Bix Beiderbecke: Jazz Me Blues

Track

Jazz Me Blues

Artist

Bix Beiderbecke (cornet)

CD

Bix Beiderbecke, Volume 2: At the Jazz Band Ball (Columbia CK 46175)

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Musicians:

Bix Beiderbecke (cornet), Bill Rank (trombone), Don Murray (clarinet), Adrian Rollini (bass saxophone), Frank Signorelli (piano), Chauncey Morehouse (drums).

Composed by Tom Delaney

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Recorded: New York, October 5, 1927

Albumcoverbixbjazzbandball

Rating: 97/100 (learn more)

When a high-school teacher in Hollywood's juvenile-delinquent flick Blackboard Jungle (1955) plays this track for his students, gangbangers contemptuously shatter both the teacher's collection of fragile shellac disks and his equally brittle illusions about educating teenagers. As broken as his records, the teacher quits his job. The moral may be Cast Not Pearls Before Swine, but there's nothing elitist about "Jazz Me Blues." With disciplined ensembles framing individualistic solos, it's a civics lesson in democracy. Maybe that's why the gangbangers rioted. Jazz extols cooperative freedom, which terrorists fear. "Jazz Me Blues" is a pluralistic pearl.

Reviewer: Alan Kurtz

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Related Links

Bixology, an excerpt from a book by Brendan Wolfe
The Dozens: Twelve Essential Bix Beiderbecke Performances by Brendan Wolfe
Remembering Bix by Ted Gioia
Bix Beiderbecke from jazz.com’s Encyclopedia of Jazz Musicians


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