Leon Bismark "Bix"
Beiderbecke (March 10, 1903 – August 6, 1931) was a jazz cornetist, pianist, composer
and one of the most influential jazz soloists of the 1920s, a cornet player
noted for an inventive lyrical approach and purity of tone.
Beiderbecke taught himself to
play the cornet largely by ear, leading him to adopt a non-standard fingering
technique that informed his unique style.
Beiderbecke's most influential
recordings date from his time with Goldkette and Whiteman, although he also
recorded under his own name and that of Trumbauer's. The Whiteman period marked
a precipitous decline in his health due to his increasing use of alcohol.
Treatment for alcoholism in rehabilitation centers, with the support of
Whiteman and the Beiderbecke family, failed to stop his decline. He left the
Whiteman band in 1929 and in the summer of 1931 he died in his Sunnyside,
Queens, New York apartment at the age of 28.
He composed or played on
recordings that are jazz classics and standards such as "Davenport
Blues", "In a Mist", "Copenhagen", "Riverboat
Shuffle", "Singin' the Blues", and "Georgia On My
Mind".
Beiderbecke died in his
apartment, in Sunnyside, Queens, New
York on August 6, 1931. The week had been stiflingly hot, making sleep
difficult. Suffering from insomnia, Beiderbecke played the piano late into the
evenings, both to the annoyance and the delight of his neighbors.
On the evening of August 6, at about 9.30 pm,
his rental agent, George Kraslow, heard noises coming from across the hallway.
"His hysterical shouts brought me to his apartment on the run,"
Kraslow told Philip Evans in 1959.
He pulled me in and pointed to
the bed. His whole body was trembling violently. He was screaming there were
two Mexicans hiding under his bed with long daggers. To humor him, I looked under
the bed and when I rose to assure him there was no one hiding there, he
staggered and fell, a dead weight, in my arms. I ran across the hall and called
in a woman doctor, Dr. Haberski, to examine him. She pronounced him dead.
Historians have disagreed over
the identity of the doctor who pronounced Beiderbecke dead, with several
sources stating that it was Dr. John Haberski - the husband of the woman
Kraslow identified - who pronounced Beiderbecke dead in his apartment.
The official cause of death, as
indicated on the death certificate, was lobar pneumonia. Unofficially, edema of
the brain coupled with the effects of long-term alcoholism have been cited as
contributory factors.