![]() Each July this city on the Mississippi holds the Bix Beiderbecke Memorial Jazz Festival, which draws roughly 15,000 jazz fans. ![]() For the past 30 years, Bix Beiderbecke has been something of a cottage industry in his hometown of Davenport, Iowa. And for four days, I’m a little emperor.”ĭon’t confuse Pospychala’s event with the “other” Bix fest. “But when you’re doing this, you get on a high. “This is way too much work, and I can’t trust anyone else to handle it,” Pospychala grumbles, trying to coordinate the details from his cluttered, pet-filled home in Libertyville. He’s also worrying about the lighting in the Racine banquet room, which is inadequate for live performance, and lining up other gigs for the musicians so that traveling to Wisconsin will be worth their while. It’s too expensive to ship the large instrument, and local music shops don’t have a clue what he’s talking about. Three weeks before this year’s event, Pospychala is frantically searching for an E-flat tuba for the West Jesmond Rhythm Kings, a hot-jazz band from England. “Some people spend that much on a car.” He adds, “I do this for my own heart.” Pospychala accepted on the condition that he pay them back–not necessarily an easy task, considering that he’s lost about $80,000 on the festival over the years. This year a group of supporters offered to front him several thousand dollars for a down payment on the Racine venue. The festival is a labor of love not only for him but for other hard-core Bix fans. But Pospychala managed to use his clout and cobble together enough funding to prove once again that Bix lives. This year’s event–starting February 28 in Racine, Wisconsin–almost didn’t happen. Last year’s “Tribute to Bix Beiderbecke” drew at least 350 attendees from 30 states and six foreign countries. You could easily be back in Chicago in the 20s, at the Savoy Bar and Grill on Michigan Avenue or at one of Bix’s smoky recording sessions. Add an imaginary cigar or cigarette (now that we’re in the smoke-free new millennium) and the music carries you to another time and place. Close your eyes, sip your beer, and listen. Once the bands start playing, the Kenosha Holiday Inn fades. The man throwing the party–as he’s done every year since 1990–is Phil Pospychala, who lives and breathes traditional jazz. The guest of honor is an ill-fated musical genius who’s been dead since 1931, Leon “Bix” Beiderbecke, whose transcendent cornet playing, hard drinking, and untimely death created a whole new musical archetype in the 1920s. The rest are onstage, playing a form of music known as “hot jazz.” It doesn’t look like a seance–most of the attendees are eating cake, sipping coffee and beer, and munching on sandwiches. In a gloomy March weekend in a windowless banquet room at the Kenosha Holiday Inn, a group of determined people are trying to raise the dead. ![]()
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