Andy Schumm and his Sink-O-Pators
Futuristic Rhythms: Imagining the Later Bix Beiderbecke
Rivermont BSW-2244 (2018)
www.RivermontRecords.com
Andy Schumm has made a name for himself in the last decade as the leading cornet player in the style of Bix Beiderbecke: a true standout in a crowded field. Futuristic Rhythms: Imagining the Later Bix Beiderbecke is his third album taking on the role of Bix himself.
Schumm led the Lake Records release of Bix: Off The Record (LACD339 2015) which featured tunes Bix was known to have played but never recorded. He followed that up with When Louis Met Bix (LACD345 2016) where he as Bix and Enrico Tomasso, in the role of Louis Armstrong, imagined not so much a foggy riverside meeting as a series of professional engagements featuring both legends.
In Futuristic Rhythms, he takes it further, exploring what might have been recorded had Bix lived past 1931. Such an exercise is in part a guessing game for scholars of the life and legend: who would he have worked with? What songs would he have been drawn to? Would he have developed with the times? The reasoning behind each track on the album is explained in the extensive liner notes written by Julio Schwarz Andrade. Several are obscure compositions from the 20’s that Bix might have been attracted to later. “Rain,” composed by Eugene Ford in 1927 is given a gorgeous softness. The standout tr
