The Bix Centennial All Stars • Celebrating Bix (Double LP)

Not to imply the competition was fierce or anything, but I just included this album as one of my three picks for Historical Record of the Year in a jazz critic’s poll. It’s odd to think of 2002 in historical terms but here we are, and, considering several of the key people involved with Celebrating Bix! are no longer with us, it is a chance to hear a lineup of top-tier jazz musicians that is no longer possible. It is a stellar lineup and was even uniquely good at the time it was recorded. Co-producers Dan Levinson, Doug LaPasta, and David White helped get this group together to record in 2002 and the album was released by Arbors Records the month of Bix’s centennial in 2003. It became Dan Levinson’s best selling album in the years to follow until all original copies were gone. In cooperation with Turtle Bay Records, he has brought it back to market in an expanded double CD/LP format with three previously unreleased tracks and new album notes. As Dan Levinson makes crystal clear in his new notes, and in the reprinted original notes for that matter, this was not intended as a recreation of Bix’s readily available classic recordings. Nor was there any attempt to employ period equipment to recreate a sound. Instead, this album is a showcase of musicians still drawing inspiration from Beiderbecke 71 years after his death. Some of those musicians are solidly in the world of trad