Bix Beiderbecke

Bix Beiderbecke (March 10, 1903 - August 6, 1931) was a notable jazz cornet player.

Leon Bix Beiderbecke was born in Davenport, Iowa to a strict middle-class family. As a teenager he would sneak off to the banks of the Mississippi to listen to the bands play on the riverboats that would come up from the south.

His early influences included New Orleans cornetists Emmett Hardy and Louis Armstrong, but Bix developed his own individualistic style of jazz cornet playing. Young Bix's parents thought he was going to ruin his life by going into music and sent him to a boarding school, but Bix broke out to pursue his music career.

Bix first recorded with his band The Wolverines, then became a sought-after musician in Chicago and then New York. He made innovative and influential recordings with Frankie Trumbauer ("Tram") and the Jean Goldkette Orchestra. He and Trambauer, a saxophone player, joined the Paul Whiteman Orchestra, the most popular and highest paid band of the day. In 1931 at the age of 28, he died of excessive drinking. Many of his family issues went unresolved.

Louis Armstrong paid high praise to Bix when he remarked that he never played the tune "Singin' the Blues" because thought Bix's classic recording of the tune shouldn't be touched. His biggest hit was "I Can't Get Started".

The novel Young Man With a Horn (1938) by Dorothy Baker was based on Beiderbecke's life. It was later made into a movie (1950) starring Kirk Douglas (with horn playing dubbed by Harry James).