Bix 7 Road Race

The Bix 7 Road Race is held annually in Davenport, Iowa, as a commemoration to Davenport native and jazz musician Bix Beiderbecke. It is followed a week later by the Bix Beiderbecke Memorial Jazz Festival.

Race

The 7 mile road race is annually held during late July, in the streets of downtown Davenport, Iowa. The race was founded in 1975 by John Hudetz, a resident of Bettendorf, Iowa. After competing in the 1974 Boston Marathon, Hudetz was inspired to bring the excitement to the Quad-Cities with a race of his own. The inaugural race had a field consisting of eighty-four runners. Today the race is often run by 12,000 to 18,000 runners.

The United States’ boycott of the 1980 Olympics helped gain the Bix 7 exposure. Bill Rodgers, the world's top distance runner at the time, was unable to compete in Moscow, so he went to Davenport instead. The leadership of Race Director Ed Froehlich, promotion by the Quad-City Times newspaper, and generosity from several corporate sponsorships, has helped the Bix 7 develop into the largest non-marathon race in the Midwest, The race consistently draws elite talent from all over the globe. Running legends Bill Rodgers and 1984 Olympic Marathon Gold Medalist Joan Benoit Samuelson also compete yearly.

Bix Beiderbecke

Leon Bismark "Bix" Beiderbecke (March 10, 1903 – August 6, 1931) was an American jazz cornetist, jazz pianist, and composer.

With Louis Armstrong and Muggsy Spanier, Beiderbecke was one of the most influential jazz soloists of the 1920s. His turns on "Singin' the Blues" and "I'm Coming, Virginia" (both 1927), in particular, demonstrated an unusual purity of tone and a gift for improvisation. With these two recordings, especially, he helped to invent the jazz ballad style and hinted at what, in the 1950s, would become cool jazz. "In a Mist" (1927), one of a handful of his piano compositions and one of only two he recorded, mixed classical (Impressionist) influences with jazz syncopation.

A native of Davenport, Iowa, Beiderbecke taught himself to play cornet largely by ear, leading him to adopt a non-standard fingering some critics have connected to his original sound. He first recorded with Midwestern jazz ensembles, The Wolverines and The Bucktown Five in 1924, after which he played briefly for the Detroit-based Jean Goldkette Orchestra before joining Frankie "Tram" Trumbauer for an extended gig at the Arcadia Ballroom in St. Louis. Beiderbecke and Trumbauer joined Goldkette in 1926. The band toured widely and famously played a set opposite Fletcher Henderson at the Roseland Ballroom in New York City in October 1926. He made his greatest recordings in 1927 (see above). In 1928, Trumbauer and Beiderbecke left Detroit to join the best-known and most prestigious dance orchestra in the country: the New-York-based Paul Whiteman Orchestra.

Bix (rock group)

BIX is a rock band from Lithuania. The band was formed in 1987 in Šiauliai and in a few months became a cult band. After a period of intensive touring throughout Europe and the US they were the most experienced Baltic band, and probably the best known in the West. Recording never was a strong side of BIX since they were a 'live' band.

Their style of music may be described as post-punk with the elements of ska, Latin American music and funk.

Members

Discography

External links

Bix (disambiguation)

Bix Beiderbecke (1903 – 1931) was an American jazz musician.

Bix may also refer to:

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