Andy Schumm and His Gang to present the music and history of the incomparable Bix Beiderbecke for the Central Ohio Hot Jazz Society

...As leading interpreters, cornetist Andy Schumm and His Gang arrive from the 1920s & '30s jazz haven, Chicago, to present a tribute to the legendary musician who, most authorities say, was the "greatest hot cornet player and most inspired jazz musician of his time".

Band Personnel:
            Andy Schumm - cornet
            John Otto - clarinet/alto sax
            Dave Bock - trombone
            Jim Dapogny - piano
            Rod McDonald - guitar/banjo
            Beau Sample - bass

A video preview!

Sunday, March 27, 2011
2:00pm-5:00pm
The Burgundy Room at The Makoy Center
5462 Center Street
Hilliard, OH 43026

Tickets
Sold at the door only.  
          $20 - Non Members
          $15 - Members
          $10 - Students and Dance Club Members
          Free admission to those 18 or younger accompanied by a paying adult.
          Music Educators free when accompanying students (more info)

More about the band members:

Andy Schumm

Andy Schumm is willing to do whatever it takes to play the good stuff.

Born in Milwaukee, Wisconsin, Andy began taking piano lessons when he was 6 years old. He dabbled as a trumpet player in grade school and high school until he found his true passion for jazz while studying with Mike Plog, a well-known modern jazz trumpeter. At the University of Illinois, Andy studied trumpet and cornet with Tito Carrillo and began arranging under the tutelage of program director Chip McNeill.

His fate as a ’20s musician was sealed one night after hearing Bix Beiderbecke’s transcendent recording of “At the Jazz Band Ball” on an authentic Victor horn machine. Andy started sitting in with Dixieland bands and, ironically, discovered that he could get more work as a ’20s musician than a modern player – yeah, man! While he is heavily influenced by Bix, Andy draws inspiration from a variety of musicians including Red Nichols, Jelly Roll Morton, King Oliver, Jabbo Smith and Tommy Dorsey (especially in his covert recordings as a trumpeter!). He also enjoys listening to Johnny Dodds and Herb Morand.

Andy is currently a full-time musician traveling the world and touring with various groups. One such group is the Archipelago Project which is a non-profit educational outreach group advocating musical arts for young students and their teachers through performance, residency and consultation.

John Otto

JOHN OTTO, reedman extraordinaire, is a full-time jobbing musician and piano technician who has performed and recorded with many well-known bands all over the country.

John’s mother was a soloist in church music, musicals, weddings and an accomplished jobbing musician herself. His dad played trombone for fun and liked listening to big bands in the late 1930s. He had swing and jazz records collected in the closet, which John found most enticing upon discovery at a very early age.

John started learning piano in grade school and changed to clarinet upon entrance into junior high school. In high school, his musical mentor was Wellington Schiller, a full-time musician and teacher. Wellington would loan John his Red Nichols records, which had quite a profound impact on him by grooming his ear for melody and rhythm. Some additional instruction from the late well-known Carmen Dello helped set him up for success.

John’s first job was working in Bolingbrook, Illinois, at an amusement park called Old Chicago (an enclosed shopping mall with circus bands and traveling acts such as vaudeville shows) while in high school, but he quit to enroll in college. Although John can play great jazz in many forms on clarinet and saxophone, his abilities in the hot dance category are supreme.  Some of John’s recent work has been subbing with the St. Louis Ragtimers, though you will find him about Chicago and its surrounding ‘burbs playing jazz, swing, Dixieland AND hot dance.

Jim Dapogny

Jim Dapogny - The stride and swing piano tradition of the early 20th century is preserved through the playing of pianist and musicologist James Dapogny. Together with his small combo, the Chicago Jazz Band  Dapogny has recorded seven albums of ragtime, New Orleans and Chicago jazz, and small-band swing. The band has made semi-regular appearances on National Public Radio's "A Prairie Home Companion," and has been featured on albums by the Andrews Sisters-like trio Chenille Sisters and late jazz-blues pianist Sippie Wallace. Deeply influenced by the piano playing of Jelly Roll Morton (1890-1941), Dapogny wrote the liner notes for a series of Morton's recordings issued by the Library of Congress and Rounder Records and edited the scholarly book Ferdinand "Jelly Roll" Morton: The Collected Piano Music, published by Schirmer, Inc.. Dapogny has recorded two albums -- Laughing at Life and Original Jelly Roll Blues -- featuring his interpretations of Morton's music. The holder of a doctorate of musical arts in composition, Dapogny has taught at the University of Michigan since 1966. He received a faculty recognition award and Thurnau professorship for outstanding teaching in 1982. Dapogny has served as an editor and editorial board member for Jazz Masterworks Editions, a collaborative project of Oberlin College and the Smithsonian Institute.

People are interested in people, and so it is fitting that we delve into the human side of jazz and take this opportunity to offer our people some background on the life of our currently featured historical figure, Bix Beiderbecke. Limited newsletter space allows us to present only a brief synopsis of an all too brief life, but a life that contributed mightily to the treasure trove of creative, improvisational, instrumental jazz interpretation and style.

Jim Loeffler, as astute a student of Classic/Traditional Jazz as there ever was, comes by it honestly -- his father was steeped in the genre, and lived through the heyday of Bix and his contemporaries. Jim furnished the following summary, written by his father, Bill Loeffler, which we offer as an introduction to the legendary figure whose contributions to the art will be celebrated in Andy Schumm's scheduled performance.

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The below article was written by Wm. E. “Bill” Loeffler, 1939

Bix Biederbecke was born in Davenport, Iowa, in 1904 and managed in his first 26 years of life, to set the final standard by which all hot trumpet and cornet playing is judged today. A majority of musicians and music fans are agreed that Bix was the greatest hot cornet player and the most inspired jazz mucisian of his time.

Bix Beiderbecke

Many have spoken of him as Bix without really knowing from whence the nickname originally came. Strictly speaking, Bix Biederbeck is not the inimitable cornet player we all know, but an older brother, a music store proprieter in Davenport, who received the nickname "Bix" from friends long before young Leon did. The name was first applied to Leon as "Little "Bix", and later, as his fame grew, the qualifying adjective "Little" was dropped, resulting in his now familiar title, Bix Biederbeck.

Bix studied first to be a pianist, but when he was well on in his teens, he heard Louis Armstrong and King Oliver play on the riverboats that came to Davenport and decided that he wanted to take up the cornet.

His first public performance with an orchestral group was in auspicious company, although in a somewhat unique combination consisting of cornet, clarinet, drums and piano. Bix played the cornet, Benny Goodman the clarinet,(he was then only 12 years old), Dave Tough the drums, and Dick Voynow played the piano. Benny remembered the day (he was wearing his short pants,then) he first played with Bix. Bix thought that little Benny was Just fooling around with the instruments, and Dave Tough had to argue with Bix to let him stay on.

Attending Lake Forest Acadamy, Bix, joined a group called the Wolverines, which were very popular in the midwest at that time, and Bix's cornet was largely responsible for this popularity.

Bix and the Wolverines, February 18, 1924

Shortly after the Wolverine group went to New York, about 1924, they broke up. Bix joined Charlie Straight's orchestra for a while and then met with a new fella by the name of Frankie Trumbauer, who was makeing a name for himself in St. Louis about 1925. The Trumbauer-Bix association was a happy one, with plenty of photographic evidence of the partnership.  Under the psuedonym of the Souix City Six, they made "I'm Glad" and "Flock 0' Blues" and then recorded together as members of Jean Goldkette’s Band, Paul Whiteman’s Orchestra and many small combos under Trams supervision.

In 1920, Jean Goldkette heard of Tram's success, but Tram would not join him unless Bix Was signed up with him. Jean accepted and so Tram and Bix joined Jean in Detroit.

Bix with Frankie Trumbauer's Orchestra

In 1927, Paul Whiteman took over a large section of Jean's band and for the next two years Bix, Tram, and Bill Challis, (Goldkette's former arranger), were part of Whiteman’s band.

Bix was supposed to have appeared in a motion picture called "The King of Jazz", but alcoholism claimed him in the fall of 1929 and he had to retire from the band and return home and spend several months recuperating.

Bix never was strong enough for regular band work, and, except for a couple of radio dates and a few recording sessions, he was in retirement. The stories of his death are numerous, but the real truth is as told by Tram.

In the summer of 1931, Princeton U. was having a dance, with a pick up band that included Bix. Princeton would not accept the band unless Bix was there in person. Bix was in bed with a severe cold, but when he was told the news, he insisted on making the date. He drove to Princeton in an open car, while running a fever of 100 degrees. That, coupled with the heat of the dance hall and the cold ride back to New York, resulted in a case of pneumonia, and on August 7,1931, he died in a Long Island hospital.