The Indispensable

The Indispensable Artist: Bix Beiderbecke
Label: RCA
Category: Music



Average customer rating: 3 out of 5 stars
Media: Audio CD
Number Of Discs: 2


UPC: 078636654027
EAN: 0078636654027
ASIN: B000002WSD


Release Date: 1995-02-28

Related Categories:

General General
Related | Jazz | Styles | Music
Traditional Jazz General Traditional Jazz General
Related | Traditional Jazz & Ragtime | Jazz | Styles | Music
General General
Related | Pop | Styles | Music

Listmania:

  1. Bix Beiderbecke: young man with a horn

Tracks:

  1. I Didn't Know
  2. Idolizing
  3. Sunday
  4. I'm Proud Of A Baby Like You
  5. I'm Looking Over A Four-Leaf Clover
  6. I'm Gonna Meet My Sweetie Now
  7. Hoosier Sweetheart
  8. My Pretty Girl
  9. Slow River
  10. In My Merry Oldsmobile
  11. Clementine (From New Orleans)
  12. Washboard Blues
  13. Changes
  14. Mary
  15. Lonely Melody
  16. San
  17. Back In Your Own Backyard
  18. There Ain't No Sweet Man That Worth The Salt Of My Tears

Tracks:

  1. Dardanella
  2. From Monday On
  3. Mississippi Mud
  4. Sugar
  5. Coquette
  6. When
  7. Lovable
  8. My Pet
  9. Forget Me Not
  10. Louisiana
  11. You Took Advantage Of Me
  12. Rockin' Chair
  13. Barnacle Bill The Sailor
  14. Deep Down South - Bix Beiderbecke And His Orchestra
  15. I Don't Mind Walking In The Rain - Bix Beiderbecke And His Orchestra
  16. I'll Be A Friend With Pleasure - Bix Beiderbecke And His Orchestra
  17. Georgia On My Mind
  18. Bessie Couldn't Help It

Customer Reviews:

1 out of 5 stars Terrible product........2005-03-02

This is one of the worst reissues I have ever heard. The music is fabulous, but the sound quality is so poor you can barely hear any of it! Most or all of it seems to be taken from previous reissues, some with reverb, some with distortion or excess noise. The poor sound distracts me from hearing Bix -- a shame! Don't waste your money here.

3 out of 5 stars Poor sound and poor choice.......2004-12-20

I agree with previous reviewers that this RCA-Victor (BMG(now BMG/Sony)) package has poor sound quality.
I would add, though, that this is NOT the "indispensable Bix". These discs do not include any of the peerless small ensemble "Bix Beiderbecke and his Gang" sides or any of the recordings made with the great chamber orchestra of the C-melody master Frankie Trumbauer, a sub-unit, so to speak, of the Paul Whiteman Orchestra, but far superior to the latter.
Instead, we have some of the Jean Goldkette 78's, widely criticised, even in RCA's liner notes, as in no way representative of that band's virtues; they do not show Bix to advantage. Along with that are Whiteman sides, some of which give us little nuggets of Bix soloing, buried in music otherwise not remarkable. Finally there a few numbers from Hoagy Carmichael. These are entertaining for those already familiar with the music of the period but are really just novelty numbers and in any event feature a Bix generally, not universally, agreed to be showing the effects of years of heavy boozing.
I would suggest that listeners who aren't already familiar with this marvel of American music get one or another of the compilations by Columbia/Sony (now BMG/Sony) (two volumes) or the Bix & Tram set (4 CD's) on JSP, remastered by the late John R.T.Davies.
Bix completists who might want this set to round things out might want to consider the recent Mosaic complete Bix.

2 out of 5 stars Get your Bix elsewhere.......2002-12-17

Bix Beiderbecke is my favorite musician. Period. Having said that, it hurts me to give a review of less than five stars to a disc set dedicated to his recordings, but the sound quality on these discs is so bad, I've got to give it only two. This was the first CD of Bix's recordings I ever bought, and it is definitely the worst in terms of the sound quality. These are all remarkable "big band" recordings Bix made in the 1920s and early 1930s with the orchestras of Jean Goldkette and Paul Whiteman (plus a few others under the direction of Hoagy Carmichael), and anyone who likes Bix's music should have them, but not from this set. As other reviewers have commented, the remastering on this set is just terrible; every track sounds as if it were recorded under water. By trying to remove all traces of record surface noise, the producers have introduced annoying digital artifacts and made the records sound "wishy-washy." They're all muddy and seem to have an irritating false-reverb added to hide the poor remastering. This is a shame too, since Victor Records, which originally recorded these sides in the 1920s and 1930s, was known at the time for having one of the best electrical recording systems in the business, and produced some fine-sounding records. You'd never know it by listening to these discs.

If you're looking to buy these recordings, I'd highly recommend the "Bix Restored" series instead with excellent remastering by the well-known John R. T. Davies. Those discs sound like they should: bright, crisp, and clear--not watered-down and distorted like this set. The "Bix Restored" discs are a bit more expensive, but if you're serious about owning Bix in the best quality out there, there's really no other choice. If you can't afford the Bix Restored series, look around for some other CD offering these sides.

3 out of 5 stars Great Music - Terrible Sound.......2001-01-07

This set compiles in one place the best of Bix's recordings with the Jean Goldkette and Paul Whiteman bands. The music is, as the album title suggests, indispensable. The sound, however, is awful.

These are the muddiest sounding transfers of vintage recordings to compact disk that I have ever heard. I am not talking about the suface noise that is common to 78 r.p.m. records, and which is sometimes unavoidable on this type of reissue. These tracks have an annoying aural tarnish to them that is not present on my old LPs and 78s. Listening to these CDs is like looking at a beautiful Impressionist painting through dirty glasses.

The bad sound reaches its nadir on the accoustically-recorded "I Didn't Know" with Goldkette. The reissue engineers attempted to remove a bothersome scratch, present on the original master. In so doing, they produced a remastering that is even more annoying than the original.

Compounding these irritations, these disks contain alternate takes of "Washboard Blues," "San," and "There Ain't No Sweet Man" that are musically inferior to the more commonly-heard versions. Caveat emptor.

5 out of 5 stars BIX LIVES.......2000-04-23

There are two kinds of cornet artists- Bix Beiderbecke and everybody else.

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