 
Bix
as a verb, but perhaps more deeply, a subtle way of identifying I, You,
and He with Bix. The book consists of 19 caricatures, 19 photographs of
record labels from records by the Wolverine Orchestra, Bix and his
Gang,
the Frankie Trumbauer Orchestra, the Paul Whiteman Orchestra, and Hoagy
Carmichael and his Orchestra, and a one-page introduction. The
caricatures
are excellent from a technical point of view, but somewhat
surrealistic.
This is clearly a labor of love. The author obviously adores Bix's
music
and listens to it regularly. In fact, as he states in the introduction
"los necesito", meaning that he needs to listen to the recordings.
Dances.
According
to the Library of Congress, reference numbers VXA 2923 (master copy)
and VAE 0642 (viewing copy), on October 7, 1973 CBS-TV
broadcast
the program Camera Three entitled "The Bix Pieces". This
is a ballet choreographed by the dancer/choreographer Twyla
Tharp to the music of Bix Beiderbecke. The program was produced and
directed by Merrill Brockway and featured five dancers. Marian Hailey
was
the commentator. The video cassette is 28 minutes long.
Unfortunately,
I have been unable to obtain, borrow, or view a video tape of the
program.
I would be grateful for a copy of a video tape of the program and/or
any
detailed information about its contents.
Addendum (10/8/00) The premiere of "The Bix Pieces" took place in Paris on November 1971 at the IX International Festival of Dance. Costumes: Kermit Love; Lighting: Jennifer Tipton; Music: Bix Beiderbecke, performed by Paul Whiteman's Orchestra; "Abide with Me" by Thelonious Monk.
Twyla Tharp wrote an autobiography entitled "Push Comes to Shove", Bantam Books, New York, 1992. She writes the following about how she developed "The Bix Pieces". "Dancing continuously in the studio, I never stopped to mourn my father, but plunged daily back into working, where I could address his death without feeling I would break apart. Perhaps I felt that I could keep him with me in my dancing.I began to work on a piece to the music of trumpeteer Bix Beiderbecke. Coming from the same period as Jelly Roll Morton, the Beiderbecke music was as light and airy as the other was rough-edged and earthy, as sophisticated in his arrangements as the Morton was raw and close to the belt, as white as the other was black. Part One of "The Bix Pieces" was five songs - first me alone (twirling clear batons), then Sara and me swooping and swooning to Beiderbecke's arrangement of "Tain't So, Honey, Tain't So" sung by Bing Crosby, then Sara and me backing up Rose, then the three of us behind Isabel, then finally Ken joining the women to Crosby's "Because My Baby Don't Mean Maybe Now." I began to sense that the dark subtext behind the movement would never come through in the sprightly dancing, and I wrote in a narrator to account for the reservoir of emotion that prompted "The Bix Pieces." "I hated to tap dance when I was a kid," says she, and I proceeded to do just that. "But this dance is about remembering. My tap dancing lessons, my baton twirling lessons, my acrobatics, the hula-hula. My father." As the Adagio fromthe third quartet of Haydn's Opus 76 begins, she explains that much of the dancing was made to this adagio, because I did not want to be too literal in following the Bix music. You can begin to see as Ken dances in the vernacular and Rose in ballet style, "chassee is really slap ball change: Exactly and not all the same." All things are related, and as the Haydn winds down, she observes its theme was a folk melody existing long before Haydn. There is continuity and development in all things, "for while my father died this spring my son was born." And then comes Part Three, a very short revision of the dancing in "Because My Baby Don't Mean Maybe Now," this time reset to the John Coltrane "Abide with Me".
I am grateful to Joe Giordano for a gift of Twyla Tharp's biography.
Bix,
Rogue or Hero?
In
the book "Rogues and Heroes from Iowa's Amazing Past"
(Iowa
State University Press, Ames, Iowa, 1972), the author, George Mills,
provides
brief biographies of important or notorious people born in Iowa. The
book
consists of 18 chapters, each chapter dedicated to one town. Chapter 18
focuses on Davenport. One of the entries in the chapter is, as
expected,
Colonel Davenport. Another entry is entitled "If that Boy Had
Lived..."The
boy is Bix and there is ashort account of his life illustrated with
Bix's
famous picture from 1921. The title of the entry is taken from Louis
Armstrong's
quotation, "If that boy had lived, he'd be the greatest".
Iowans
To Be Proud Of
In the book
"Iowa Pride" (Iowa State University Press, Ames, Iowa,
1996),
the author, Duane A. Schmidt, celebrates the accomplishments of famous
Iowans. The book is divided in three parts: Iowans Who Made It Here,
Iowans
Who Made It Elsewhere, and Iowa Firsts. We find, in the second group,
an
entry entitled "Bix Beiderbecke (1903-1931), Renowned Cornet Jazz
Stylist". The two-page biography is preceded and followed by
quotes
from Louis Armstrong. "All I've ever called the dear boy was Bix...
just that name alone will make one stand up." "And when he
played
- why, the ears did the same thing." The author provides a short
phrase
summarizing the achievement for each famous Iowan. In the case of Bix,
this reads "Created a unique cornet jazz style".
There are
many
other famous Iowans included in the book. I only cite a few, in
subjects
that are of special interest to me. John Vincent Atanasoff ("invented
the digital computer"); Walter A. Sheaffer ("invented the first
practical self-filling fountain pen"); Frank H. Spedding ("co-invented
the production process for pure uranium"); James Van Allen ("discovered
earth-encircling radiation belt"); Lee Deforest ("father of the
wireless, commercial radio, and talking pictures"); Glenn Miller ("invented
the big band sound"); John Wayne ("Academy Award-winning actor").
Bix
in "The Palimpsest".
"The
Palimpsest" was a publication of the Division of the State Historical
Society
of the Iowa State Historical Departement. The magazine was published
from
1921 to 1995 under the Palimpsest name, but was changed to "Iowa
Heritage
Illustrated" in 1995. The July/August 1978 (Volume 54, Number 4) issue
has a 12-page article entitled "In a Mist: The Story of Bix
Beiderbecke"
by Darold J. Brown. The article is a brief biographical account and
contains
several well-known photographs.
The
content page of the magazine explains the meaning of the Palimpsest.
"In
early times a palimpsest was a parchment or other material which one or
more writings had been erased to give room for later records. The
history
of Iowa may be likened to a palimpsest whcih holds the record of
sucessive
generations."
Bix
and The Down Beat Hall of Fame.
In
1962, Bix was elected by the readers into the Down Beat Hall of Fame. A
list
of all the awardees, beginning in 1952
with Louis Armstrong, is available. An article about Bix
as a Jazz Hall of Fame artist is
available
in the Down Beat Jazz Magazine web site. Also available in the Down
Beat
web site is an article
by Gilbert Erskine from the August
1961
issue of the magazine. Erskine provides an interesting account of the
activities
of Bix and other members of the Jean Goldkette Orchestra at the Blue
Lantern
Inn at Hudson Lake in the summer of 1926.
Two
Victor "Best Seller" Records.
The
August
1927 Victor Catalogue lists in p. 5 the Twenty "Best Sellers". Record
number
13 has "Hoosier Sweetheart" by Jean Goldkette and His Orchestra on one
side and "What Does It Matter?" by The Victor Orchestra on the other.
Record
number 19 "Im Looking Over A Four Leaf Clover by Jean Goldkette and His
Orchestra on one side and Roger Wolfe Kahn's "Yankee Rose" on the
other.
Two best sellers with Bix in them!
I am grateful to Rob Rothberg for making available to
me a copy of the pertinent page of the Victor Catalogue.
The Bix Beiderbecke Memorial Jazz Festival on Public Television.
The
Lincoln
C. Selleck "Bix Lives" Jazz Award.
The purpose of the
Award is to encourage students under the age of 21 to "explore early
American
jazz, particularly that of the legendary jazz cornetist Bix Beiderbecke
by awarding a $400 First Place Award and a $100 Second Place Award
annually
to young musicians who demonstrate talent in playing Bix’s music."
Lincoln
C. Selleck was a jazz enthusiast, writer, and naturalist. He was one of
the founders circa 1945 (together with Dick Hallock and Howard Linley)
of the low-profile "W. O. B." (Worshippers of Bix club). The
distinguished
panel of judges consists of Dick Hallock, jazz critic and author; James
Lincoln Collier, jazz historian and author; Dave Robinson, traditional
jazz educator and musician; and Jon Milan and Howard Linley,
traditional
jazz musicians.
Applications for the current
year's
award, to be presented in January of 2001, are invited from all young
musicians
up to age 21.Students of traditional jazz age 21 or under who play a
traditional
jazz instrument are invited to apply for the 2000 Lincoln C. Selleck
"Bix
Lives" Jazz Award.. There are no entry fees. For application details,
please
see http://hometown.aol.com/yogi108/music1/index.htm.
The deadline for receipt of
completed
applications is October 1, 2000; the
award winners will be announced
by December 31, 2000 and the award presented in late January 2001.
Jazz Youth Group Leaders or
Educators
may request application kits for the
award for distribution to their
students. An audio cassette of selections of
the music of Bix Beiderbecke,
as
well as lead sheets for a number of Bix's
tunes are available to jazz
educators
or youth group leaders on receipt of a
written request and $5 in
stamps
to help cover mailing and duplication costs.
Requests for the application
materials
should be addressed to Thomas Selleck,
Lincoln C. Selleck "Bix Lives"
Jazz Award, P.O. Box 541, Fairfield, IA 52556.
Website:
http://hometown.aol.com/yogi108/music1/index.htm
Email: LSBixLives@aol.com
For more information, please
call
Thomas Selleck or Marilyn Ungaro at 515 472 6003.
1998 Award. The two award winners were announced on December 15, 1998. The first-place award was won by 17-year old Russell Baker, a trumpet player and a physics freshman at Columbia University. The second-place award was won by another 17-year old youngster, Joseph Howell of Porterville, California.
1999 Award. Three
Californian
Teens Win Prizes In Lincoln C. Selleck "Bix Lives" Jazz Award
Competition.
Gordon Au, a trumpet and
cornet-playing
sophomore at U.C. Berkeley, has taken top honors in the second annual
Lincoln
C. Selleck "Bix Lives" Jazz Award Competition. His brother Brandon, a
16-year-old
trombone player from Carmichael, California, tied for second place with
13-year-old Jazz Pianist David Hull from Fresno California. The annual
competition encourages
traditional jazz in young
musicians
and awards a $400 First Place Prize and a
$100 Second Place Prize.
The award was established in
memory
of jazz enthusiast and writer Lincoln C. Selleck in order to perpetuate
his passion for the classic jazz of the 1920's
and '30's.
First-Place Winner Gordon Au,
has
been playing traditional jazz trumpet and
cornet since age eight. He
credits
his early exposure to trad jazz to his
uncle Howard Miyata who
currently
plays trombone with the High Sierra Jazz
Band. A former leader and
performer
with the Sacramento Jazz Society's
official youth band, the New
Traditionalist
Jazz Band, Gordon has played at
numerous jazz jubilees and in
May
of this year he will play at the Sacramento
Jazz Jubilee as a featured
'Jazz
apprentice' performing with a professional
band.
Second Place Winner pianist
David
Hull, age fourteen, was guided into the
world of jazz at a young age by
his father Ed. David has appeared at many
jazz festivals including the
Sacramento
Jazz Jubilee, the Suncoast Jazz
Festival and the Gateway Jazz
Festival.
He currently plays with the trad jazz
Hull's Angels Band and attends
the Bullard T.A.L.E.N.T. Middle School in
Fresno, California.
Tied for Second Place, Brandon
Au has played trombone with his brother Gordon in the New
Traditionalists
Jazz Band since 1993. His trad jazz training
started at age 12 and under the
tutelage of musicians such as Bill Allred,
leader of his Classic Jazz
Band,
Brandon continues to polish his skills.
An
Incident in Princeton.
James
Stewart and Jose Ferrer were undergraduate students at Princeton
University
during the late 'twenties and early 'thirties. They belonged to the
Charter
Club. In his book "James Stewart, A Biography", Turner Publishing,
Inc.,
Atlanta, Georgia, 1996, Donald Dewey relates a visit of Bix to the
Club.
"If the Charter Club did not have one defining characteristic, it
helped
for members to like music. When Stewart wasn't entertaining with his
accordion,
he was swapping musical notes in the club's quarters with Jose Ferrer,
the future actor, then preoccupied with leading a dance band.He also
had
a hand in planning the club's elaborate jazz weekends for which some of
the biggest names in the business were hired. On May 2, 1931, for
instance,
Charter sponsored a weekend party bill that included Bix Beiderbecke,
Bud
Freeman, Jimmy Dorsey and Charlie Teagarden. The weekend gained a
footnote
in the Beiderbecke story when the trumpeter, already oiled by a flask
from
which he had been sipping all evening, wandered off to another house,
where
he sat down at a piano and began to play a series of original,
mesmerizing
compositions that were never written down, let alone recorded. Later
that
Sunday morning, he had to be pulled off the street for flashing his
flask
in front of scandalized Princetonians on their way to church. It was
partly
because of this incident that a campus periodical admonished Charter a
few weeks later for its spending on the weekend parties. "Just when the
time will come when the clugs realize that they do not have to vie with
New York debutante parties in elaborateness and splendor, is
problematic,
but it is bound to come", warned the Prince."
A
Poem
for Bix.
Michael
Longley is an Irish poet, born in 1939, who has written poems (such as Cease
Fire and Peace)
about the problems in Northern Ireland. In 1992, he received the
prestigious
Whitbred Poetry Prize for his work Gorse Fires. Michael
Longleywrote
the poem "To Bix Beiderbecke", a short (ten-line) poem honoring Bix's
genius
for composition and improvisation.
A Poem About Bix's Piano Music.
On Sunday, August 1, 1999, at the Bix Beiderbecke Memorial Jazz Festival in Davenport, Iowa, David Jellema, Archivist at the Center for Popular Music, Middle Tennessee State University, cornet player, and member of the New Traditional Jazz Band, read a poem written by his father, the poet Rod Jellema. The poem has not been published yet. Through the courtesy of David and Rod, I am providing the complete text of the poem below.
Some aura, thin and far ago,
the flutter of lights that plays
off the side of the eye
and darts away just when a child
will quickly turn the head to catch it.
He feels for keys and the chords shiver
like that, a mist of light
that catches Eden's first breath.
Maybe it startled the first time he saw
lights in the distance at night,
empty factories, houses lit low
and lonely down the river
from the docks of Davenport while boats
cried their horns all over black water.
Or was it candlelights one starless night,
nodding off one by one in the glass
of the dining room window, small tongues
of fire down a twisting road
that he looked for years later, outside,
taking Vera for a drive in his father's
1920 Davis 8. The road never appeared.
Ivory keys in hollow rooms. If only
his fingers will see the sounds to take.
To him it's a matter of spaces,
he dares to know the spaces in his head
but some days it's cloudy. And anyway
he has to find with his fingers
those notes the spaces mean, touch them
as though they've never before existed.
Too late to learn Ravel's way there
on paper. Twenty eight and dying of booze.
Through eight fogged years of bandstands
and jams, he caught his music in flashes,
blew instant recompositions of themes
that he bent through silver, mixing colors
quick, before the phrases could die
by hanging themselves in clouds of smoke
and ash over the seas of laughing faces
deaf and adrift on a thousand lost dance floors.
When even that holy agitation of the flashes
clouded in, he worked anyway to lengthen
their glints through a whole piano suite
of broken light, bad gin and the shakes
on any borrowed pianos he could find.
Shaded from morning stabs of light,
he got back to where he was going all along,
the dreaming mind, the diamond-making dark.
copyright 1999 Rod Jellema
I am grateful to Rod and David Jellema for providing me with a copy of the poem and for their generosity in allowing me to include it here.
Gunnar Harding (b. 1940), a well-known Swedish modernistic poet, has written a very nice poem (in Swedish) about Bix, called "Davenport Blues, BIX BEIDERBECKE (1903-1931)". It was published in his book "Gasljus" (1983). Gunnar Harding is especially famous for his tours, where he has been reading his poetry accompanied by a jazz band.
Ben Mazer is a well-known poet, a former student of Seamus Heaney at Harvard University, widely published in American and British periodicals, and the author of one published collection of poems, White Cities (Ben Mazer, Frank Parker (Illustrator) / Paperback / Barbara Matteau Editions / February 1995). Mr. Mazer has written a sequence of five poems about Bix Beiderbecke, all of which have been published in well-known British and American literary periodicals. The pertinent references follow.
FIVE POEMS ABOUT BIX BEIDERBECKE
Mazer, Ben. "Bix
Beiderbecke
(1903-1931)." The Dark Horse (Scotland), No. 5,
Summer 1997; pp. 16-17.
Mazer, Ben. "Davenport." Press (New York, NY), Issue 6, 1997; p. 43.
Mazer, Ben. "White
Jazz." Verse
(Williamsburg, VA & Scotland), Volume 14,
Number 3, 1998; p. 2.
Mazer, Ben. "Bix in
Amherst." Verse
(Williamsburg, VA & Scotland), Volume
14, Number 3, 1998; p. 3.
Mazer, Ben. "Royal
Garden." Stand
(Newcastle upon Tyne, UK), Volume 39,
Number 3, Summer 1998; p. 36.
Ben kindly gave me permission to reproduce here an excerpt from his poem "Bix Beiderbecke (1903-1931)."
My Wolverines – we were the
living
proof
the idiom of jazz was universal.
I led the young men with my
silver
horn
improvising records; as
archetypal
as
the first ice skater on a
frozen
lake
I was Hans Brinker at the brink
of jazz –
modern, yet somehow cold and
dark
as winter;
almost anonymously at life's
center.
I am grateful to Ben Mazer for the detailed
bibliographic
references about his poems.
This
composition
by Earl A. Rohlf is, as described in the sheet music published by
Polecat
Records, "A Collection of Piano Music written in the style of Bix
Beiderbecke's
piano music." Earl A. Rohlf was born in Davenport, Iowa in 1907. His
older
brother, Wayne, was one of Bix's classmates and played trumpet.
According
to the liners for the sheet music, Earl was a talented pianist who
"attended
the American Conservatory of Music in Chicago. Later on he was a staff
pianist, arranger, and composer for several radio and TV stations in
Cleveland,
and taught both piano and organ." "Ode to Bix" was composed around 1974
and consists of four parts.
Bix Bash
Bix Lives
Ode to Bix
Rhapsody for Bix.
The sheet music for Ode to Bix was published on December 9, 1995
by Polecat Records, 3730 Fairlawn Drive, Minnetonka, Minnesota 55345
A
Tribute to Bix in Ascona.
The
yearly Ascona
New Orleans Jazz Festival will take
place
this year from June 25 to July 4, 1999. This is the 15th year that jazz
musicians and fans from all over the world will converge in this
exclusive
resort town in Switzerland. There will be tributes to three giants of
jazz,
Bix Beiderbecke, Duke Ellington and Jelly Roll Morton. The tribute to
Bix
will feature Lino
Patruno and the Red Pellini Gang with
a special appearance by the amazing Spiegle Willcox.
Bix's
First Recording and the Gennett Richmond Studio.
Bix's
first recording was made on February 18, 1924 in the Richmond, Indiana
studio of Gennett Records, a subsidiary of the Starr Piano Company. The
Wolverines recorded four sides - "Fidgety Feet", "Lazy Daddy",
"Sensation
Rag", and "Jazz Me Blues". The band made several takes of "Lazy Daddy"
and "Sensation Rag", but all were rejected. On the other hand, "Fidgety
Feet" and "Jazz Me Blues" were pressed and released in May 1924 in the
blue Gennett label. Although this date must be viewed as a "first" for
Bix's jazz legacy, by 1924 a series of legendary jazz figures and bands
already had recorded for Gennett Records: the New Orleans Rhythm
Kings, King Oliver's Creole Jazz Band (with a young Louis Armstrong),
Jelly
Roll Morton, and Doc Cook and His Dreamland Orchestra (featuring
Freddie
Keppard and Jimmy Noone).
A very
interesting
and comprehensive account of the history and activities of the Gennett
Studios is given by Rick Kennedy in his book
"Jelly Roll, Bix, and Hoagy." A briefer but quite useful account can be
found in a web site entitled "The
Cradle of Recorded Jazz".
A
Fictional Story About the Last Days of Bix.
Sheryl Smith
has written a fictional short story about the last days of Bix's life.
The complete story -entitled "Bix: To What End?"- is available on the
internet
at http://www.testdesigns.com/bixstory.htm
Hoagy,
Bix and Wolfgang Beethoven Bunkhaus.
The
Mark Taper Forum Theater, located in the Los Angeles Music
Center,opened
in 1967. The productions staged in the Forum range from the classics to
the avant-garde. In the 1980-81 season, the musical production "Hoagy,
Bix and Wolfgang Beethoven Bunkhaus" was presented. The musical drama
was
written by Adrian Mitchell and was produced by Steve Robman. Richard M.
Sudhalter was the musical director. The band he assembled for the show
included Dave Frishberg, the author of "Dear
Bix".
The
following
is an almost verbatim transcription of an account kindly provided to me
by Richard M. Sudhalter.
""Wolfgang
Beethoven Bunkhaus" was the pseudonym under which the
cellist, pianist and composition student William Ernest Moenkhaus wrote
satires, nonsense plays, and neo-dadaist poetry for The
Vagabond,Indiana
University's student literary magazine of the 1920s. Son of anIU
professor, he did part of his education at a Gymnasium in
Germany,transferring
to Switzerland in autumn, 1914, after the Great War began.He was
apparently
exposed to the Dadaist movement then taking shape in Zurich
- or at least its intellectual fallout - and brought its principles
back
with him when he returned to study music in Bloomington.
As can be
read
in Carmichael's memoirs, Moenkhaus became intellectual mentor
for a circle of students who hung out at the campus soda shopand
luncheonette,
the Book Nook. His rather fey manner, flair for mock-sententious
aphorisms and aperÁus, and above all his obvious depthand
brilliance,
proved irresistible to the half-formed Carmichael. Inan
intriguing
way he was the exact antithesis of Bix: "Monk" thecreature of
intellect,
all left-brain domination, Bix was one of intuition. Moenkhaus
learned
music, understood theory (he notated several of Hoagy's first pieces
for
him); Bix came to it almost entirely by instinct.
Together
they
formed a sort of yin and yang for Hoagy's awakening consciousness. Hot
music fascinated Monk (though his efforts to play it were ineffectual
at
best), especially its intuitive character. Bix, for his part, had a
flair
for the kind of imaginative reordering of the world of appearances, the
fatalistic view of the universe, at the heart of Monk's thinking.
The British
poet and playwright Adrian Mitchell found this constellation
fascinating.
He linked Moenkhaus's wit, moreover, to the surreal (and very British)
humor of Edward Lear, the musical high-jinks of Gerard Hoffnung, and
even
(a bit of a reach, it always seemed to me) the zanier side of the
Beatles.
His idea in writing the Bunkhaus play was to use Moenkhaus's work as a
counterpoint to both the high seriousness of Bix music and Monk's
intellectual
life, and the world of fancy that each, in its way, also embodied.
Both,
remember, were essentially dark spirits, haunted - even tormented - by
heaven knew what inner forces. Behind the Book Nook carryings on,
behind Dadaism itself, was a profound despair at the human condition.
Bix,
of course, was no intellectual; if he was aware of this kind of thing
at
all, it was something of an abstraction for him. But consider the
emotional mix of his playing: sunlight breaks through its darkest
moments:
his basic optimism burned long after his aspirations faltered.
But it is also no accident that in all Beiderbecke's recordsthere is
not
one moment of whoop-de-do fun, or unalloyed happiness. Ithink it well
to
pay heed here to Ralph Berton, when he talks aboutBix's shadowed
obsession
with music. I thought then, and still think, he
was on to something.
The "drama
with
music" concept of Adrian's play required jazz: not the denatured
product used in Ain't Misbehavin', Jelly's Last Jam, and other Broadway
items, but real hot music. That meant a six-piece band onstage
throughout
most of the play, performing mostly Carmichael songs and
a few jazz band numbers associated with Bix. Its first
productionwas
in a small pub theatre in London's East End. The first U.S. production
was at the Indiana Repertory Theatre - actually the remodelled Indiana
Theatre, the very building in which Bix and Tram had joined Paul
Whiteman
in October 1927. I was arranger and musical director, but did not
play in this production, which ran for some three weeks. All the
bandsmen were Indianapolis musicians. A few of the actors - Jamey
Sheridan, Armin Shimerman - turn up now and then on TV.
The Taper
production
in Los Angeles came some months later. The stage band was myself
on cornet, Dave Frishberg singing and playing piano, Bob Reitmeier on
clarinet
and alto, Howard Alden (age 22) on banjo and guitar, Putter Smith
(younger
brother of Carson Smith) on bass, and Dick Berk on drums.
The cast included the singer-cabaret artist Amanda McBroom. Mark Robman
worked out an interesting idea for staging the musical sequences: every
time the Bix character, played by Harry Groener, had to play some
cornet,
he would stand, horn at mouth, in the spotlight, facing the audience; I
would stand, in darkness, back-to-back with him, but costumed
identically.
Then we would simply revolve, as if on a pedestal, bringing me into the
spotlight and him into shadow. I'd play the solo - I remember
doing
"Singin' the Blues" and "I'm Comin' Virginia," among others - then we'd
revolve back, and I'd melt into the darkness off stage while Groener
carried
on with his lines.
The musical
side of the show got mostly rave reviews, but Mitchell's play took a
critical
pasting. Unfairly, I thought: he'd tried, very imaginatively, to
bring off a difficult concept, blending the Weltschmerz of the Bunkhaus
humor (even casting some of the episodes as puppet-show plays within
the
play) with the Beiderbecke tragedy, all against the Carmichael
coming-of-age
motif. There were things that didn't work, sure - but I thought then,
and
still do, that it was a very ambitious undertaking and deserved better
treatment than it got."
Next, it
is interesting
to point out the connection betwen this show and the CD Dick
Sudhalter and His Friends "With Pleasure". According to
Leonard
Feather who wrote the liners for the original album included in the CD:
"Before the show closed, it became apparent to Sudhalter that the combo
he had assembled was too good not to be preserved. With the exception
of
Dan Barrett and Daryl Sherman, all the participants here were his
colleagues
in the show. Instead of confining himself to Carmichael songs for this
album, he dipped into the vast reserve of early jazz/pop standards
stored
in his capacious memory. Several of the selections are clearly a nod to
Bix Beiderbecke." Thus, we can hear interesting renditions of "From
Monday On", "Blue River", "Waiting at the End of the Road",
and "I'll Be A Friend "With Pleasure"".
Finally, it
is noteworthy, that almost twenty years after his involvement with the
show centered around Hoagy, Dick Sudhalter is currently writing a
biography
of Hoagy's. I quote form Hoagy's web
site:
"Trumpeter-historian Richard M. Sudhalter has signed with Oxford
University
Press to write a full-length biography, Star Dust: The Life and Music
of
Hoagy Carmichael, to be published in late 1999. Mr. Sudhalter's
research
will draw on interviews, archival material, recorded music, and the
composer's
own personal papers. The book will also include more than three dozen
photographs,
and careful analysis of Hoagy Carmichael's music and methods." The
publication
of the book is part of the centennial
celebrationof
Hoagy Carmichael's birth. As another part
of the celebration, Dick Sudhalter with singer Barbara Lea and an
all-star
band of European Jazz musicians will present, in late 1999, a new show,
"Along
the Stardust Road", in Hamburg, Berlin and other major cities
in
Germany, Austria, and the Benelux countries.
I acknowledge
with gratitude Richard M. Sudhalter's contribution. Without his help,
this
section could not have been included here.
Enrico Borsetti kindly sent me scans of the program for the English production of the play. They follow here.
The
Hoagy and Bix Company.
This item is
taken from Hoagy's centennial
celebration web site.
"Columbia Artists
Management
Inc., Concert Productions, and The Hoagy & Bix Company will present
a big band centennial celebration tour featuring the music of Hoagy
Carmichael.
This tour will play in at least 45 cities in the United States and will
begin in Los Angeles in January 2000."
The
Original Bixography.
In
the early 1940's, the Canadian Bixophile Edward Moogk organized "The
Bix Beiderbecke Club". The Club was "Dedicated to the Memory and
Works
of Bix Beiderbecke". Wayne Rohlf, who had attended high school at the
same
time as Bix, was the first Honorary President. The membership was small
(22 members in February 1943). One of the members at that time was Joe
Giordano, Bixophile extraordinaire, collector, and writer.
The club
published
a monthly newsletter entitled "BIXOGRAPHY"! The name had been
coined
56 years before I launched the "Bixography" web site! I hope this is
not
viewed as plagiarism or copyright infrigement. I plead innocent! It is
only this week (May 19, 2000) that I learned of the existence of
the"Original
Bixography" through the courtesy of Joe Giordano who sent me copies of
two issues of the newsletter.
The
newsletter
consisted of original contributions and reprints of articles published
in magazines. As an example, the contents of the February 1943 issue
was:
Club News and Members; A List of Available Bix Records; High School
Days
with Bix, by Wayne H. Rohlf; Bix Stories, by Eddie Condon and Frank
Norris;
Beiderbecke Discography, by George Hoefer, Jr.
I am grateful to Joe Giordano
for
sending me copies of the "Bixography".
The above account is an almost verbatim transcription of an e-mail (7/8/99) from Trevor Rippingale. I am grateful to Trevor for providing the information.
Ror Wolf: Leben und Tod des
Kornettisten
Bix Beiderbecke aus Nord-Amerika.
(Schöffling & Co.,
Frankfurt/Main
2000, 285 pp., ISBN 3-89561-317-7).
This book contains radio plays
from 1969 to 1997 by the German author Ror Wolf (b. 1932). One of the
plays
(pp. 155-203) bears the same title as the book. The Bix radio play was
written in 1985/86 and first broadcast on February 12, 1987. Here we
meet
people like Tram, Hoagy, Mezz Mezzrow, Jimmy Mc Partland, Pee Wee
Russell,
Paul Whiteman - and of course Bix himself - telling the story of Bix
Beiderbecke.
This is a very nice radio play, in great part because the author is
familiar
with the literature about Bix, and consequently there is little if any
fiction in it. As a matter of fact, parts of what the characters say
are
recognizable as quotes from books.
A CD is included in the book -
unfortunately it does not contain the play about Bix. The play is
available
on a separate CD from another publisher: Leben und Tod des Kornettisten
Bix Beiderbecke aus Nord-Amerika (Der Audio Verlag, Berlin 2000, ISBN
3-89813-108-4).
In 1988, Ror Wolf was awarded
the
prize "Hörspielpreis der Kriegsblinden" for this radio play.
The above account is an almost verbatim transcription of an e-mail (9/2/01) from Anders Gustafsson. I am grateful to Anders for providing the information.
The First Discography of Bix's Recordings.
and the musicians and bands with whom he played." "Enthusiasm for Bix
and
the music of the "Jazz Age" is the catalyst which unites and leads us
to
spend many hours listening to original recordings, selecting those that
appeal, then transcribing and scaling them down into arrangements which
maximize the sound of our small group, yet still preserve the spirit
and
feel of the era." (This quote is taken from their home
page). The band has made appearances at the 22nd, 25th, and 27th
Bix
Beiderbecke Memorial Jazz Festival. They will be coming to the festival
again in 2000. The group has made six recordings some of which are
available
(see their home
page
and Trevor
Rippingale's personal page) by getting
in touch with Trevor Rippingale, the "coordinator, not the leader" of
this
nice group. Jazzology has released their fifth CD, Roll On Mississippi,
Roll On.
traditionalist.
He collected, from the time he was a teenager until the 1990's over
30,000
arrangements played by the dance and jazz bands of the 1920's and early
1930's. As a band leader, he insists on all musicians playing note by
note,
including solos, the original arrangements he uses. Vince Giordano's
Nighthawks
have recreated in person and in recordings the great music from the
California
Ramblers, the Jean Goldkette Orchestra, McKinney's Cotton Pickers, Red
Nichols, and other giants from the 1920's. Vince plays most bass
instruments
-bass saxophone, tuba, string bass. He collaborated with Bill Challis
(yes,
the great arranger for the Jean Goldkette and the Paul Whiteman
orchestras)
in "The Goldkette Project" (see the page on recordings). He was one of
the musicians in the soundtrack of the film "Bix: An
Interpretation
of a Legend". Chip Deffaa has a good account of Vince's
activities
(up to 1984) in the book "Traditionalists and Revivalists in Jazz", The
Scarecrow Press and the Institute of Jazz Studies, Rutgers, Metuchen,
N.
J. 1993. As a matter of fact, the dust cover of the book is a
photograph
of Vince Giordano playing the bass saxophone. Currently, Vince brings
his
unique skills as jazz musician and collector extraordinaire of stock
and
special arrangements to his position as an archivist for BMG
Entertainment.
Although this is a full time occupation, Vince finds enough time to
play
every Monday and Thursday nights at the Cajun Restaurant, 8th Avenue
and
16th Street in New York City. He also does gigs with various groups who
play in the traditional mode. Thus, he appeared with Ralph Norton and
his
Varsity Ramblers at the Bix Beiderbecke Memorial Jazz Festivals of 1997
and 1998. Vince's full Nighthawks band appeared in March 2001 at the
the
Tribute to Bix in Kenosha, Wisconsin.
"When Vince Giordano's Nighthawks are playing, it's easy to
lose track of time: not just minutes, or hours,
but whole decades. For most people who listened to jazz during its first
golden age, roughly 1924 to 1934, it meant a dozen-odd white guys in
waiter suits, reading music off stands while the patrons ate, drank and
danced.
Cajun, the slightly down-at-the-heels Creole restaurant in the Chelsea
section of Manhattan, where Mr. Giordano's band (essentially white guys
in
tuxes) holds forth two nights a week, sells its liquor legally and has
no dance
floor, but it's otherwise exceedingly easy to mislay 70 years there —
especially when the Nighthawks, all 11 of them, rip through an old
barn-burner like the Casa Loma Orchestra's "Casa Loma Stomp" from
1930, or ease into the Jean Goldkette Orchestra's lovely 1927
arrangement
of "Clementine From New Orleans." In their hands, jazz is young again,
full
of ginger and pep and still possessed of a certain innocence. It's
difficult
not
to agree with the film critic Leonard Maltin, a fan, when he says:
"Their
music
makes me feel good. It lifts my spirits."
By rights Mr. Giordano, 49, should be a star. Not because very few
people
play the bass as well as he does (or the tuba, or the bass saxophone; he
plays seven instruments that he'll admit to). Not because after 30- odd
years
onstage he knows as much about leading a jazz band as any man alive.
Not even because he can keep a topnotch band together, no easy task in
the
best of circumstances and an almost heroic one when you factor in the
Nighthawks' low pay and other commitments — these are professional
musicians who are very much in demand (and then there's Mr. Giordano's
day job, as an archivist at BMG Records, and the other bands he plays
in).
Nor is it because he has many prominent fans, although on any given
night
at
Cajun you might see Mr. Maltin or the cartoonist R. Crumb or the
director
Mel Brooks or any one of the number of jazz writers, filmmakers, actors,
radio personalities and other time-travelers who make up much of the
Nighthawks' regular clientele.
Mr. Giordano should be a star because he is a star. He has the charm,
confidence and bearing of a star, a star's sense of mission and
purpose.
He
even looks like a star, at least by the standards of, say, 1931.
But it's not 1931, and, in the modern world of jazz, Mr. Giordano has
two
strikes against him. First off, the Nighthawks are a revival band.
According
to jazz orthodoxy, the revival band stands somewhere in between the
circus
band and the society orchestra: a novelty outfit made up of amateurs,
has-beens and never-wases, good only for amusing tourists and
titillating
retirees with a whiff of their long-past youth. For some reason, it's
acceptable to live within the musical territory carved out by Thelonious
Monk and Miles Davis and John Coltrane a generation or two ago, but not
that of the generations before them.
Yet a repertory band can still thrive, if not always with the critics.
Wynton
Marsalis has led the Lincoln Center Jazz Orchestra, unabashedly modeled
on
Duke Ellington's great band of the 1940's, to such heights of acclaim
that
Jazz at Lincoln Center, its parent organization, is building it a
100,000-square-foot, $115-million concert hall, which is scheduled to
open
in 2003.
This success has had a certain trickle-down effect, as Mr. Giordano
readily
acknowledges: "Wynton has made my life much easier." When he assembled
the current "herd," as he calls it, of Nighthawks, at the end of 1998,
he hadn't
had a band together in four years.
But Mr. Marsalis's idea of a repertory band and Mr. Giordano's are two
different animals, and that's not just because the center of the
Lincoln
Center
band's sound is in the late 1930's, a decade later than that of the
Nighthawks. For one thing, the Lincoln Center players enjoy a generous
latitude in bringing modern techniques and ideas into the old music,
ensuring
a good deal more solo pyrotechnics than you would have heard in the
music's day. The Nighthawks do not. "I prefer sticking closer to the
score,"
Mr. Giordano said. In fact, when the director Terry Zwigoff needed
somebody to create precise renditions of a few classic jazz 78's for the
soundtrack of his new film, "Ghost World," he turned to Mr. Giordano.
To be a Nighthawk isn't easy. As Dan Levinson, the band's principal
clarinet
soloist, pointed out: "It's very hard to play that music accurately and
to
disregard all of the changes in music that have taken place since it was
originally performed. You really have to forget about swing and be-bop
and
all the subsequent permutations of post-1934 jazz."
In fact, many of the arrangements the Nighthawks play are straight
transcriptions from the original records, solos and all. Others,
however,
are
not — and it's a mark of the band's command of the idiom that you find
it
hard to tell which solos are old and which are new. "I have no doubt
this
would have been one of the best bands in the 20's," said Sherwin Dunner,
the producer of Yazoo Records' well-received "Jazz the World Forgot"
series.
Yet paradoxically, given the Nighthawks' concern for authenticity,
their
music
is in practice entirely free from the eat-your-vegetables quality that
sometimes colors the Lincoln Center band's efforts. Partly this is
because
you can experience it sitting at a table with a drink in your hand (if
you can
get a reservation, that is; space at the Cajun is limited, and they
fill
it).
Mostly, however, it has to do with the Nighthawks' repertory.
When the Lincoln Center band chooses an old piece to revive, you can be
sure it will be a classic: this season the group will be playing music
of Duke
Ellington and Billy Strayhorn, Woody Herman, and John Coltrane, among
others. Pretty safe ground. The Nighthawks are up to something
different.
Mr. Giordano is a dedicated, even obsessive, collector of old music. The
basement of his house in Brooklyn is packed with more than 30,000 fully
indexed band arrangements. As a result, his band book runs to four fat
volumes, more than a thousand items, with plenty of surprises.
The jazz establishment would have no problem with many of these items.
The
Nighthawks play plenty of Ellington, Jelly Roll Morton, Louis Armstrong
and
so forth. But then there's the other stuff. Take "The Moon and You,"
their
theme song, a bright, catchy fox trot composed by Leroy Shield for the
1931
Laurel and Hardy short "One Good Turn." It's precisely the kind of
confection that jazz critics consider lightweight — "dance music," not
jazz.
Yet in the Nighthawks' rendition, there's a surprising amount of power
under
the music's sunny exterior; it's as if you opened the hood of one of
those
cute
new Volkswagens and found a V-8 engine. "I like to mix it up — I don't
like
to be a jazz elitist," Mr. Giordano said. "Everybody had their degree of
jazzness." Listening to 1920's pop records, that jazzness is often not
immediately apparent. Live, the Nighthawks bring it out. (You'll never
hear
Rudy Vallee the same way again.) The Lincoln Center Jazz Orchestra
confirms, often gloriously, what we know about jazz's history; the
Nighthawks challenge it.
Jazz tradition dictates that there is only one way to settle such
philosophical
differences: a battle of the bands. I've long nurtured a fantasy of
Vince
Giordano and his crew and Wynton Marsalis and his going toe-to-toe
onstage. Whether this (admittedly improbable) contest were to be held at
Lincoln Center or, better yet, at Cajun, it could run all night as far
as I'm
concerned.
David Wondrich is the author of ``Torrid Rhythm: the First
Century of
Rock and Roll, 1843-1950,'' to be published next year by A Cappella
Press.
On August 13, 2001 I sent in the following letter to the editor of the New York Times. The letter was not published.
"Dear Editor:
I was very pleased to
read the
laudatory comments of Mr. David Wondrich about Vince
Giordano's Nighthawks. The
praise
is highly deserved. For the last thirty years, Vince, a
talented
musician/collector/historian,
has labored mightily for the preservation and
dissemination of the jazz
legacy
of the 1920s. I am also glad to see that Mr. Wondrich
refers to "Jazz" in the
title
of the article.
In the 1920s there was a
continuum
of styles going from hot jazz to bland dance band
music. Hot dance bands
were
somewhere in between. But, jazz was a strong component of
almost all styles of
popular
music. Both black and white musicians played hot jazz and
dance music. Examples of
hot
jazz bands are Louis Armstrong's Hot Fives (black) and the
Original Memphis Five
(white).
Examples of dance bands are the Fletcher Henderson (black) and Jean
Goldkette
(white) orchestras. As a matter of fact, these two orchestras played in
a"Battle of the Bands" in the Roseland Ballroom in New York in October
1926. Jean Goldkette, by all accounts, was the decisive winner, in
great
part because of the "hot"
musicians in the
orchestra.
The four bands had very different styles, but they all played
jazz.
Some critics and
historians
take the position that only black musicians played "real" jazz in
the 1920s, whereas white
musicians,
with the possible exception of a small portion of the
output of the legendary
cornetist
Bix Beiderbecke, played a pale imitation of jazz, or mostly
pop music. Ken Burns'
recent
PBS program about jazz has, unfortunately, reinforced the
myth that jazz is an art
form
cultivated almost exclusively by black musicians.
I strongly disagree with
this
widely accepted notion. Bands of white musicians such as Red
Nichols and His Five
Pennies,
the Coon-Sanders Original Nighthawk Orchestra, the California Ramblers
and the smaller groups derived from it, and last, but not least, the
Jean
Goldkette Orchestra, played a style of hot music which contained most
of
the elements of jazz, but derived more from the European musical
tradition,
and less from the blues. For various reasons, many jazz historians and
scholars are reluctant to admit that a great portion of the music
played
by many white musicians in the 1920s was indeed a form of jazz.
The repertoire of the
Nighthawks
includes many tunes played by white dance bands from
the 1920s. I view the
Vince
Giordano Nighthawks as the 21st century equivalent of the
1920s Jean Goldkette
Orchestra.
Make no mistake: as beautifully articulated by Mr.
Wondrich, what the
Nighthawks
play at the Cajun on Mondays and Thursdays is most
certainly jazz.
Albert Haim
Addendum, December 21,
2002.
The "Goings On" section of
the
December 23 & 30, 2002 edition of the New Yorker includes
the following item.
****************************************
CAJUN
129 Eighth Ave., at 16th St.
(691-6174)
It's not as if Vince Giordano
and
the Nighthawks are obsessed with the music of the
twenties and thirties—they've
even
been known to slip in a number or two from the forties
as well. Manning the most
unwieldy
of instruments (bass, tuba, bass saxophone) as well as
a bulbous vintage Kellogg
microphone,
Giordano leads a tuxedo-clad twelve-piece band
whose ease with early jazz
and
swing breathes life into an overlookedera. Authenticity and
affection, rather than
nostalgia
and affectation, are what power this valuable and enjoyable
ensemble. They're here on
Mondays
and Thursdays. The rest of the week features combos
fluent in Dixieland jazz and
other
improvisational sounds of New Orleans.
*********************************
A cartoon depiction of Vince
Giordano
with his instruments illustrates the column.
I think that the reporter hit the nail right on the head when he/she wrote,
Authenticity and affection, rather than nostalgia and affectation
Indeed, it is abundantly
clear to
anyone who goes to the Cajun any Monday or Thursday
evening -and you should when
you
are in town or nearby -that Vince and his fellow
musicians are driven by their
love
for the jazz and the hot dance music of the 1920s and
1930s and that they bring
back
the sound of "that overlooked era" in the most authentic
manner. The performance by
the
band is not an excuse for a "back to the past" sentimental
journey, but a living,
dynamic
demonstration that this music can be current and timely in
the 21st century. Vince and
his
fellow musicians understand the spirit and the historical
context of the music from the
1920s
and 1930s and, thus, render it as a breathing,
flourishing presence for
today's
audiences.
Addendum. June 25, 2006. The June 24, 2006 issue of the New
York Times has the following article about Vince Giordano.
Whiteman,
Bennie Moten, Ben Pollack, Ben Selvin, and George Olsen. Since 1989,
the
orchestra performs the first Saturday of every month at the Recreation
Center in Mill Valley, California. At the 1993 Bix Beiderbecke Memorial
Jazz Festival, John was a guest conductor for an all-star 1920s'style
orchestra
assembled especially to play for the opening in Davenport of Avati's
film
"Bix: An Interpretation of a Legend". The San Francisco
Starlight
Orchestra has recorded four CD's. They are available from Stomp Off
Records
or directly (check their
home
page) from Jim Brennan, the manager and tuba player for the
orchestra.
I have their delightful CD "Cheerful Little Earful"
which
contains several tunes associated with Bix, such as Clementine,
Baltimore,
and Bessie Couldn't Help It.
Goldkette
years. The Varsity Ramblers have made several appearances at the annual
Tribute to Bix in Libertyville, Illinois and at the annual Bix
Beiderbecke
Memorial Jazz Festival in Davenport, Iowa. Ralph's CD, The Moon and
You,
can be obtained by writing to Ralph C. Norton, 1204 Oakwood Road, East
Peoria, Illinois 61611. One of the highlights of the 1997 Festival was
the return of Bix's cornet to Davenport to be housed permanently in the
Putnam Museum. On the Saturday morning of the Festival, Ralph and his
Varsity
Ramblers, augmented by Spiegle Wilcox, played at Bix's
grave-site.
Bix's cornet was brought in and Ralph had the honor and privilege of
playing
it. It was a highly emotional experience for the band, the audience,
and,
in particular, for Ralph. For this solemn occasion, Ralph raised his
playing
to the highest level and treated the audience to a highly charged and
moving
performance.
Nichols, Miff Mole, Phil Napoleon, Benny Goodman, etc.) According to
Brian
Rust's liners for the delightful CD "Pleasure Mad", the new
Charleston
Chasers "are young musicians -three of them are women- who love the old
style and have set out to give it a new lease on life." The sound is
very
much the sound of the white hot dance bands of the 20's and there is an
underlying Bixian quality to several of the songs. There are two
Goldkette
sides - Proud of a Baby Like You and Clementine. Sean
Bolan,
the leader of the band and cornet player, does an excellent job in
emulating
Bix's sound.I am grateful too Rich Johnson for a copy of the newspaper article.
Bix
Beiderbecke Lithograph Print
"Rehearsing Davenport
Blues"
by Ben Denison (Denison Jazz Art) is a painting based on the recording
session at the Gennett Studio's in Richmond, Indiana 1925 when
"Davenport
Blues" was recorded. The musicians in the session were Bix Beiderbecke,
Tommy Dorsey, Tommy Gargano, Paul Mertz, Don Murray, and Howdy
Quicksell.
Unfortunately for Howdy Quicksell, he arrived late and did not get to
record
Davenport Blues. Bix, Tommy Dorsey, Paul Mertz, Don Murray, and Howdie
Quicksell are included in the painting. The back cover of "Bix: The
Leon
Bix Beiderbecke Story" by Philip R. and Linda K. Evans displays a
photograph
of the painting.
For an image of the painting
go
to
http://www.decadesign.com/scptest/0bixprintlg.jpg
A print (28" x 49") of this
painting
is available. $75.00 plus shipping ($10.00 - rolled in tube;
$25.00
- flat in box). Contact: bdennis@execpc.com
I am grateful to Daniel Kutsko
for providing the information about the painting.
The
Keeley Institute
Bix Beiderbecke broke down
during
the September 13, 1929 recording session of the Paul Whiteman
Orchestra.
Bix spent September 14 in his room at the 44th Street Hotel. Paul
Whiteman
went to see Bix and told him in no uncertain terms that he had to
straighten
out. The next day, Paul and Kurt Dieterle took Bix to Grand Central
Station
and put him on the train to Davenport. Once in Davenport, Bix spent
several
weeks at home trying to recuperate. He was weak and had pains in his
legs.
As Bix's health was not returning, the family doctor advised that
Bix hospitalized in a sanitarium. On October 14, 1929, Bix was taken to
Dwight, Illinois for admission to the Keeley Institute, an alcohol
recovery
organization well-known throughout the midwest. Bix stayed in the
Institute
for four weeks and returned to Davenport on November 14. Except
for
brief trips, Bix stayed in Davenport until April 17, 1930 when he went
to Chicago and a few days later to New York.
The following information about the Keeley Institute is from the Chrysalis website.
"From Rush, Keeley, and Smith: Three Physicians’ Roles in Alcoholism Treatment
Dr. Leslie E. Keeley, 1834-1900
Dr. Leslie E. Keeley was
born in
Ireland, raised in New York, and served as a surgeon in the Union Army
during the Civil War following his medical education at Rush Medical
College
in Chicago (named after Benjamin Rush) (22,23).
Through the earlier influence
of
Benjamin Rush, many in Post-Bellum America considered alcoholism an
illness—and
alcoholics as persons needing treatment. Alcoholics sought relief
through
reform clubs and religious movements.
Wealthier addicts received
treatment
in the nation’s various inebriate asylums—special hospitals for
treating
alcohol and drug addicts. Numerous alcoholics and their families also
experimented
with mail order "miracle cures," which were widely promoted and often
promised
permanent sobriety from alcoholism in as little as one day (24). In all
classes of treatment -- religious, psychological, and medical --
results
varied widely.
In 1879, Keeley, who had
developed
an interest in drug addiction during his wartime service, announced he
had a discovered a specific remedy for alcohol and drug addictions
(25).
That same year, he opened his first clinic, the Keeley Institute, in
Dwight,
Illinois and began treating patients with his "Double Chloride of Gold
Cure" (26). In accordance with the wishes of its creator, the exact
formula
of the cure (Keeley hinted only at gold salts in combination with other
compounds) was never revealed -- a mystery that remains part of the
Keeley
legacy (27).
The "Keeley Cure" was praised
as
a miraculous intervention by Keeley’s first patients and later by the
popular
press (28). White documents Keeley’s uncanny savvy in promoting his
cure.
In 1891 he issued the following challenge to Joseph Medhill, publisher
of the Chicago Tribune : "send me six of the worst drunkards you can
find,
and in three days, I will sober them up, and in four weeks I will send
them back to Chicago sober men." Medhill responded by sending confirmed
alcoholics to the Institute for treatment. When Medhill reported that
"they
[the men treated] went away sots and returned gentlemen," news of
Keeley’s
cure spread throughout the nation and farther. Books by former patients
lauding Keeley’s treatment, high profile work with alcoholic veterans
of
the Civil and Mexican Wars, and aggressive advertising sent patients
flocking
to the Keeley Institute. Keeley began to franchise and by mid-1893
there
were 118 Keeley Institutes in America. Institutes were founded in
England,
Finland, Denmark, and Sweden as well (29).
Above: post card of the Keeley Institute, circa 1930.
Patients in the Keeley
Institutes
underwent a four week treatment course. The atmosphere in the clinics
was
largely informal, with minimal direct supervision of patients. There
was
a strong mutual support among patients, and patients maintained contact
with each other after leaving treatment, often through post-treatment
support
groups called Keeley Leagues. During the first few days of their
therapy,
new arrivals were provided with as much liquor as they requested. In
fact,
the only strictly enforced treatment routines were the four times a day
injections of Keeley Cure. At 8 a.m., 12 noon, 5 p.m., and 7:30 p.m.
patients
received injections drawn in varying amounts from three bottles with
red,
white, and blue liquids. Independent laboratory tests published in
medical
journals and the press reported widely different formulas, including
ingredients
such as alcohol, strychnine, aloe, coca, morphine, atropine, and
morphine
(30).
Keeley required all of his
employees
and franchisees to sign a pledge to never reveal the formula of the
cure.
He received harsh criticism from the scientific establishment (and
competitors)
for withholding the formula. Keeley’s secrecy prevented scientific peer
review and independent replication studies; it gave the Keeley
Institutes
a monopoly on a potentially important drug. Thus many in medicine
viewed
Keeley’s secrecy as a serious breach of medical ethics, to which Keeley
responded:"…my cure is the result of a system, and cannot be
accomplished
by the administration of a sovereign remedy. It involves he intelligent
use of powerful drugs, gradations to suit the physical condition of
particular
patients, changes in immediate agents employed at different stages of
the
cure, and an exact knowledge of the pathologic conditions of
drunkenness
and their results" (31). Keeley argued that release of the general
formula
would lead to its gross misuse (32).
Controversy continued to follow
Keeley until the end of his life. The Keeley claim of an unprecedented
95% success rate for treatment of alcoholics (later modified to 51%)
was
hotly challenged. Competitors moved in with other gold cures."
I am grateful to Chris Smith for kindly
sending
me the photo of the Institute and the information about Dr. Keeley.
Bix
and the Beta Theta Fraternity.
The
University of Iowa was founded on February 25, 1847. Almost 78 years
later,
on February 2, 1925, Bix Beiderbecke enrolled at the University as an
"unclassified
student." Within a few days, Bix pledged the Beta Theta Pi Fraternity
(Alpha
Beta Chapter), the same fraternity that his older brother Burnie had
joined
while he was a student at the Iowa State University. Bix's career
as a student was short-lived: on February 20, 1925, Bix withdrew from
the
university. Because of his short stay, Bix was never initiated in the
fraternity.
This information is available in Philip and Linda Evans' book, "Bix:
The
Leon Bix Beiderbecke Story." We now have tangible proof of Bix's
pledging.
It turns out that Bix, together with the other fourteen pledges in his
class, signed his name in the paddle that was presented to the pledge
master,
Carlyle Fairfax "Andy" Anderson. The paddle signed by Bix is, through a
generous gift from Robert G. Anderson, the son of Carlyle Anderson, in
the hands of the Bix Beiderbecke Memorial Society. In his letter
accompanying
the gift, Robert writes, "Both my mother and father were at the
University
of Iowa at this time, and both remember hearing Bix play. They said
they
never heard anything so beautiful in their lives as the sound that Bix
made. My mother remembers him playing on the back of a flat-bed truck
that
toured around the campus. It is also interesting that she went to
summer
camp with Bix's sister. My mother was from Cedar Rapids."
In p. 183 of Evans and Evans' "Bix: The Leon Bix Beiderbecke Story", we
read, "Those later Blue Goose dances in the Burkley Hotel were the idea
of the center and captain of the team, "Tubby" Griffin. Tubby promoted
these dances with another fellow, leasing the ballroom from the hotel
and
booking the ban
