Sugar

Recorded by the Frankie Trumbauer Orchestra on October 26, 1927.

This recording is included in the discographies by Brian Rust, by Sudhalter and Evans, and by Evans and Evans. The recording is included in the Sunbeam set, but not in the Masters of Jazz set. In the liners for the latter, Marc Richard states:

“Why have so many compilers insisted on including the 26th October recording of Sugar in their reissues? Let us confirm once and for all: Bix does not play on this side. As to the actual identity of the trumpeter, we do not wish here to get bogged down in conjecture.”

Castelli, Kaleveld, and Pusateri in their Disco- Biography “The Bix Bands” state:

 The presence of Bix in “Sugar” is doubted by some, giving Ahola as a substitute. Ahola himself, and Rank, and also aural evidence confirm the presence of Bix, on an off-day. The lead trumpet (or cornet) is not Bix. Bix could be the second cornet heard in the intro “pass” after the 1st chorus and in the 4th chorus.

In “Bix, The Leon Bix Beiderbecke Story”, Phil and Linda Evans provide a detailed discussion:

Bill Rank and Chauncey Morehouse are certain the solo on Sugar is Bix.

Chauncey says Bix “was under duress”, and had to read his solo, thus causing confusion among collectors.

Some have attributed the solo to “Boe” Ashford. The record was played for “Boe” on 3/7/91, and he identified the cornet as Bix.

Bill vividly remembered the date.

Miff Mole was to have played on the Victor date (morning recording) but had forgotten it.

When Red called, Miff offered an excuse that he was working on his car and couldn’t repair it in time to make the recording. (Miff was then living on Long Island.) Bill made both recordings. In later years, as the doubts began to build questioning the solo as Bix, Dick Dupage (12/2/62) played the recording for Red Nichols and he stated he was quite certain the solo was Bix, playing a bit loaded.

Bill Rank’s opinion about this recording is presented in an interesting article published in “Storyville” # 22, pages 44-46, December 1968/January 1969. When Bill Rank visited England at age 64, he was interviewed by Laurie Wright. Richard M. Sudhalter and John R. T. Davies were present. In her account of the interview, Lauire Wright writes:

We continued to play records until we came to Trumbauer’s SUGAR when the inevitable question was asked as to who the cornet was. Bill listened for a moment and then said: You don’t know who THAT is? Why, that’s Bix.

Dick Sudhalter and John R. T. looked suitably surprised and pointed out that this was unlike Bix at all, but sounded very like Hooley, but Bill would have none of it.

That may not be the Bix you know but he had his off days too you know, man, I was there… and that’s Bix.

(Just for the record Dick and John remained unconvinced, but equally when Brian Rust questioned Hooley on this he denied his presence and said HE thought it was Bix).

Michael Brooks presents another detailed discussion (which follows very closely one presented by Sudhalter and Evans in Man and Legend) of this recording in the liners for the CD “Bix Beiderbecke, Volume 2, At the Jazz Band Ball”:

For years this was a controversial Bix item, not helped by the fact that only one of two cuts recorded that day was ever released.

Now unemployed, Trumbauer approached cornetist Red Nichols, one of the busiest freelancers in the business, with a proposition.
Tram was on a retainer with a music publishing company, so he suggested that Nichols record certain tune(s), augmenting his pick-up groups with a few Trumbauer sidemen, then Trumbauer would do the same, adding Nichols and a few others to his group.

Nichols agreed and on the morning of October 26, 1927, Trumbauer, Rank, Pee Wee, and Rollini went to the Victor studios on East 24th Street to join Nichols where they recorded “Sugar” and “Make My Cot…“
Nichols and some of his colleagues then showed up at Okeh that same afternoon to cut “Sugar” and “Did You Mean It?” with Tram.
Apparently Tommy Rockwell disliked Nichols, for as soon as he saw him he threw him out of the studio, thus ending a promising business partnership.

Supposedly Bix was under the weather, but Rockwell insisted “no Bix, no session”.
Tram located him in a speakeasy, but he was in no fit state to solo. Nichols denies bringing another horn man along, as already Tram had booked one. The obvious choice would have been Sylvester Ahola from the Club New Yorker, but Ahola states that he was not present and his meticulously kept diaries support him. There are two trumpets present in the ensemble, but the solo trumpet bears no resemblance to Bix’s style, nor does it resemble any of the better-known white New York trumpet players of the period (Phil Napoleon, Leo McConville, Chelsea Quealey).

More frustrating still, although the other side was never released and no copy is known to exist, a test of it was sent to Parlophone in London for possible release and rejected by the resident jazz expert, Edgar Jackson, who retained it until his collection was destroyed by a landmine in World War II.

To end the bizarre saga, “Sugar” was released under the name of Russell Gray and his Orchestra, a Texas bandleader who had never met Bix or Tram, and “Did You Mean It” was pressed on the back, remade by the Westerners, a totally non-jazz group.

 

Sudhalter and Evans write:

The eight-bar cornet or trumpet solo following the vocal bears little resemblance, stylistically or tonally, to any of Bix’s recorded work. No other trumpet players listed in the personnel, though two are clearly audible in the closing bars of the final ensemble.”

They continue:

“Who, then? The trumpet-playing brothers Bob and “Bo” Ashford had taken part on the Nichols Victor date that morning. “Bo” later became jazz trumpet soloist with Casa Loma, then with a band led by Ozzie Nelson. But virtually no examples of his style exist on record for comparison. The identity of the man who took the solo while Bix noodled in the corner of the studio may remain eternally unresolved.

We listened to the recording and to the solo, in particular, over and over. We feel that the quality of invention is very good but not necessarily Bixian. Moreover, the tone is totally different from that of Bix. On balance, it is clear to us that Bix did not play the solo.

Finally, it is fascinating to note that, when asked, musicians contemporaneous with Bix — Bill Rank, Chauncey Moorhead, Red Nichols, Sylvester Ahola — stated pretty categorically that the cornet in “Sugar” was played by Bix.

In contrast, current musicians, and experts on Bix’s sound at that  — Dick Sudhalter and John R. T. Davies — are equally categoric in their denial of Bix being responsible for the solo.

I am convinced that the solo is not by Bix. Therefore, I note that witnesses’ accounts taken thirty or forty years after events took place are not to be taken as clear and convincing evidence. Examples of the need to maintain a critical attitude are Andy Secrest’s own contradictory statements about “Waiting at the End of the Road”, or those of Frankie Trumbauer about the origin of the title “In A Mist”.