Bix Beiderbecke

The Wolverines with Beiderbecke at Doyle's Academy of Music in Cincinnati, Ohio, in 1924

Beiderbecke joined the Wolverine Orchestra late in 1923, and the seven-man group first played a speakeasy called the Stockton Club near Hamilton, Ohio. Specializing in hot jazz and recoiling from so-called sweet music, the band took its name from one of its most frequent numbers, Jelly Roll Morton's "Wolverine Blues."[40] During this time, Beiderbecke also took piano lessons from a young woman who introduced him to the works of Eastwood Lane. Lane's piano suites and orchestral arrangements were self-consciously American whilst also having French Impressionist allusions, and influenced Beiderbecke's style, especially on "In a Mist."[40] A subsequent gig at Doyle's Dance Academy in Cincinnati became the occasion for a series of band and individual photographs that resulted in the image of Beiderbecke—sitting fresh-faced, his hair perfectly combed and his cornet resting on his right knee.[41]

On February 18, 1924, the Wolverines made their first recordings. Two sides were waxed that day at the Gennett Records studios in Richmond, Indiana:[upper-alpha 10] "Fidgety Feet", written by Nick LaRocca and Larry Shields from the Original Dixieland Jazz Band, and "Jazz Me Blues", written by Tom Delaney. Beiderbecke's solo on the latter heralded something new and significant in jazz, according to biographers Richard M. Sudhalter and Philip R. Evans:

Both qualities—complementary or "correlated" phrasing and cultivation of the vocal, "singing" middle-range of the cornet—are on display in Bix's "Jazz Me Blues" solo, along with an already discernible inclination for unusual accidentals and inner chordal voices. It is a pioneer record, introducing a musician of great originality with a pace-setting band. And it astonished even the Wolverines themselves.[43]

The Wolverines recorded 15 sides for Gennett Records between February and October 1924. The titles revealed a strong and well-formed cornet talent. His lip had strengthened from earlier, more tentative years; on nine of the Wolverines' recorded titles he proceeds commandingly from lead to opening solo without any need for a respite from playing.[44]

In some respects, Beiderbecke's playing was sui generis,[upper-alpha 11] but he nevertheless listened to, and learned from, the music around him: from the Dixieland jazz as exemplified by the Original Dixieland Jazz Band; to the hotter Chicago style of the New Orleans Rhythm Kings and the south-side bands of King Oliver and other black artists; to the classical compositions of Claude Debussy and Maurice Ravel.[46]

Louis Armstrong also provided a source of inspiration, though Beiderbecke's style was very different from that of Armstrong, according to The Oxford Companion to Jazz:

Where Armstrong's playing was bravura, regularly optimistic, and openly emotional, Beiderbecke's conveyed a range of intellectual alternatives. Where Armstrong, at the head of an ensemble, played it hard, straight, and true, Beiderbecke, like a shadowboxer, invented his own way of phrasing "around the lead." Where Armstrong's superior strength delighted in the sheer power of what a cornet could produce, Beiderbecke's cool approach invited rather than commanded you to listen.[47]

Armstrong tended to accentuate showmanship and virtuosity, whereas Beiderbecke emphasized melody, even when improvising, and rarely strayed into the upper reaches of the register.[48] Mezz Mezzrow recounted in his autobiography driving 53 miles to Hudson Lake, Indiana with Frank Teschemacher in order to play Armstrong's "Heebie Jeebies" for Beiderbecke when it was released.[49] In addition to listening to Armstrong's records, Beiderbecke and other white musicians patronized the Sunset Café on Fridays to listen to Armstrong and his band.[50] Paul Mares of the New Orleans Rhythm Kings insisted that Beiderbecke's chief influence was the New Orleans cornetist Emmett Hardy, who died in 1925 at the age of 23.[51] Indeed, Beiderbecke had met Hardy and the clarinetist Leon Roppolo in Davenport in 1921 when the two joined a local band and played in town for three months. Beiderbecke apparently spent time with them, but it is difficult to discern the degree to which Hardy's style influenced Beiderbecke's—especially since there is no publicly known recording of a Hardy performance.[52]

Beiderbecke certainly found a kindred musical spirit in Hoagy Carmichael, whose amusingly unconventional personality he also appreciated. The two became firm friends. A law student and aspiring pianist and songwriter, Carmichael invited the Wolverines to play at the Bloomington campus of Indiana University in the spring of 1924. On May 6, 1924, the Wolverines recorded a tune Carmichael had written especially for Beiderbecke and his colleagues: "Riverboat Shuffle".[53]

During an engagement at the Cinderella Ballroom in New York during September–October 1924, Bix tendered his resignation with the Wolverines,[upper-alpha 12] leaving to join Jean Goldkette and his Orchestra in Detroit, but Beiderbecke's tenure with the band proved to be short-lived. Goldkette recorded for the Victor Talking Machine Company, whose musical director, Eddie King, objected to Beiderbecke's modernistic style of jazz playing.[54] Moreover, despite the fact that Beiderbecke's position within the Goldkette band was "third trumpet", a less taxing role than 1st or 2nd trumpet, he struggled with the complex ensemble passages due to his limited reading abilities. After a few weeks, Beiderbecke and Goldkette agreed to part company, but to keep in touch, with Goldkette advising Beiderbecke to brush up on his reading and learn more about music.[55] Some six weeks after leaving the band, Bix arranged a Gennett recording session back in Richmond with some of the Goldkette band members, under the name Bix and His Rhythm Jugglers. On January 26, 1925, they set two tunes to wax: "Toddlin' Blues", another number by LaRocca and Shields, and Beiderbecke's own composition, "Davenport Blues", which subsequently became a classic jazz number, recorded by musicians ranging from Bunny Berigan to Ry Cooder and Geoff Muldaur.[56] An arrangement of "Davenport Blues" as a piano solo was published by Robbins Music in 1927.

In February 1925, Beiderbecke enrolled at the University of Iowa in Iowa City. His stint in academia was even briefer than his time in Detroit, however. When he attempted to pack his course schedule with music, his guidance counselor forced him instead to take religion, ethics, physical education, and military training. It was an institutional blunder that Benny Green described as being, in retrospect, "comical," "fatuous," and "a parody."[57] Beiderbecke promptly began to skip classes, and after he participated in a drunken incident in a local bar, he was expelled.[58] According to Lion, he was not expelled, but quit (pp. 94–95).</ref> That summer he played with his friends Don Murray and Howdy Quicksell at a lake resort in Michigan. The band was run by Goldkette, and it put Beiderbecke in touch with another musician he had met before: the C-melody saxophone player Frankie Trumbauer. The two hit it off, both personally and musically, despite Trumbauer having been warned by other musicians: "Look out, he's trouble. He drinks and you'll have a hard time handling him."[59] They were inseparable for much of the rest of Beiderbecke's career, with Trumbauer acting as something of a guardian to Beiderbecke.[60] When Trumbauer organized a band for an extended run at the Arcadia Ballroom in St. Louis, Beiderbecke joined him. There he also played alongside the clarinetist Pee Wee Russell, who praised Beiderbecke's ability to drive the band. "He more or less made you play whether you wanted to or not," Russell said. "If you had any talent at all he made you play better."[61]

In the spring of 1926, Bix and Trumbauer joined Goldkette's main dance band, splitting the year between playing a Summer season at a Goldkette-owned resort on Lake Hudson, Indiana and headlining at Detroit's Graystone Ballroom, which was also owned by Goldkette. In October 1926, Goldkette's "Famous Fourteen", as they came to be called, opened at the Roseland Ballroom in New York City opposite the Fletcher Henderson Orchestra, one of the East Coast's outstanding African American big bands. The Roseland promoted a "Battle of the Bands" in the local press and, on October 12, after a night of furious playing, Goldkette's men were declared the winners. "We […] were amazed, angry, morose, and bewildered," Rex Stewart, Fletcher's lead trumpeter, said of listening to Beiderbecke and his colleagues play. He called the experience "most humiliating".[62] On October 15, 1931, a few months after Beiderbecke's death, the Fletcher Henderson Orchestra recorded a version of "Singin' the Blues" that included Rex Stewart performing a nearly note-for-note homage to Beiderbecke's most famous solo.[62]

Although the Goldkette Orchestra recorded numerous sides for Victor during this period, none of them showcases Beiderbecke's most famous solos. The band found itself subjected to the commercial considerations of the popular music sector that Victor deliberately targeted the band's recordings at. The few exceptions to the policy include "My Pretty Girl" and "Clementine", the latter being one of the band's final recordings and its effective swan song. In addition to these commercial sessions with Goldkette, Beiderbecke and Trumbauer also recorded under their own names for the OKeh label; Bix waxed some of his best solos as a member of Trumbauer's recording band, starting with "Clarinet Marmalade" and "Singin' the Blues", recorded on February 4, 1927. Again with Trumbauer, Beiderbecke re-recorded Carmichael's "Riverboat Shuffle" in May and delivered two further seminal solos a few days later on "I'm Coming, Virginia" and "Way Down Yonder in New Orleans". Beiderbecke earned co-writing credit with Trumbauer on "For No Reason at All in C", recorded under the name Tram, Bix and Eddie (in their Three Piece Band). Beiderbecke switched between cornet and piano on that number, and then in September played only piano for his recording of "In A Mist". This was perhaps the most fruitful year of his short career.[upper-alpha 13]

Under financial pressure, Goldkette folded his premier band in September 1927 in New York.[upper-alpha 14] Paul Whiteman hoped to snatch up Goldkette's best musicians for his traveling orchestra, but Beiderbecke, Trumbauer, Murray, Bill Rank, Chauncey Morehouse, and Frank Signorelli instead joined the bass saxophone player Adrian Rollini at the Club New Yorker. The band also included guitarist Eddie Lang and violinist Joe Venuti, who had often recorded on a freelance basis with the Goldkette Orchestra. Another newcomer was Sylvester Ahola, a schooled trumpeter who could play improvised jazz solos and read complex scores. When Ahola introduced himself, Beiderbecke famously stated "Hell, I'm only a musical degenerate".[65] When that job ended sooner than expected, in October 1927, Beiderbecke and Trumbauer signed on with Whiteman. They joined his orchestra in Indianapolis on October 27.[66]

The Paul Whiteman Orchestra was the most popular and highest paid dance band of the day. In spite of Whiteman's appellation "The King of Jazz", his band was not a jazz ensemble as such, but a popular music outfit that drew from both jazz and classical music repertoires, according to the demands of its record-buying and concert-going audience. Whiteman was perhaps best known for having premiered George Gershwin's Rhapsody in Blue in New York in 1924, and the orchestrator of that piece, Ferde Grofé, continued to be an important part of the band throughout the 1920s. Whiteman was large physically and important culturally —"a man flabby, virile, quick, coarse, untidy and sleek, with a hard core of shrewdness in an envelope of sentimentalism", according to a 1926 New Yorker profile.[upper-alpha 15] A number of Beiderbecke partisans have criticised Whiteman for not giving Bix the opportunities he deserved as a jazz musician.[upper-alpha 16] James complains that, after Beiderbecke joined the band, "Whiteman moved farther and farther away from the easy-going, rhythmically inclined style of his earlier days", becoming "more subservient to his business sense". He goes on to suggest that this artistically compromised Beiderbecke, in part causing his death. [70]}}

Benny Green, in particular, derided Whiteman for being a mere "mediocre vaudeville act", and suggesting that "today we only tolerate the horrors of Whiteman's recordings at all in the hope that here and there a Bixian fragment will redeem the mess."[upper-alpha 17] Richard Sudhalter has responded by suggesting that Beiderbecke saw the Whiteman band as an opportunity to pursue musical ambitions that did not stop at jazz:

Colleagues have testified that, far from feeling bound or stifled by the Whiteman orchestra, as Green and others have suggested, Bix often felt a sense of exhilaration. It was like attending a music school, learning and broadening: formal music, especially the synthesis of the American vernacular idiom with a more classical orientation, so much sought-after in the 1920s, were calling out to him.[67]

Beiderbecke is featured on a number of Whiteman recordings, including "From Monday On", "Back In Your Own Back Yard", "You Took Advantage Of Me", "Sugar", "Changes" and "When". These feature specially written arrangements that emphasize Beiderbecke's improvisational skills. Bill Challis, an arranger who had also worked in this capacity for Jean Goldkette, was particularly sympathetic in writing scores with Beiderbecke in mind, sometimes arranging entire ensemble passages based on solos that Bix played.[72] Beiderbecke also played on several notable hit records recorded by Whiteman, such as "Together", "Ramona" and "Ol' Man River", the latter featuring Bing Crosby on vocals.

The heavy touring and recording schedule with Whiteman's orchestra may have exacerbated Beiderbecke's long-term alcoholism, though this is a contentious point. Whiteman's violinist Matty Malneck said "The work was so hard, you almost had to drink"[upper-alpha 18] adding "He didn't get to play the things he loved with the Whiteman band because we were a symphonic band and we played the same thing every night, and it got to be tiresome."

On November 30, 1928, whilst on tour in Cleveland, Beiderbecke suffered what Lion terms "a severe nervous crisis" and Sudhalter and Evans suggest "was in all probability an acute attack of delirium tremens", presumably triggered by Beiderbecke's attempt to curb his alcohol intake.[73][74] "He cracked up, that's all", trombonist Bill Rank said. "Just went to pieces; broke up a roomful of furniture in the hotel."[74]

In February 1929, Beiderbecke returned home to Davenport to convalesce and was hailed by the local press as "the world's hottest cornetist".[75] He then spent the summer with Whiteman's band in Hollywood in preparation for the shooting of a new talking picture, The King of Jazz. Production delays prevented any real work from being done on the film, leaving Beiderbecke and his pals plenty of time to drink heavily. By September, he was back in Davenport, where his parents helped him to seek treatment. He spent a month, from October 14 until November 18, at the Keeley Institute in Dwight, Illinois.[76] According to Lion, an examination by Keeley physicians confirmed the damaging effects of Bix's long-term reliance on alcohol: "Bix admitted to having used liquor 'in excess' for the past nine years, his daily dose over the last three years amounting to three pints of 'whiskey' and twenty cigarettes.....A Hepatic dullness was obvious, 'knee jerk could not be obtained' – which confirmed the spread of the polyneuritis, and Bix was 'swaying in Romberg position' – standing up with his eyes closed".[77]

While he was away, Whiteman famously kept his chair open in Beiderbecke's honor, in the hope that he would occupy it again. However, when he returned to New York at the end of January 1930, Beiderbecke did not rejoin Whiteman and performed only sparingly. On his last recording session, in New York, on September 15, 1930, Beiderbecke played on the original recording of Hoagy Carmichael's new song, "Georgia on My Mind", with Carmichael doing the vocals, Eddie Lang on guitar, Joe Venuti on violin, Jimmy Dorsey on clarinet and alto saxophone, Jack Teagarden on trombone, and Bud Freeman on tenor saxophone. The song would go on to become a jazz and popular music standard. In 2014, the 1930 recording of "Georgia on My Mind" was inducted into the Grammy Hall of Fame.[78]

Beiderbecke's playing had an influence on Carmichael as a composer. One of his compositions, "Stardust", was inspired by Beiderbecke's improvisations, with a cornet phrase reworked by Carmichael into the song's central theme.[upper-alpha 19] Bing Crosby, who sang with Whiteman, also cited Beiderbecke as an important influence. "Bix and all the rest would play and exchange ideas on the piano", he said.

With all the noise [of a New York pub] going on, I don't know how they heard themselves, but they did. I didn't contribute anything, but I listened and learned […] I was now being influenced by these musicians, particularly horn men. I could hum and sing all of the jazz choruses from the recordings made by Bix, Phil Napoleon, and the rest.[80]

Following the Wall Street Crash of 1929, the once-booming music industry contracted and work became more difficult to find. For a while, Beiderbecke's only regular income came from his work as a member of Nat Shilkret's orchestra on The Camel Pleasure Hour NBC radio show. However, during a live broadcast on October 8, 1930, Beiderbecke's seemingly limitless gift for improvisation finally failed him: "He stood up to take his solo, but his mind went blank and nothing happened", recalled a fellow musician, Frankie Cush.[81] The cornetist spent the rest of the year at home in Davenport and then, in February 1931, he returned to New York one last time.

In New Orleans, jazz had traditionally been expressed through polyphonic ensemble playing, with the various instruments weaving their parts into a single and coherent aural tapestry. By the early 1920s, developments in jazz saw the rise of the jazz soloist, with solos becoming longer and more complex. Both Beiderbecke and Armstrong were key figures in this evolution, as can be heard on their earliest recordings. According to the critic Terry Teachout, they are "the two most influential figures in the early history of jazz" and "the twin lines of descent from which most of today's jazz can be traced."[upper-alpha 22]

Beiderbecke's cornet style is often described by contrasting it with Armstrong's markedly different approach.[106] Armstrong was a virtuoso on his instrument, and his solos often took advantage of that fact. Beiderbecke was largely, although not completely, self-taught, and the constraints imposed by that fact were evident in his music. While Armstrong often soared into the upper register, Beiderbecke stayed in the middle range, more interested in exploring the melody and harmonies than in dazzling the audience. Armstrong often emphasized the performance aspect of his playing, while Beiderbecke tended to stare at his feet while playing, uninterested in personally engaging his listeners.[107] Armstrong was deeply influenced by the blues, while Beiderbecke was influenced as much by modernist composers such as Debussy and Ravel as by his fellow jazzmen.[upper-alpha 23]

Beiderbecke's most famous solo was on "Singin' the Blues", recorded February 4, 1927. It has been hailed as an important example of the "jazz ballad style"—"a slow or medium-tempo piece played gently and sweetly, but not cloyingly, with no loss of muscle."[109] The tune's laid-back emotions hinted at what would become, in the 1950s, the cool jazz style, personified by Chet Baker and Bill Evans. More than that, though, "Singin' the Blues" has been noted for the way its improvisations feel less improvised than composed, with each phrase building on the last in a logical fashion. Benny Green describes the solo's effect on practiced ears:

When a musician hears Bix's solo on 'Singing the Blues', he becomes aware after two bars that the soloist knows exactly what he is doing and that he has an exquisite sense of discord and resolution. He knows also that this player is endowed with the rarest jazz gift of all, a sense of form which lends to an improvised performance a coherence which no amount of teaching can produce. The listening musician, whatever his generation or his style, recognizes Bix as a modern, modernism being not a style but an attitude.[110]

Like Green, who made particular mention of Beiderbecke's "amount of teaching," the jazz historian Ted Gioia also has emphasized Beiderbecke's lack of formal instruction, suggesting that it caused him to adopt "an unusual, dry embouchure" and "unconventional fingerings," which he retained for the rest of his life. Gioia points to "a characteristic streak of obstinacy" in Beiderbecke that provokes "this chronic disregard of the tried-and-true." He argues that this stubbornness was behind Beiderbecke's decision not to switch from cornet to trumpet when many other musicians, including Armstrong, did so.[111] In addition, Gioia highlights Beiderbecke's precise timing, relaxed delivery, and pure tone, which contrasted with "the dirty, rough-edged sound" of King Oliver and his protégé Armstrong, whose playing was often more energetic and whose style held more sway early in the 1920s than Beiderbecke's.

Beiderbecke's playing – both as a cornetist and a pianist – had a profound effect on a number of his contemporaries. Eddie Condon, for instance, described Beiderbecke's cornet playing as "like a girl saying yes"[98] and also wrote of being amazed by Beiderbecke's piano playing: "All my life I had been listening to music […] But I had never heard anything remotely like what Beiderbecke played. For the first time I realized music isn't all the same, it had become an entirely new set of sounds"[upper-alpha 24] "I tried to explain Bix to the gang," Hoagy Carmichael wrote, but "[i]t was no good, like the telling of a vivid, personal dream […] the emotion couldn't be transmitted."[upper-alpha 25]

Mezz Mezzrow described Beiderbecke's tone as being "pickled in alcohol […] I have never heard a tone like he got before or since. He played mostly open horn, every note full, big, rich and round, standing out like a pearl, loud but never irritating or jangling, with a powerful drive that few white musicians had in those days."[upper-alpha 26]

Some critics have highlighted "Jazz Me Blues", recorded with the Wolverines on February 18, 1924, as being particularly important to understanding Beiderbecke's style. Although it was one of his earliest recordings, the hallmarks of his playing are evident. "The overall impression we get from this solo, as in all of Bix at his best," writes the trumpeter Randy Sandke, "is that every note is spontaneous yet inevitable."[upper-alpha 27] Richard Hadlock describes Beiderbecke's contribution to "Jazz Me Blues" as "an ordered solo that seems more inspired by clarinetists Larry Shields of the ODJB and Leon Roppolo of the NORK than by other trumpet players."[119] He goes on to suggest that clarinetists, by virtue of their not being tied to the melody as much as cornetists and trumpet players, could explore harmonies.

"Jazz Me Blues" was also important because it introduced what has been called the "correlated chorus", a method of improvising that Beiderbecke's Davenport friend Esten Spurrier attributed to both Beiderbecke and Armstrong. "Louis departed greatly from all cornet players in his ability to compose a close-knit individual 32 measures with all phrases compatible with each other", Spurrier told the biographers Sudhalter and Evans, "so Bix and I always credited Louis as being the father of the correlated chorus: play two measures, then two related, making four measures, on which you played another four measures related to the first four, and so on ad infinitum to the end of the chorus. So the secret was simple—a series of related phrases."[120]

Beiderbecke plays piano on his recordings "Big Boy" (October 8, 1924), "For No Reason at All in C" (May 13, 1927), "Wringin' and Twistin'" (September 17, 1927)—all with ensembles—and his only solo recorded work, "In a Mist" (September 8, 1927). Critic Frank Murphy argues that many of the same characteristics that mark Beiderbecke on the cornet are also reflected in his piano playing: the uncharacteristic fingering, the emphasis on inventive harmonies, and the correlated choruses.[121] Those inventive harmonies, on both cornet and piano, pointed the way to future developments in jazz, particularly bebop.[122]

Bix Beiderbecke wrote or co-wrote six instrumental compositions during his career:

• "Davenport Blues" (1925)
• "In a Mist (Bixology)" (1927)
• "For No Reason at All in C" (1927) with Frank Trumbauer
• "Candlelights" (1930)
• "Flashes" (1931)
• "In the Dark" (1931)

"Candlelights", "Flashes", and "In the Dark" are piano compositions transcribed with the help of Bill Challis but never recorded by Beiderbecke.[upper-alpha 13] Two additional compositions were attributed to him by two other jazz composers: "Betcha I Getcha", attributed to Beiderbecke as a co-composer by Joe Venuti, the composer of the song, and "Cloudy", attributed to Beiderbecke by composer Charlie Davis as a composition from circa 1924.[123]

Bix Beiderbecke's first recordings were as a member of the Wolverine Orchestra

• "Fidgety Feet" / "Jazz Me Blues", recorded on February 18, 1924, in Richmond, Indiana, and released as Gennett 5408
• "Copenhagen", recorded on May 6, 1924, and released as Gennett 5453B and Claxtonola 40336B
• "Riverboat Shuffle" / "Susie (Of the Islands)", recorded on May 6, 1924, and released as Gennett 5454[upper-alpha 13]

As Bix Beiderbecke and his Rhythm Jugglers

• "Toddlin' Blues" / "Davenport Blues", recorded on January 26, 1925, in Richmond, Indiana, and released as Gennett 5654

With the Jean Goldkette Orchestra in 1926–27

• "Sunday", recorded on October 15, 1926, in New York and released as Victor 20273
• "My Pretty Girl" / "Cover Me Up with Sunshine", recorded on February 1, 1927, in New York and released as Victor 20588
• "Sunny Disposish", recorded on February 3, 1927, in New York and released as Victor 20493B
• "Clementine", recorded on September 15, 1927, in New York and released as Victor 20994 "Jean Goldkette and his Orchestra".

With Frankie Trumbauer and His Orchestra and guitarist Eddie Lang

• "Clarinet Marmalade" / "Singin' the Blues", recorded on February 4, 1927, in New York and released as Okeh 40772
• "Riverboat Shuffle" / "Ostrich Walk", recorded on May 9, 1927, in New York and released as Okeh 40822
• "I'm Coming, Virginia" / "Way Down Yonder in New Orleans", recorded on May 13, 1927, in New York and released as Okeh 40843
• "For No Reason at All in C" / "Trumbology", recorded on May 13, 1927, in New York and released as Okeh 40871, Columbia 35667, and Parlophone R 3419
• "In a Mist" / "Wringin' an' Twistin'", recorded on September 9, 1927, in New York and released as Okeh 40916 and Vocalion 3150
• "Borneo" / "My Pet", recorded on April 10, 1928, in New York and released as Okeh 41039

As Bix Beiderbecke and His Gang

• "At the Jazz Band Ball" / "Jazz Me Blues", recorded on October 5, 1927, in New York and released as Okeh 40923
• "Royal Garden Blues" / "Goose Pimples", recorded on October 5, 1927, in New York and released as Okeh 8544
• "Sorry" / "Since My Best Gal Turned Me Down", recorded on October 25, 1927, in New York and released as Okeh 41001
• "Wa-Da-Da (Everybody's Doin' It Now)", recorded on July 7, 1928, in Chicago, Illinois, and released as Okeh 41088
• "Rhythm King", recorded on September 21, 1928, in New York and released as Okeh 41173

With the Paul Whiteman Orchestra

• "Washboard Blues", recorded on November 18, 1927 in Chicago and released as Victor 35877
• "Changes" [Take 2], recorded on November 23, 1927 in Chicago and released as Victor 25370
• "Lonely Melody" [Take 3] / "Mississippi Mud" [Take 2], with Bing Crosby, the Rhythm Boys, and Izzy Friedman, recorded on January 4, 1928, in New York and released as Victor 25366
• "Ramona", recorded on January 4, 1928, in New York and released as Victor 21214-A. No. 1 for 3 weeks
• "Ol' Man River" (From Show Boat), recorded on January 11, 1928, in New York and released as Victor 21218-A and Victor 25249 with Bing Crosby on vocals. No. 1 for 1 week
• "San" [Take 6], recorded on January 12, 1928, in New York and released as Victor 24078-A
• "Together", recorded on January 21, 1928, in New York and released as Victor 35883-A. No. 1 for 2 weeks
• "Back in Your Own Back Yard" [Take 3], recorded on January 28, 1928 in Camden, NJ and released as Victor 21240
• "There Ain't No Sweet Man That's Worth the Salt of My Tears" [Take 3], recorded on February 8, 1928 in New York and released as Victor 21464
• "Mississippi Mud" [Take 3] / "From Monday On" [Take 6], with vocals by Bing Crosby, recorded on February 28, 1928, in New York and released as Victor 21274
• "My Angel", recorded on April 21, 1928, in New York and released as Victor 21388-A. No. 1 for 6 weeks
• "Louisiana" [Take 1], recorded on April 23, 1928 in New York and released as Victor 21438
• "My Melancholy Baby", recorded on May 15, 1928, in New York and released as Columbia 50068-D[124]
• "Tain't So, Honey, 'Tain't So", recorded on June 10, 1928 in New York and released as Columbia 1444-D
• "Because My Baby Don't Mean "Maybe" Now", recorded on June 18, 1928 in New York and released as Columbia 1441-D
• "Sweet Sue", recorded on September 18, 1928 in New York and released as Columbia 50103-D
• "China Boy", recorded on May 3, 1929 in New York and released as Columbia 1945-D
• "Oh! Miss Hannah", recorded on May 4, 1929 in New York and released as Columbia 1945-D

As Bix Beiderbecke and His Orchestra

• "I Don't Mind Walking in the Rain" / "I'll Be a Friend with Pleasure", recorded on September 8, 1930, in New York and released as Victor 23008

With Hoagy Carmichael and His Orchestra

• "Barnacle Bill, the Sailor" / "Rockin' Chair", with vocals by Carson Robison, recorded on May 21, 1930, in New York and released as Victor V-38139 and Victor 25371
• "Georgia on My Mind", with Hoagy Carmichael on vocals, recorded on September 15, 1930, in New York and released as Victor 23013

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