Bix Beiderbecke with Frankie Trumbauer's Orchestra

by George Avakian
From the liner notes of the 1947 78 RPM record collection "Bix And Tram: Bix Beiderbecke with Frankie Trumbauer's Orchestra" on Columbia records. 

The partnership of cornetist Bix Beiderbecke and saxophonist Frank Trumbauer was one of the Damon and Pythias relationships which occasionally stud the history of jazz. From their first record dates together with mid-western pickup groups in the early twenties until Bix's untimely death in 1931, they were almost inseparable, working together in Trumbauer's Orchestra in St. Louis, then with Jean Goldkette. and finally with Paul Whiteman's enormous aggregation.

They made a high living in the commercial dance bands of their day, and their individuality was not entirely lost in those big orchestras, for always there were sympathetic arrangers who gave them solo spots or opportunities to lead ensembles written in their personal styles. For purely personal kicks, they had recourse to jam sessions wherever they went-notably in Chicago and New York-and to a lesser degree they were able to express themselves more freely on their own recording dates. 

With their friends from the Goldketteand Whiteman bands, Bix and  Tram (as Trumbauer was known) made numerous records with smaller combinations under their own names. This album of recordings, made originally for the Okeh label under Trumbauer's name, is a musical expression of the Bix/Tram relationship. Both played in essentially the same melodic style.

Bix's cornet work was mellow in tone, supple and dexterous in execution, and always inventive in content. Trumbauer, playing a C-melody saxophone (an instrument virtually unknown to the present generation, but the rage of many a campus in the bath tub gin era), was such a close counterpart of Bix that there have been recorded passages in which it is possible to confuse one for the other for a few bars (as in the beginning of Bix's solo on Paul Whiteman's Sweet Sue.

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