CD1
1. Singin' the Blues Till My Daddy Comes Home
2. Fidgety Feet
3. Oh, Baby! Don't Say No, Say Maybe
4. Copenhagen
5. Tiger Rag
6. Sensation Rag
7. Flock o' Blues
8. Davenport Blues
9. My Pretty Girl
10. Clarinet Marmalade
11. Ostrich Walk
12. Riverboat Shuffle
13. I'm Coming, Virginia
14. Way Down Yonder in New Orleans
15. For No Reason at all in C
16. Three Blind Mice
17. In a Mist
18. Clementine from New Orleans
19. Wringin' an' Twistin'
20. Humpty Dumpty
21. Krazy Kat
22. Baltimore
23. There Ain't No Land like Dixieland to Me
24. At the Jazz Band Ball
25. Royal Garden Blues
26. The Jazz Me Blues
27. Sorry
CD2
1. Goose Pimples
2. Since My Best Gal Turned me Down
3. Cryin' All Day
4. A Good Man is Hard to Find
5. Changes
6. Lonely Melody
7. There'll Come a Time, Wait and See
8. San
9. Mississippi Mud
10. Dardanella
11. From Monday On
12. Borneo
13. Somebody Stole My Gal
14. Thou Swell
15. Louisiana
16. T'ain't So, Honey, T'ain't So
17. Ol' Man River
18. Wa-Da-Da, Everybody's Doin' It Now
19. Rhythm King
20. Margie
21. Baby, Won't You Please Come Home
22. Loved One
23. Deep Harlem
24. Deep Down South
25. Georgia on My Mind
Musicians include
George Brunis
Frankie Trumbauer
Jimmy and Tommy Dorsey
Bud Freeman
Benny Goodman
Gene Krupa
Eddie Lang
Miff Mole
Don Murray
Bill Rank
Adrian Rollini
Jack Teagarden
Joe Venuti
Vocalists include
Hoagy Carmichael
Bing Crosby
Irving Kaufman
Scrappy Lambert
In his most interesting sleeve-note, Digby Fairweather suggests that in his time Bix was to Armstrong, what in later times Miles Davis was to Dizzy Gillespie, in that their style was cooler and less showy. After listening to this record, I agree that this was probably true, but my personal taste was for Armstrong and Diz because they brought entertainment as well as great music.
Considering that his whole career lasted less than a decade, Bix made a lot of recordings and his story is well-known to most jazz fans. He was a brilliant musician but he became an alcoholic, like so many in the jazz field, and eventually it killed him. He died in 1938 at the age of only 28 and like many of the most able musicians he was the complete article right from the early days. He was also a more than competent pianist, as several tracks on the record demonstrate.
One of the things I found surprising was how much of the music was played from arrangements. I would not have expected this from a band of jazz players. The extent to which the arrangements went however is open to question. All the solos are improvised I am sure, so probably a lot were just frameworks, to keep things tidy. Someone has made a superb job of cleaning up the original recordings because the sound is very good throughout.
That Bix was a very fine cornet player is something that is not open
to doubt, his talents (considering the period these recordings were
made in) is outstanding. His playing is always extremely neat and
tidy, while also interesting. And whilst many of his colleagues' work
now sounds very dated, Bix's own playing still sounds fresh and vibrant.
This album is very much for the fans of music from the 1920s because I found 2 hours, 36 minutes of it too much all in one go, whereas dipping into it for the odd track or two was for me much more fun.
Don Mather
CD Reviews
Retrospective RTS 4154
