Remembering Bix Beiderbecke

BEIDERBECKE, RAUCH, WIESE, KUEHL

Posted By: Jessica (email)
Date: 12/26/2021 at 13:46:19

Quad-City Times (Davenport, Iowa)
24 July 1988 (Sunday)
Page 65

[Newspaper section about Remembering Bix Beiderbecke]

Cantaloupes filled with ice cream -- how grand it seemed!

I knew Bix briefly because for about three years my mother, Anna Rauch Wiese, was a domestic helper for the Beiderbecke family. She also took care of his brother, Charles, and sister, Mary Louise.

His parents came to our house for dinner on occasion and we were invited to supper there.

I remember a meal when Bix was there, but the thing I recall most about it was not Bix, but that they had scooped-out cantaloupes filled with ice cream. I've never forgotten how grand that seemed.

Bix must have been about 14 or 15 then and I was six years younger. He ate with us, and i don't remember anything out of the ordinary about his conversation. He was just a normal-looking teen-ager.

But toward the end of the meal, he got up, put on a navy blue jacket, picked his horn up off the piano and walked out the door. I guess he had a job to play. That was the last time I ever saw him.

Marjorie Kuehl
Davenport