Books have been written about Bix Beiderbecke, movies have been made. His incandescent talent, meteoric rise and tragic death at 28: 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. Hopefully, learning this style via these songs will open the student to new possibilities.

This lesson is over 2 hours. The arrangements are for the intermediate to advance players. They are multi-section compositions with lots of fingerpicking challenges. But all your hard work will be very worthwhile as these tunes are some of the greatest in the early jazz repertoire. 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.

Titles include: Susie (of the Islands), I’m Coming Virginia, I Need Some Pettin’ and Stardust

139 minutes • Level 3/4 • Detailed tab/music PDF file on the DVD