Riverboat Shuffle

1903. Born to Agathe and Bismarck “Bix” Beiderbecke, the younger Bix grew up with an older brother and sister in Davenport, Iowa in a stern Germanic household albeit with upper middle class comfort. Bismark ran a prospering coal and lumber merchant business. His mother taught Bix piano starting age 2. He played by feel standing upright with his hands over his head. She also played the organ in the Presbyterian church. 1910. Davenport Daily Democrat. “Seven-year-old boy musical wonder! Little Bickie Beiderbecke plays any selections he hears.” Agathe’s father captained a Mississippi riverboat. As a youth, Bix’s interests included music, sports and hanging out along the waterfront surreptitiously hopping aboard boats. Academics definitely did not feature as an interest. After being held back for two years and a shady arrest his parents sent him to the Lake Forest Academy boarding school outside of Chicago in 1921 hoping it would reform him. Like many other parents sending children to boarding school their hopes were dashed and they saw their child get wilder and more out of control. Older brother Burnie served in the Great War and when he returned in ’18 he brought a phonograph and records like “Tiger Rag” by the Original Dixieland Jazz Band. Bix knew and loved the hot sounds of Jazz from riverboat bands. Now he bought a cornet and taught himself by playing along with the records. 1920. He first hears and meets Louis Armstrong and Baby Dodds playing with Marable’s riverboat band. By this time he is gigging with various local bands. At Lake Forest his non-dedication to academics continues but the school serves his ambitions putting him in proximity to Chicago’s cookin’ music scene. He regularly climbs out his window at night, takes a bus to the north side of Chicago to the Friar’s Inn and other clubs and speakeasies. Sometimes he get on stage with the Rhythm Kings. He also ventures to the South Side, gets to know Armstrong and the other New Orleans Jazz cats better both personally and musically. He forms a band at school. They get reprimanded for “performing indecorously” at a dance. The hammer comes down. Big Bix and Agathe get a letter of expulsion. Your son habitually makes un-authorized trips off campus. Numerous times caught with alcohol on campus. Strange obsession with untoward negro music. Lake Forest has it basically correct. Bix is a Jazz fiend and booze hound. Will be until he dies.

While working sometime for his father’s company he begins the life of a professional musician. By late ’23 he joins the Wolverine Orchestra with like minded hot Jazz heads. Over the next eight years he records regularly with an array of bands, mostly lead by others, but today mostly notable for his stunning solos.

“Fidgety Feet” (N. La Rocca/ L. Shields) 1923. First a hit for the Original Dixieland Jazz Band and a popular standard through the Roaring Twenties. Bix and the Wolverines stick to the Sicilian Jazz style - up tempo, fast March, on the beat, several rhythm breaks, dynamic with horns giving plenty of color. And as they said of Bix at the time his cornet rings pure as a bell.

"Jazz Me Blues” (T. Delaney) 1924. Another ODJB hit reworked by Bix and His Gang and one of the first legendary performances by boisterous young Bix. In the early and mid 20s Beiderbecke and Armstrong pave the way for the future of Jazz with their popularization of the “solo.” Louis grew up immersed in the brass band culture of New Orleans in the specific denomination that reverered “cutting”. This required playing your horn with operatic bravado, an athleticism of endurance. Louis belted into his horn like an opera diva at the moment of peak drama. Bix grew up immersed in European Classical piano, a culture of complex, resolving harmony, later, by listening to records, teaching himself to play Jazz cornet. We hear Bix cooing into his horn honeyed notions of romance while walking with swagger and panache. Jazz being the love of his life. Cutting contests were part of live performances not captured by the short format records of the time. Most Jazz consisted of ensemble playing and improvisation. Louis and Bix developed two distinct approaches to solo but based on the same concept. As Bix’s hometown friend Esten Spurrier explained “Bix and I always credited Louis as the father of the correlated chorus: play two measures, then two related , making four, on which you played another four measures related to the first four, and so on ad infinitum to the end of the chorus.” Jazz insiders studied and admired Bix, especially that most attentive of listeners Louis, and the Bixology of hot jazz with resolving harmonics would soon flow seamlessly into the American Pop the Jewish boys on Tin Pan Alley were writing. Through the history of Jazz we hear the Armstrong diva soloing style, loud, wide-ranging sonically, virtuosic and physically demanding, particularly among sax men like Charlie Parker and John Coltrane and most particularly with electric guitarists like Chuck Berry and Jimi Hendrix. The Bix style, alternating solos between players, staying mostly in the mid range focused on melody and harmonic resolution became the most widely used approach to Jazz particularly with another classically trained trumpeter. And ain’t that a motherfucker that musically speaking Miles Davis was a lineal descendent of a white man.

1899. Howard and Lida Carmichael host the Hoaglands circus troupe in their small home while the troupe performs in Bloomington, Indiana. When Lida gives birth later that year they call the baby Hoagland or Hoagy for short. The family, perpetually on the brink of poverty bats around from house to house in Bloomington, Indianapolis and Missoula, Montana. They do have a piano and Lida teaches the children to play. Hoagy excels and later takes lessons and forms a relationship with Reginald DuValle the “Rhythm King” of Indy. Duvalle’s home served as a lay over spot for many touring black Jazz musicians. From DuValle Hoagy learned the rudiments of Jazz improvisation. 1918. Hoagy’s three year old sister takes gravely ill. For lack of money the family cannot provide her adequate medical attention. She dies. Hoagy vows to never be broke again and plans a career as an attorney. He starts getting party and fraternity gigs while attending Indiana University. In ’22 he meets Bix. Probably not a great acquaintance for a career minded guy, but the two jazz heads become fast friends. The next year Bix introduces Hoagy to Armstrong. The Hoagy Louis relationship will outlast the Bix Louis relationship. Hoagy has started writing songs. He writes one especially for Bix called “Free Wheeling.” The name gets changed to “Riverboat Shuffle.” The ’24 recording with the Wolverines charges full force like an invading army with a series of short harmonic solo breaks, a longer powerful Box solo, a seductive clarinet solo and a raucous outro with Bix unleashing a King Oliver style growl. It’s somewhat amazing that a bunch of white youths from the Midwest have gained this level of fluency in the Jazz idiom in a few short years. With his mind on his money and his money on his mind Carmichael graduates Indiana U. law school in ’26. Fortunately for music history he does not seems to have been a very good lawyer or maybe just one with a mind full of melody.