Jazz drummer and bandleader Josh Duffee says he feels at ease anywhere he's played on the planet.
"Anywhere I go around the world, when I tell them I'm from Davenport, Iowa, they say, 'That's the home of Bix Beiderbecke,'" said Duffee, a member of the board of directors of the Bix Beiderbecke Memorial Society. "He's known more around the world than he was in the '20s. His popularity, his sound is worldwide."
The music of Beiderbecke (1903-1931) has been celebrated for 43 years through the Bix Beiderbecke Memorial Jazz Festival the first weekend of August. Players and fans come from across the country and around the world to celebrate the cornet player.
"His greatest contribution was really inventing jazz improvisation on the cornet, and being a free spirit and just being able to learn by his ear," Duffee said.
Bix's music first gained the attention of jazz fans while he was a member of Frankie "Tram" Trumbauer's band, which played extended gigs in St. Louis and recorded the album "Singin' the Blues."
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