In my report of the 2022 Bix Beiderbecke Memorial Jazz Festival In Davenport, Iowa, I opined that it was one of the best edition I’ve attended. It was, but this year’s surpassed it.
The 53rd Bix got off to a rousing and auspicious start on Thursday, August 3, with the annual one-hour free concert at the Putnam Museum. The museum houses Bix’s cornet, engraved with his name. It is played at this event by whomever is in the participating band; this year it was Andy Schumm with a band he called the Wolverines. This seven-piece group was comprised of the front line of the Chicago Cellar Boys—Andy on just about everything and John Otto and Natalie Scharf on reeds—plus Jeff Barnhart on a 66-key piano, Steve Pikal on bass, TJ Muller on guitar/banjo, and Josh Duffee on drums. Their set covered exclusively covered tunes played by Bix in the various bands he was in or led. A truly enjoyable performance, not that I expected anything less from a group like this.
Actually, the festival began unofficially the previous night at Jim’s Knoxville Tap, a roadhouse just outside of Milan, a small town across the Mississippi in Illinois. The Cellar Boys played, as they usually do. Normally this event occurs on Sunday evening, but there was a schedule conflict at the Tap, so it was moved to Wednesday. I only learned this from Josh Duffee’s Facebook post a few days earlier, when it was too lat
