Bix Beiderbecke

Bix Beiderbecke was one of the greatest jazz musicians of the 1920s. His colorful life, quick rise and fall, and eventual status as a martyr made him a legend even before he died. Possessor of a beautiful, distinctive tone and a strikingly original improvising style, Beiderbecke spent time during the mid-'20s in Chicago and St. Louis (the latter with Frankie Trumbauer's Orchestra), and really broke out in 1927; he recorded his piano masterpiece "In a Mist," cut many classic sides with a small group headed by Trumbauer, and then signed up with Paul Whiteman's huge and prosperous orchestra. He was productive throughout 1928 but by the following year, his drinking really began to catch up with him. After brief comebacks in 1929 and 1930, he died that year at the age of 28. ~ Scott Yanow