(NOTE: HIT ABOVE ‘PLAY ON YOUTUBE’ BUTTON TO WATCH VIDEO. THE GUY WHO POSTED IT APPARENTLY THINKS HE OWNS IT).

When I was a kid in the early 70s getting into jazz and old movies, two great revivals were taking place. One was The Marx Brothers revival, which began on college campuses in the late 60s and reached its zenith with the 1973 re-release of the long-out-of-circulation ‘Animal Crackers’. The other big re-discovery was Bix Beiderbecke. Bix went from being a 1920s jazz figured admired by those in the know, to a musical phenomenon that everyone suddenly seemed to be a super-fan of. There were Bix music festivals, Bix LP reissues, Bix fan clubs–there was even a bumper sticker that read “Big Lives”. While I’m sure a lot of this admiration was genuine, a good deal of it feels to me in retrospect like fashionable hero worship; Bix’s life was a short and tragic one and much was made at the time of the similarities between him and rock star flame-outs of the day like Jim Morrison and Janis Joplin. Bix took on the aura of a lost hero, a soul too talented and tortured to live. At that time it was believed that no film of him existed which leant a further spooky ephemerality to his legend. Yet over the years several pieces of film have surfaced. I posted one of them yesterday–home movies of the Jean Goldkette band on tour with Bix clearly at the center of it. Above is another view of Bix in a newsreel special of 1928 playing with Paul Whiteman’s band. Bix stands and plays a solo about halfway through and we get confirmation of a long doubted rumor that he played while puffing his cheeks out. (You’re not supposed to do that–it’s a sign of not having been professionally trained and besides it really hurts). The YouTuber who posted this gives a very good explanation of how the film and music are synchronized as well as some other Bix details about what kind of trumpet he played etc. I’ll leave you to read that directly rather than rehash it all here. Enjoy and remember: Bix Lives!–at least on film and records…