CHAPTER 12 | FOUR GIANTS OF EARLY JAZZ 297
to the prodding of Fisk University–educated Lil Hardin, the jazz pianist to whom
he was married from 1924 until the 1930s. “Lil worked the fat off Louis,” Carmichael
wrote. “She got a book of the standard cornet solos and drilled him. He really
worked, even taking lessons from a German down at [the American Conservatory
of Music, at] Kimball Hall, who showed Louis all the European cornet clutches.”
Carmichael’s comments reveal Armstrong as a performer who was eager to learn
all the tools of the trade. Armstrong himself, in a 1961 interview, attributed his
attitude to being “from New Orleans, where the musicians were very serious about
their music.... All of my life in music, whatever happened to me that’s right today
come from observin’ other musicians that was playing something.”
It has sometimes been assumed that the black oral tradition, the demands
of audience taste, and formal musical training are incompatible. Indeed, each
infl uence has been described here as if it belongs to a separate musical domain:
the traditional, popular, and classical spheres. Yet in Louis Armstrong’s musical
consciousness, these infl uences and their values of continuity, accessibility, and
transcendence were uniquely blended, each playing a role in the work of one of
the century’s most remarkable artists.BIX BEIDERBECKE: JAZZ LEGEND
The Chicago jazz scene also gave birth to the career of white cornetist Leon “Bix”
Beiderbecke. Louis Armstrong once wrote, “The fi rst time I heard Bix, I said
these words to myself: There’s a man as serious about his music as I am.” Born
in 1903 into a prosperous Iowa family, Beiderbecke began piano lessons at the
age of fi ve, but, fi nding his teachers’ approaches to classical music unappealing,
he lost interest and in fact never learned to read music fl uently until late in life.
In his teen years, recordings by Nick LaRocca and the Original Dixieland Jazz
Band caught his ear, and he taught himself cornet by playing along with them.
His parents, unhappy with their son’s musical taste and academic performance,
sent him to Lake Forest Academy, north of Chicago. Here he discovered the city’s
jazz scene; he also confi rmed his resistance to school and fondness for alcohol.
After being expelled from the academy in 1922, Beiderbecke stayed in the Mid-
west, living wherever he could fi nd work playing jazz. Catching on with other
young musicians who emulated black players, he began recording in 1924 with
the Wolverines Orchestra. Over the next several years he won admiration from
musicians and knowledgeable fans for his warm sound and melodic originality.
In 1927 a leading New York bandleader, Paul W hiteman (see chapter 13), hired
Beiderbecke, along with a few other jazz improvisers, to enliven his dance orches-
tra’s performances. Between 1927 and 1929 he made many infl uential recordings
with W hiteman and with various groups in New York. By the time he left W hiteman
in 1929, however, heav y drinking had taken its toll, and Beiderbecke was able to
work only sporadically from then until he died in the summer of 1931.
Although Beiderbecke was little known by the public while he was alive, his
memory took on a mythic aura. Starting among musicians, the legend spread to the
general public after the appearance of Dorothy Baker’s novel Young Man with a Horn
(1939), based loosely on Beiderbecke’s life and later made into a movie. His talent,
alcohol consumption, short life, and almost mystical devotion to music helped to
create the myth that would make Beiderbecke a symbol of the Roaring Twenties.K Leon “Bix” Beiderbecke
(1903–1931), legendary jazz
cornetist from Iowa.172028_12_280-304_r3_ko.indd 297 23/01/13 8:40 PM