The Bix Centennial All Stars
‘Celebrating Bix’
Turtle Bay Records

The art of cornetist and composer Bix Beiderbecke was essentially about doing a lot with a little. His entire life spanned only 28 years, and his recording career a mere six. Furthermore, most of the music he left us was in the form of almost microscopically brief statements: Virtually every track was less than three minutes, and Beiderbecke’s own specific contributions have to be measured in increments of seconds.  

If that wasn’t enough, some of the melodies he was importuned to improvise upon were banal and uninspiring — not much to work with there — and in certain cases he was surrounded by less-than-ideal arrangements and mediocre vocalists. Yet, in spite of all this, he more than prevailed, giving us one of the most richly rewarding canons of work in all of American music.

To fully appreciate Bix, you have to follow that wisdom; it’s not enough to celebrate every record, every take, or even every chorus — you have to prize every phrase, every note. It’s in that spirit that “Celebrating Bix” seeks to take these often-astonishing miniatures, these diminutive gems and jewels and musical treasures, and expand upon them, open them up into something that is at once wholly new but at the same time illuminates the mastery of the original historical recordings.

Produced by Doug LaPasta, David White, and the saxophonist and clarinetist Dan Levinson, who also plays throughout, “Celebrating Bix” was originally recorded and released in 2002, in honor of the Beiderbecke centennial the following year. The producers assembled an impressive roster of vintage jazz specialists, many of whom were longtime members of Vince Giordano’s Nighthawks, including Mr. Giordano himself, playing mostly bass saxophone in the spirit of Beiderbecke’s frequent collaborator, Adrian Rollini. 

Twenty years ago, “Celebrating Bix” was rightfully hailed as one of the more impressive experiments in jazz repertoire, the idea of starting not merely with vintage songs but with actual improvisations themselves, and using those as the point of departure. Now, “Celebrating Bix” itself has been expanded into a two-disc, 90-minute package that includes three selections that were crowded out of the original release.  

On nearly every track, classic Bix solos have been scored for a section of two or three cornets, as has previously been done with those of, among others, Louis Armstrong, Lester Young, and Charlie Parker. That’s only the foundation: From there, the various arrangers, including the late Peter Ecklund and Mr. Levinson himself, recapture the feeling of Bix’s actual recordings without recreating them slavishly.  

They consistently build on the originals, in a sense reinterpreting them in the same way that Beiderbecke and his colleagues built on the material that they were given. In general, the time feel is looser and more openly swinging — though still with a traditional jazz two-beat — in a way that makes the music more accessible to contemporary ears.

Traditionally, Bix’s most iconic solo — his equivalent of Armstrong’s “West End Blues” — is the 1927 “Singin’ the Blues.”  Unlike “West End,” this 1920 song isn’t in actual 12-bar form, but Beiderbecke and his musical partner, the saxophonist Frank Trumbauer, take the melody and infuse it with the all-pervasive spirit of the blues. Like Ellington’s 1943 “The Blues,” it’s a profound contemplation of the blues itself.  

The new interpretation expands it into an intimate extravaganza, almost like a two-sided 78: It opens with Mr. Levinson stating J. Russell Robinson’s melody on clarinet, followed by a lush vocal from Barbara Rosene. Only then does the ensemble move into the classic Bix-Trumbauer record: The famous intro is goosed with a few notes from Bix’s own “In a Mist,” then we hear Trumbauer’s chorus scored for three c-melody saxophones (Mr. Levinson, Pete Martinez, and Scott Robinson), which has got to be a first.  The side climaxes with the Bix chorus played by Randy Sandke, Jon-Erik Kellso, and Dan Barrett on cornets. 

“I’m Coming Virginia” was another Beiderbecke milestone, not least because at two choruses, it’s the closest he ever came to an epic, one of his longest solos. Here it’s set up again by Ms. Rosene and Mr. Levinson’s clarinet. As the three cornets play the two choruses, the solo becomes something different: an extended meditation on the meaning of home.  

Walter Donaldson’s “Borneo,” on its face a lesser tune by a major songwriter, was the vehicle for one of the great chase choruses in jazz history, in which Bix and Trumbauer exchanged four-bar phrases back and forth.  

Here, that chorus is scored for three cornets playing call-and-response with three saxes. It’s preceded by a new chase chorus by two proponents of saxophone esoterica, Mr. Robinson on c-melody and Mr. Giordano on bass. There’s also an upgraded vocal chorus, sung by the Manhattan Rhythm Kings in the spirit of Paul Whiteman’s Rhythm Boys; it reminds us that all the singers here, including Ms. Rosene and James Langton on “From Monday On” and “Deep Down South,” are a substantial improvement on the originals, with the exception of those numbers sung by the young Bing Crosby.   

Some of the reinterpretations are so strong as to force us to upgrade our appreciation of the originals; I always dismissed “Trumbology” as an excuse for Trumbauer to indulge the more circus-esque aspects of his playing. The new version, which is one of the three tunes added to the new edition, shows exactly how Trumbauer served as a missing link between the earlier, novelty-style players like Rudy Weidoeft and later jazz stylists like Lester Young and Charlie Parker.

Beiderbecke’s life has always seemed like a cautionary tale that ran parallel to the roaring ’20s themselves; he was a sensitive, gentle soul who drank himself to death and robbed us all of his brilliance. Projects like these don’t exactly make up for that, but they help just the same.