Frank Trumbauer & Bix Beiderbecke: I'm Coming Virginia

In this, his longest solo, Bix is at the height of his powers. He eschews the gutbucket growls and half-valves that were just becoming popular with Duke Ellington and instead digs deep into the melody. In true Impressionist style, with all the manly restraint of Henry James, he suggests rather than declaims the tunes dark melancholy, taking Trumbauers solo the handoff is just perfect and gently refining it. His correlated phrases (Bixs term) build, one on top of the other, until Bix finally leaps up to a (relatively) high register and delivers what Richard Sudhalter rather dramatically described as Caravaggio-like shafts of light.