Was Bix Poisoned?

The Scene of the crime? The new tenant had only recently taken up residence at 43-30 46th Street in the Borough of Queens, New York. He rarely left his apartment except to restock his supply of bootleg gin. But on this humid, mid-summer day, there was suddenly a disturbance in the hallway outside of Apartment 1G. The new tenant is screaming and demanding to see the landlord, who when he arrives, finds the man standing in the middle of his room, trembling and ranting that two Mexicans with long daggers are hiding under his bed. The landlord bends down to look under the bed, and as he was beginning to stand up, the tenant collapses into his arms. A doctor living in the building—some say it was the wife of the doctor who was a nurse—rushes to the apartment, but it is too late. Bix Beiderbecke has died at the age of 28 at 9:30 p.m. on Thursday, August 6, 1931. The Cause Lobar pneumonia was listed as the official cause of death, and there is broad agreement that acute alcoholism contributed significantly to the serious decline in Bix’s physical and mental health over the last couple years of his life. As he researched Bix over the years, Randy Sandke has wondered about the underlying cause of the legendary cornetist’s demise. He laid out his premise in a 2013 article originally published in The Journal of Jazz Studies, titled “Was Bix Beiderbecke Poisoned by the Federal