AMG Review of Bix Beiderbecke, Vol. 2: At the Jazz Band Ball

Cub Koda
All Music Guide

This second installment into Bix's recorded career focuses on the sides he made while working as a member of Paul Whiteman's band. Cutting dates with old friends and bandmates like Frank Trumbauer, Adrian Rollini, Pee Wee Russell, Bill Rank, Eddie Lang, and drummer Chauncey Morehouse, these sides chronicle Bix's activities in the studios away from the "king of jazz" between 1927 and 1928. But don't consider all these sides as some sort of hot jazz oasis away from the more stilted arrangements of the Whiteman band; there's more than enough corn aboard on sides like "Mississippi Mud," two takes of "Clorinda," "Our Bungalow of Dreams," and "There'll Come a Time," several of these tracks clumsily adorned with annoying glee-club vocals. But sides like the two takes of "Three Blind Mice," "Sorry," "Jazz Me Blues," "Royal Garden Blues," and "Since My Best Gal Turned Me Down" show Bix still was full of creative ideas galore and a tone to die for. While conventional wisdom has this period as the start of Bix's musical decline, these sides show that there was much great music left in him.