The 47th annual Bix Beiderbecke Memorial Jazz Festival in Davenport, Iowa, got off to a rousing unofficial start on Thursday, August 2, with a free concert at the Putnam Museum. Miss Jubilee and the Humdingers from St. Louis provided the music. As is customary, Bix’s cornet, a Vincent Bach that he bought in 1927, was played by Ken Cebrian, the band’s horn man. The horn is one of the museum’s artifacts and is seldom played. What surprised me about Ken’s performance is that he didn’t wear white gloves to hold it, as the curator did when she gave me a close-up look (see nearby photo). Bix’s name is engraved on the bell.
I missed it this year, but the Fat Babies from Chicago played for 90 minutes Wednesday evening at Grumpy’s Saloon in East Davenport.
The music sets ran from Thursday evening through Saturday evening at the Rhythm City Casino, the festival’s venue for the second year. Other than the excessive air-conditioning, which was also an issue last year, the venue was excellent.
Seven bands were on the card, including two formed just for this occasion. Those were the Fats Waller Legacy Band and the Benny Goodman Trio. In addition to the two mentioned earlier, there were the Bix Youth Band, Graystone Monarchs, and the Wolverines. These Wolverines are, according to their website, a 7-piece outfit from Minneapolis, not the slightly larger band of the same name
