Page "Bix Beiderbecke" Paragraph 53

When a musician hears Bix's solo on ' Singing the Blues ', he becomes aware after two bars that the soloist knows exactly what he is doing and that he has an exquisite sense of discord and resolution.

He knows also that this player is endowed with the rarest jazz gift of all, a sense of form which lends to an improvised performance a coherence which no amount of teaching can produce.

The listening musician, whatever his generation or his style, recognizes Bix as a modern, modernism being not a style but an attitude.