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Saturday, December 19, 2020

Bix Beiderbeche Memorial Jazz Band

 

Blues For Bix

Bix Beiderbecke Memorial Jazz Band
Photo by Bob Farlee
Audex AX-103

The Bix Beiderbecke Memorial Jazz Band

August 6, 1971

Oakdale Cemetery, Davenport, Iowa - Davenport Blues

Joe Ashworth - C Melody Sax
Billy Barnes - Cornet
Bill Donahoe - Washboard
Jay Duke - Drums
John Gill - Banjo
John Schober - Clarinet
Skip Strong - Trombone
Bill Taggart - Tuba

From the back cover: This recording took place October 19 and 20, 1973, at The Tarn in Bartley, NJ – a 100-year old foundry converted into a gigantic recreation room. It was cold – so was the BBMJB since they hadn't played together since July in Davenport. This was the original 1971 group with a plus of Tex Wyndham on piano for good measure. Joe Ashworth switched to clarinet/soprano sax and John Schaber to C melody/alto sax.

Basically, the Bix Beiderbecke Memorial Jazz Band is a visual band capable of a spiritual drive when the occasion and venue require it. They are high-spirited and empathic at some time – all these virtues dissolve their few technical errors under such conditions. But a cold recording in a cold studio with harder-to-throw cold engineers and liner/notes/writers and critical friends and unsympathetic acoustics ain't easy. (Ever record with six-foot logs cracking and snapping in a giant fireplace?) The end result? The BBMJB on tape, finally. Recorded, edited, mastered by a master. Something for posterity.

The BBMJB has had detractors – "they don't play (sound) like Bix (Bix group)." This is not the intent of the BBMJB. Their intention is playing what they feel in tribute to Bix and his days and fellow Bix-era jazzmen – feeling the guts, spirit, fun, sadness, wildness of an age highlighted buy the short life of a long-legendary figure who epitomized the times and the music - a figure who gave this time of American Music a romantic filter of sterile musical windmills.

Some of Bix's best known tunes are not here. Neither are some of BBMJB's famed lease breaking flagwavers. And here in non-biz-relatged-jazz – but what is  non-biz is jazz and BBMJB is jazz and this session is jazz? As Barnes said sagely, "So why not Creole Love Call? Bubber recorded with Bix? Lagniappe is the absence of any vocals; knowing the words and the music (almost) is not enough to capture the nuances of Bix-era vocalists that would be almost in opposition here to what the BBMJB intends and dose. And anti-climatic.

Blues For Bix required just one take. Some numbers are 3rd and 4th takes. A few more were done on both sessions before a printable edition came out of the playback monitor.

Here, without the redundant explanations of the who/what/where/how comes of lp note sonography are serious, dedicated jazzmen doing what they want to do their way. Let the listener and devotees of Jazz and Bix and BBMJB be the critic/lp liner note writer.

Jazz history has been made by the Bix Beiderbecke Memorial Jazz Band and the dream of non-musician (as he calls himself)/leader Bill Donahoe. The purpose of making this lp is so there will exist a tangible record that on the 40th anniversary of Bix's death there were those who cared. – Bill Bocin - Editor, The Jazzologist

Davenport Blues
Creole Love Call
Royal Garden Blues
Fidgety Feet
Riverboat Shuffle
Louisiana
Blues For Bix
From Monday On
I'll Be A Friend With Pleasure
Bogalusa Strut

2 comments:

  1. Thanks for posting. I found a copy in OK shape at the local Salvation Army for 25 cents. I believe it has the drummer Jay Duke's autograph. I went to New Orleans to see some authentic Jazz and feel these guys had an energy for this recording that I didn't find there.

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  2. My father was Bill Taggart, the tuba player - yellow sweater in the middle, next to John Schober, clarinetist/saxaphonist.

    I was there when they recorded this album at my grandparent's house, "The Tarn", in Bartley, NJ. That picture is them standing on the dock on the lake that my grandfather built.

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