Concert Honors Bix Beiderbecke

Concert Honors Bix Beiderbecke
Our Neighborhood: The Way It Was • Interesting People • Local History • Events Around Town And More
Cornetist, Pianist And Composer Lived In Sunnyside
by Patrick Clark
Musicians, jazz lovers and passersby celebrated the life and
music of a local legend at the 10th annual Bix Beiderbecke
Memorial Jazz Concert in Sunnyside on Saturday, Aug. 7.
Honoring Beiderbecke—who is considered along with Louis Armstrong
as one of the two most influential cornetists of the late-1920s—the concert
also served as an energetic kick-off for the Sunnyside Shines Business Improvement District program that transforms 46th Street between Queens
Boulevard and Greenpoint Avenue into a pedestrian mall on Saturday afternoons throughout the month of August.
After tradition, the concert was opened by a performance from another
neighborhood musical institution, the
Sunnyside Drum Corps, and for the
first time, included a dance recital from
Summer Stock For City Kids.
With a crowd of hundreds gathered
around the bandstand, cornetist Kirby
Jolly—who plays professionally in the
American Concert Band—raised the
band with a rendition “Fidgety Feet,”
the first song that Beiderbecke ever
recorded, as the youngsters from the
Summer Stock troupe danced along.
From there, the 15-piece band moved
through a series of period classics, including “Copenhagen” and “Toddlin’
Blues,” tunes recorded by Beiderbecke’s first group, the Wolverines, in
1924. Later in the set, Dave Shenton,
formerly a house musician at the famed
Abbey Road studio in London, played
Beiderbecke’s technically demanding
piano solo from “In a Mist.”
Bix Beiderbecke, circa 1924.
Halfway through the concert, Sunnyside resident and trombonist Frank Pedulla took the baton from Jolly, leading
the band through the evening’s conclusion.
“We got a lot of nice feedback,” said event organizer Paul Maringelli, who
played drums. “A lot of people told me how nice it was to have live music, to
have such a professional band.”
Maringelli, who has lived in Sunnyside for about 20 years, went on to provide a brief biography of Beiderbecke, and to share the story behind the first
memorial concert in 2001.
The musician, said Maringelli, was born in 1903 in Davenport, Iowa, where
he taught himself the cornet by ear.
In 1923, Beiderbecke joined the Wolverines, a seven-man group that is
said to have played “hot jazz” out of a gangster’s hangout in Hamilton, Ohio,
and later teamed up to record with Hoagy Carmichael.
The next year, Beiderbecke left the Wolverines for a gig with Jean Goldkette in Detroit, and in 1925 recorded with a group known as Bix Beiderbecke
Sunnyside resident Paul Maringelli played drums at the 10th annual Bix Beiderbecke Memorial
Jazz Concert on Saturday, Aug. 7. Cornetist Kirby Jolly (second from left) and trombonist Frank
Pedulla (far right) took turns leading the band.
(photo: Nicholas Biondo)
and His Rhythm Jugglers, which included Tommy Dorsey on trombone.
Beiderbecke came to New York
with the Frankie Trambauer Orchestra in 1927 and then hooked up with
Paul Whiteman - one of the bestknown bandleaders of the day.
“For me, Bix was one of the
greats,” said Mike Ridley, a member
of the Cotton Club Orchestra who
Jazz lovers and passersby filled 46th Street between Queens Boulevard and Greenpoint Avenue for
the 10th annual Bix Beiderbecke Memorial Jazz Concert, which kicked off Sunnyside Shines
(photo: Nicholas Biondo)
Summer Street program, on Saturday, Aug. 7.
“I was shocked. All this time it was right across the
street from my house, and I never knew it.”
—Paul Maringelli, event organizer, commenting on the
location of Bix Beiderbecke’s Sunnyside residence.
played trumpet in Saturday’s concert.
But Beiderbecke, who played on
four number-one records in 1928,
battled an addiction to alcohol, and
by 1930 had drank himself out of his
performing career. After seeking
treatment back in Iowa, Beiderbecke
returned to New York, where he died
in his Sunnyside apartment in 1931.
Though his career in music was
brief, Beiderbecke played with such
luminaries as Carmichael, Tommy
and Jimmy Dorsey and Bing Crosby,
and is said to have helped give Benny
Goodman his start on the big stage.
Maringelli had long known Beiderbecke’s playing, but it wasn’t until
he saw the Ken Burns documentary
Jazz that he discovered the cornetist
had lived—and died—in Sunnsyide.
“I started asking around locally,
and I couldn’t find out where in the
neighborhood he lived,” he said.
So Maringelli widened the scope
of his search, tracking down Beiderbecke’s great-nephew who in turn
contacted a book-author who finally
supplied the address: 43-30 Bliss St.
“I was shocked,” said Maringelli.
“All this time it was right across the
street from my house, and I never
knew it.”
That year, Maringelli spearheaded
the first Beiderbecke memorial concert, inviting a lone trumpeter to play
“Taps” in the courtyard of All Saints
Church, which abuts the building in
which the jazz-legend died.
The memorial grew from there, as
Maringelli found funding to pay an
increasing number of musicians, and
as the extended concerts attracted
bigger crowds and wider attention.
Last year, with the sponsorship of
the Kiwanis Club of Sunnyside, Assemblywoman Catherine Nolan and
Sunnyside Shines, the concert moved
to its current venue on 46th Street
under the Sunnyside Arch.
“It’s not like I was ever the
biggest Bix fan in the world,” said
Maringelli. “It’s as if Louis Armstrong died on your block, and the
only one who knew it was some guy
in Nebraska. Bix died here and I
wanted people to know. Now it just
keeps growing, like it’s got a life of
its own.”
29 • TIMES, THURSDAY, AUGUST 12, 2010
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