The Indispensable

Bix Beiderbecke

Product Details

• Audio CD (February 28, 1995)
• Original Release Date: February 28, 1995
• Number of Discs: 2
• Label: RCA
• ASIN: B000002WSD
• Average Customer Review: 2.8 out of 5 stars See all reviews (6 customer reviews)
• Amazon.com Sales Rank: #188,322 in Music (See Bestsellers in Music)

Editorial Reviews

Amazon.com
On this two-disc set of his recordings for RCA Victor, cornetist Bix Beiderbecke figures largely as a sideman in the orchestras of Jean Goldkette and Paul Whiteman. Despite that, this covers one of the most important chapters in American music in the 1920s, chronicling not only Beiderbecke's career, but also the gradual spread of jazz into the more popular bands of the day. Although he was primarily a classical pianist, Goldkette staffed his band with gifted jazz players, including saxophonist Frankie Trumbauer, clarinetist Jimmy Dorsey, trombonist Tommy Dorsey, violinist Joe Venuti, and guitarist Eddie Lang, as well as Beiderbecke.

The first track here comes from Beiderbecke's brief stay with Goldkette in 1924, a job that quickly ended over the cornetist's inability to read music. His second period with Goldkette began in 1926, and the band's jazz qualities are abundantly clear on tracks like "Proud of a Baby Like You" and "Clementine." When Goldkette's band was breaking up in 1927, Paul Whiteman hired the nucleus of the group, immediately acquiring some jazz credibility in the process. The first of Beiderbecke's appearances with Whiteman is on "Washboard Blues," written and sung by his friend Hoagy Carmichael, and it's with Carmichael's 1930 group that Beiderbecke makes his final appearances here, adding his horn to songs like "Rockin' Chair" and "Georgia on My Mind." There are also three tracks from 1930 under Beiderbecke's own leadership, and both the Carmichael and Beiderbecke tracks benefit from members of the same tight-knit group that had been with Goldkette four years earlier. --Stuart Broomer

Customer Reviews

Most Helpful Customer Reviews

15 of 15 people found the following review helpful:

2.0 out of 5 stars Get your Bix elsewhere, December 17, 2002

By	"Gimpy" Peach Johnson - See all my reviews

Bix Beiderbecke is my favorite musician. Period. Having said that, it hurts me to give a review of less than five stars to a disc set dedicated to his recordings, but the sound quality on these discs is so bad, I've got to give it only two. This was the first CD of Bix's recordings I ever bought, and it is definitely the worst in terms of the sound quality. These are all remarkable "big band" recordings Bix made in the 1920s and early 1930s with the orchestras of Jean Goldkette and Paul Whiteman (plus a few others under the direction of Hoagy Carmichael), and anyone who likes Bix's music should have them, but not from this set. As other reviewers have commented, the remastering on this set is just terrible; every track sounds as if it were recorded under water. By trying to remove all traces of record surface noise, the producers have introduced annoying digital artifacts and made the records sound "wishy-washy." They're all muddy and seem to have an irritating false-reverb added to hide the poor remastering. This is a shame too, since Victor Records, which originally recorded these sides in the 1920s and 1930s, was known at the time for having one of the best electrical recording systems in the business, and produced some fine-sounding records. You'd never know it by listening to these discs.

If you're looking to buy these recordings, I'd highly recommend the "Bix Restored" series instead with excellent remastering by the well-known John R. T. Davies. Those discs sound like they should: bright, crisp, and clear--not watered-down and distorted like this set. The "Bix Restored" discs are a bit more expensive, but if you're serious about owning Bix in the best quality out there, there's really no other choice. If you can't afford the Bix Restored series, look around for some other CD offering these sides.

15 of 15 people found the following review helpful:

3.0 out of 5 stars Great Music - Terrible Sound, January 7, 2001

By	Michael D. Robbins (San Antonio, Texas United States) - See all my reviews (REAL NAME)

This set compiles in one place the best of Bix's recordings with the Jean Goldkette and Paul Whiteman bands. The music is, as the album title suggests, indispensable. The sound, however, is awful.

These are the muddiest sounding transfers of vintage recordings to compact disk that I have ever heard. I am not talking about the suface noise that is common to 78 r.p.m. records, and which is sometimes unavoidable on this type of reissue. These tracks have an annoying aural tarnish to them that is not present on my old LPs and 78s. Listening to these CDs is like looking at a beautiful Impressionist painting through dirty glasses.

The bad sound reaches its nadir on the accoustically-recorded "I Didn't Know" with Goldkette. The reissue engineers attempted to remove a bothersome scratch, present on the original master. In so doing, they produced a remastering that is even more annoying than the original.

Compounding these irritations, these disks contain alternate takes of "Washboard Blues," "San," and "There Ain't No Sweet Man" that are musically inferior to the more commonly-heard versions. Caveat emptor.

4 of 4 people found the following review helpful:

3.0 out of 5 stars Poor sound and poor choice, December 20, 2004

By	bukhtan (Chicago, Illinois, USA) - See all my reviews

I agree with previous reviewers that this RCA-Victor (BMG(now BMG/Sony)) package has poor sound quality.
I would add, though, that this is NOT the "indispensable Bix". These discs do not include any of the peerless small ensemble "Bix Beiderbecke and his Gang" sides or any of the recordings made with the great chamber orchestra of the C-melody master Frankie Trumbauer, a sub-unit, so to speak, of the Paul Whiteman Orchestra, but far superior to the latter.
Instead, we have some of the Jean Goldkette 78's, widely criticised, even in RCA's liner notes, as in no way representative of that band's virtues; they do not show Bix to advantage. Along with that are Whiteman sides, some of which give us little nuggets of Bix soloing, buried in music otherwise not remarkable. Finally there a few numbers from Hoagy Carmichael. These are entertaining for those already familiar with the music of the period but are really just novelty numbers and in any event feature a Bix generally, not universally, agreed to be showing the effects of years of heavy boozing.
I would suggest that listeners who aren't already familiar with this marvel of American music get one or another of the compilations by Columbia/Sony (now BMG/Sony) (two volumes) or the Bix & Tram set (4 CD's) on JSP, remastered by the late John R.T.Davies.
Bix completists who might want this set to round things out might want to consider the recent Mosaic complete Bix.