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.

read more: http://www.redhotjazz.com/bixtramarticle.html

'Frankie Trumbauer and Me'

Reprinted from http://jazzwax.com

The jazz saxophone starts with Frankie Trumbauer in the early 1920s. All of the greats of the 1930s and '40s were fans, including Lester Young. In addition to playing C-melody saxophone (between the tenor and alto in size) and recording with Jean Goldkette, Red Nichols, Paul Whiteman, and Bix Beiderbecke, Trumbauer was a skilled pilot who joined the Civil Aeronautics Authority (CAA) and was a test pilot during World War II, training crews in the operation of the B-25 bomber. 

JazzWax reader J. Pat Geis, a retired mechanical engineer in California, remembers a flight with a cool-headed Trumbauer:

"My father, W. Laurence Geis, had a high school band in the 1920s and after college in Sioux Falls, S.D., he took several of the band members out on the road. Lawrence Welk and some polka bands toured the Midwest then. Welk always reminded his band members to buy a loaf of bread on Saturdays, since the Blue Laws closed everything down on Sundays. Sometimes they got stiffed after their Saturday night gigs. Dad didn't want to put his players through this, so he broke up the band and took a job in Omaha.

"After the 1929 stock market crash, dad lost his job and returned to Sioux Falls. I was born shortly after, and dad went to work as a truck driver for Kroger, a grocery chain, while he searched for a better-paying job. He also taught piano and violin privately in our home. Soon he landed a job teaching radio operation and theory (dad was a ham radio operator) to men in a Civilian Conservation Corps (CCC) camp based in Chamberlain, S.D. Many of his students went into the military or the Merchant Marine Corp during World War II. From his job with the CCC, my dad went into the CAA in 1940, which is where he met Frankie Trumbauer.

"After the war, when I turned 17, I worked in the ground crew of the CAA headquartered in Kansas City, Misouri. We had just installed an instrument landing system in Lincoln, Neb., and the CAA's Twin Beeches [Beechcraft Model 18] and DC3s were equipped with recording equipment operated from the co-pilot's position. The recorder had a strip chart that ticked out the necesary data for landing.

"One day I flew with Trumbauer in a Twin Beech. After taking off, we sensed trouble and radioed the tower for a visual. They confirmed that our right landing gear had not locked into place. So we flew around and hit the runway hard on the left wheel to try and jar it down. That didn't  work. We tried again but without success. As we came around, I could see the hanger doors opening and the red fire trucks emerging.

"I asked Trumbauer what his plan was. He said that we'd try it one more time and if the gear didn't drop and lock, we would come in on the left landing gear only and do a ground loop—or we could pull up the left gear and do a belly landing in the grass. Either would have been dangerous with aviation fuel aboard. We had no choice but to stay with the plane; there were no parachutes.

"The third time we hit the runway hard, the right-side gear dropped. We lifted up and flew around to test the right landing gear and it held as we landed. Trumbauer had saved our lives. He and I parted, never to see one another again." Trumbauer died in 1956 at age 55.

Here's Frankie Trumbauer with Bix Beiderbecke on Singin' the Blues from 1927...

Used with permission by Marc Myers