Leon "Bix" Beiderbecke was born on March 10, 1903 in Davenport, Iowa to parents Bismark and Agatha Beiderbecke. Bismark was an executive with the East Davenport Coal and Lumber Company, and the Bix grew up in a very respectable neighborhood in Davenport.
Everyone called the boy Bix, though there is some question as to whether this was his actual middle name, or a nickname
Considered a musical prodigy, and gifted with both perfect pitch and a incredible musical memory, Bix could pick out tunes on the piano by the time he could reach the keys. The community was interested in the boy’s talents; the Davenport Democrat published an article about his accomplishments when he was only six years old.
However, Bix’s piano teacher, though impressed with the boy ’s natural talent, quit in frustration because Bix refused learn to read the sheet music and wouldn’t stop changing around the notes of the music. His mother, herself an accomplished pianist, also failed to teach Bix how to read music, and gave up the idea of her youngest son becoming a concert pianist.
As Bix was growing up, riverboats were starting to play a different style of music, a style of which the conservative parents of Davenport didn’t approve. Strains of jazz and blues would drift to the banks of the Mississippi, and Bix,was fascinated. He was usually late for supper when a big riverboat was due to cruise by. One night, he didn’t come home at all. He returned the next morning escorted by the captain of the riverboat on which Bix had stowed away. Story has it he captain of the boat supposedly told the worried parents that Bix was the best calliope player he had ever heard, and it was too bad the boy was too young to be hired.
It was on a riverboat that Bix first heard a young man called Louis Armstrong play the cornet. Louis was only three years older than Bix, and made an enormous impression on the boy. Bix bought his first cornet, used, and quickly learned to play by listening to the radio and the victrola. He gave his first public performance less than two months later at a Davenport High School dance, sitting in with the student band. Though Bix didn’t have the valves all figured out, and didn’t have a strong lip, the more accomplished musicians were apparently amazed at his progress. He practiced continously, trying, as he told friends, to play the notes as perfectly as he could imagine them.
Bix didn’t seem to put the same enthusiasm into his studies and was in danger of failing his senior year. His parents did not want their son to become a professional jazz musician, living from paycheck to paycheck in speakeasies and other seedy places, and they were especially concerned about the social stigma of jazz, which many people back then thought encouraged immoral behavior. In order to make sure Bix had a good education , they decided to send him to Lake Forest Academy near Chicago, a strict boarding school.
Bix was so far behind that he was placed in the Academy’s sophomore class, but he was determined to work hard in order to please his parents. However, the speakeasies of Chicago were within easy reach of the Academy, and some bands would even let Bix sit in after they heard him play.. Soon, he was staying out all night, and coming to classes half-asleep, and sometimes hung over. Though the thought of his parent’s disappointment bothered him, he wouldn’t give up his music. He loved the acceptance of the other musicians, and the approval of the audiences.He was hooked.
Bix formed a campus band, called Cy-Bix, to play at school dances. Cy-Bix was very popular. The headmaster of Lake Forest disapproved of their many off-campus bookings, and ordered them to play for Academy functions only. The story goes that the band waited until Sunday services, for which they provided the music for the hymns, to stage their protest. Halfway through the service, they played Rock of Ages but Dixie style. This was the last straw for the headmaster and Bix was asked to leave the Academy.
At the time Bix was only eighteen years old and he didn’t want to go home and face his family. So instead, he headed for Chicago. Though he couldn’t get a musician’s union card because he couldn’t read enough music to pass the exam, he did manage to find gigs here and there. He began to make a name for himself, but before he could, his father found him. Bix returned to Davenport and started working for the East Davenport Coal and Lumber Company, but he talked his parents into letting him return to Chicago for a few months during the summer.
A few months stretched into years, and in 1923, Bix managed to bluff his way through the exam to get his professional musician’s union card, and soon joined a band called the Wolverines. He played with several different bands all over the country for the next seven years. It was while he was playing in St Louis that he began listening to classical composers of the modern school, such as Debussy, Ravel, Holst, and Stravinsky, and incorporating their rhythms into his own compositions, all the while he developed a horn style that seemed to embody the spirit of jazz.
Bix jammed and recorded with several of the most famous jazz artists of the time, including Hoagy Carmichael, who was a great admirer of Bix’s sound. Bix composed and recorded several numbers that are played today, including his first recorded composition, Davenport Blues
Bix traveled constantly, playing with the Jean Goldkette Band and the Paul Whitman Band, and he never slowed down or took care of himself. He never drank during a performance, but afterwards he could never refuse anyone who wanted him to play or offered him a drink. Eventually, too much drink and too little sleep caught up with him, and in 1928, he returned to Davenport to rest. Story has it that one day, he found all of the recordings he had sent to his parents over the years were unopened. He left for New York soon after.
His drinking was now full alcoholism, and even though his music didn’t suffer, he did. In late 1929, Bix checked into the Keeley Institute in Dwight, Illinois, for rehabilitation. During that time, he did not touch his horn. After he finished his six-week stay, Paul Wittman wanted Bix back with his band, but Bix was depressed and worried that he wasn’t good enough anymore. To fortify his courage, he soon began drinking again.
In 1930, Bix was hired to play on the “New Camel Pleasure Hour” radio show. The program was a favorite in Davenport, where jazz was now more or less accepted, and the city considered Bix a favorite native son. Even Bix’s parents relented, finally visiting their son at his job Unfortunately, radio did not allow Bix the musical freedoms he was used to while performing on stage, and he soon became restless and bored. He began drinking at rehearsals, either that or skipping them altogether, and staying up all hours playing his kind of music. Even his perfect memory could not hold up under all his abuse: during an October broadcast, Bix stood up for a solo, and could not play. He later told a friend that his mind had gone completely blank.
By early 1931, he had virtually stopped drinking. Some people gave credit to a woman named Helen Weiss, a native New Yorker. Not long after they met, Bix was introducing Helen as his ‘future wife. Bix still couldn’t bring himself to turn down anyone who asked him to play, and no matter how late is was, there always seemed to be someone who would convince him to play one more number. By late that summer, the pressure and the heat ran him down, combined with a persistent cold, it soon developed into pneumonia.
Bix Beiderbecke died August 6, 1931of pneumonia complicated with the results of years of heavy drinking. He was only twenty-eight years old. His mother and brother, who were on their way to New York to care for him, didn’t know until they arrived that he had already passed away. They brought his body back home to Davenport, and he was given one of the biggest funerals the city had ever seen, attended by famous musicians and friends and fans. He was buried in Oakdadale Cemetery.
In November of 1997, Bix Beiderbecke was inducted into the International Jazz Hall of Fame
James, Burnett. Bix Beiderbecke. 1959.
Sudhalter, Richard M. and Phillip R. Evans. Bix: Man and legend. 1974.
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Illinois Ancestors