The Music of Bix Beiderbecke Arranged for Fingerstyle Guitar (DVD)

Grossman's Guitar Workshop
Level : Intermediate-Advanced
Taught by Ernie Hawkins

Books have been written about Bix Beiderbecke, movies have been made. His incandescent talent, meteoric rise and tragic death at 29: this is the stuff of myth and legend. We are fortunate that we have quite a few incomparable recordings. Although it is said that they only capture a shadow of Bix's sound, you can hear right away what the fuss was all about.

As Ernie Hawkins attempted to do with some Louis Armstrong songs in an earlier DVD set, (Louis and Bix, it is said, had opportunities to play together, and greatly admired each other), here he is playing and teaching some favorite Bix songs on guitar. Once again, the extraordinary fingerpicking style developed by Rev Gary Davis shines through, making this approach to the jazz of the 1920`s possible. These songs may be challenging, but they are fun and rewarding to learn and play.

This lesson is over 2 hours. They are multi-section compositions with lots of fi ngerpicking challenges. Ernie teaches phrase by phrase and then uses the split-screen so you can carefully study what each hand is doing. A detailed tab/music booklet is included as a PDF file on the DVD.