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Aug 12, 2022

Bix Beiderbecke: First Gay Jazz Musician

If you grew up in the Quad Cities, you couldn't help but hear about Davenport, Iowa native Bix Beiderbecke (1903-1931).  We listened to him in music class, and researched him in Mr. Manary's American history class.  Scott, the cornetist who died, was a fan.

There was a  Bix Beiderbecke Jazz Festival every year.  There was a bust of him in Leclair Park in Davenport. (My Grandma Davis wasn't from Rock Island, but she had some of his records.)

 But no one told us, or no one knew, that he was gay.

Beiderbecke was one of the pioneers of jazz, playing and composing for the cornet and piano. He performed with the legendary Paul Whiteman's Band in New York. He influenced Hoagy Carmichael, Bing Crosby, and the "cool jazz" of the 1950s.  But he had a tortured personal life, became an alcoholic, and died of pneumonia brought on by exhaustion in 1931, only 28 years old.




His first biographies, and the teachers in Rock Island, never suggested for a moment that he might be gay.  

But in Remembering Bix: A Memoir of the Jazz Age (2000), Ralph Berton writes that Berton's brother Eugene, a gay opera singer, took Bix  to a gay sex party in 1920s New York.  Bix kept exclaiming "Iowa has nothing like this!"

In Bix: The Definitive Biography of a Jazz Legend (2005), by Jean-Pierre Lion, Eugene and Bix have a brief romantic escapade.  But, Eugene complains, "It meant absolutely nothing to him. His attitude toward sex, with men or women, was 'What the hell?'"




What women?  His biographies try to pair him up with this or that woman, but with limited success and lots of conjecture.  But it's not hard to find Bix talking to men, working with men, spending his life with men.  His roommates include Eddie Lang,  a young Bing Crosby, and gay musician Jimmy McPartland (left, with his future wife Marian, who knew that he was gay and didn't care).

Of course, the "accusation" has some jazz fans up in arms.  Even more than country-western music, the world of jazz is known for its homophobia.  There have been some lesbian jazz singers, but very, very few gay men, and even fewer open gay men, especially in instrumental "pure" jazz, where macho men in smoky rooms refer to non-aggressive musical styles as "faggy."


 "I don't even know one jazz musician who is [gay]," Dizzy Gillespie said.

I know one.

9 comments:

  1. Billy Strayhorn!!!!

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  2. "or know one knew"

    Ouch. Please correct.

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    1. Sorry, didn't notice when proofreading.

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    2. Great thing to put on the internet. Typos be damned...Bix was a GREAT musician, his playing is wild and inventive, deliriously happy. It's almost impossible to believe he died at the age of 28. Terrific to know that in all likelihood he was gay. Thanks for posting this.

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  3. That was a common thing for most musical styles. It is of course no true Scotsman. And a generation of gay artists we call themselves the first gay X as a result.

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    1. I looked up "No True Scotsman":
      Jazz musician: "No jazz musician is gay."
      Me: "What about Bix Beiderbecke?
      Jazz musician "No real jazz musician is gay"

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    2. Yeah, but then you get gay meaning "attracted to other men" versus gay meaning "an entire social structure among MSM dating to the 1970s", which actually is markedly different from prior MSM social structures.

      Some of the younger kids have started saying mlm (men loving men) but I just think of pyramid schemes when I hear mlm.

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  4. I've always thought he was probably gay. Hunch that he and Trumbauer were in a bromance and Bix being a popular musician would have enjoyed the wild 20's and the "love that dare not speak its name". He just has that fluid gender-bending energy. In a way his music is very feminine. And never a word about a significant woman in his life. So yeah as soon as I came across this blog I was like "I KNEW it!" lol.

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  5. The novel and movie "The Young Man With a Horn" are said to be based on his life.

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