DUKES of Dixieland: Sound of Bix

As the title indicates, this recording salutes rather than imitates Bix Beiderbecke, who was only 28 when he died in 1931. Within these 52 minutes, the Dukes of Dixieland's fresh arrangements gracefully capture the spirit and evoke the feeling of the great jazz cornetist without attempting to re-create his recordings. During the few years in which he appeared on the music scene, Bix greatly expanded the vocabulary of jazz. Because of his harmonic explorations that reached into the future, he was probably the music's first modernist. By combining sensitivity and refinement with expressive force, he created some of the warmest sounds ever produced by a brass instrument. Sadly, his name appeared in print only three times while he was alive. (It appears a dozen times here!)