title: Biological pest control

text: Vertebrate animals tend to be generalist feeders, and seldom make good biological control agents; many of the classic cases of "biocontrol gone awry" involve vertebrates. For example, the cane toad ("Rhinella marina") was intentionally introduced to Australia to control the greyback cane beetle ("Dermolepida albohirtum"), and other pests of sugar cane. 102 toads were obtained from Hawaii and bred in captivity to increase their numbers until they were released into the sugar cane fields of the tropic north in 1935. It was later discovered that the toads could not jump very high and so were unable to eat the cane beetles which stayed on the upper stalks of the cane plants. However, the toad thrived by feeding on other insects and soon spread very rapidly; it took over native amphibian habitat and brought foreign disease to native toads and frogs, dramatically reducing their populations. Also, when it is threatened or handled, the cane toad releases poison from parotoid glands on its shoulders; native Australian species such as goannas, tiger snakes, dingos and northern quolls that attempted to eat the toad were harmed or killed. However, there has been some recent evidence that native predators are adapting, both physiologically and through changing their behaviour, so in the long run, their populations may recover.


title: Biological pest control

text: "Rhinocyllus conicus", a seed-feeding weevil, was introduced to North America to control exotic musk thistle ("Carduus nutans") and Canadian thistle ("Cirsium arvense"). However, the weevil also attacks native thistles, harming such species as the endemic Platte thistle ("Cirsium neomexicanum") by selecting larger plants (which reduced the gene pool), reducing seed production and ultimately threatening the species' survival. Similarly, the weevil "Larinus planus" was also used to try to control the Canadian thistle, but it damaged other thistles as well. This included one species classified as threatened.


title: Biological pest control

text: The small Asian mongoose ("Herpestus javanicus") was introduced to Hawaii in order to control the rat population. However, the mongoose was diurnal, and the rats emerged at night; the mongoose, therefore, preyed on the endemic birds of Hawaii, especially their eggs, more often than it ate the rats, and now both rats and mongooses threaten the birds. This introduction was undertaken without understanding the consequences of such an action. No regulations existed at the time, and more careful evaluation should prevent such releases now.


title: Biological pest control

text: The sturdy and prolific eastern mosquitofish ("Gambusia holbrooki") is a native of the southeastern United States and was introduced around the world in the 1930s and '40s to feed on mosquito larvae and thus combat malaria. However, it has thrived at the expense of local species, causing a decline of endemic fish and frogs through competition for food resources, as well as through eating their eggs and larvae. In Australia, control of the mosquitofish is the subject of discussion; in 1989 researchers A. H. Arthington and L. L. Lloyd stated that "biological population control is well beyond present capabilities".


title: Biological pest control

text: A potential obstacle to the adoption of biological pest control measures is that growers may prefer to stay with the familiar use of pesticides. However, pesticides have undesired effects, including the development of resistance among pests, and the destruction of natural enemies; these may in turn enable outbreaks of pests of other species than the ones originally targeted, and on crops at a distance from those treated with pesticides. One method of increasing grower adoption of biocontrol methods involves letting them learn by doing, for example showing them simple field experiments, enabling them to observe the live predation of pests, or demonstrations of parasitised pests. In the Philippines, early-season sprays against leaf folder caterpillars were common practice, but growers were asked to follow a 'rule of thumb' of not spraying against leaf folders for the first 30 days after transplanting; participation in this resulted in a reduction of insecticide use by 1/3 and a change in grower perception of insecticide use.


title: Biological pest control

text: Related to biological pest control is the technique of introducing sterile individuals into the native population of some organism. This technique is widely practised with insects: a large number of males sterilized by radiation are released into the environment, which proceed to compete with the native males for females. Those females that copulate with the sterile males will lay infertile eggs, resulting in a decrease in the size of the population. Over time, with repeated introductions of sterile males, this could result in a significant decrease in the size of the organism's population. A similar technique has recently been applied to weeds using irradiated pollen, resulting in deformed seeds that do not sprout.


title: Kuvempu

text: Kuppali Venkatappa Puttappa (29 December 1904 – 11 November 1994), popularly known by his pen name Kuvempu, was an Indian poet, playwright, novelist and critic. He is widely regarded as the greatest Kannada poet of the 20th century. He was the first Kannada writer to receive the Jnanpith Award.


title: Kuvempu

text: Kuvempu studied at Mysuru University in the 1920s, taught there for nearly three decades and served as its vice-chancellor from 1956 to 1960. He initiated education in Kannada as the language medium. For his contributions to Kannada Literature, the Government of Karnataka decorated him with the honorific "Rashtrakavi" ("National Poet") in 1964 and Karnataka Ratna ("The Gem of Karnataka") in 1992. He was conferred the Padma Vibhushan by the Government of India in 1988. He penned the Karnataka State Anthem Jaya Bharata Jananiya Tanujate.


title: Kuvempu

text: Kuvempu was born in Hirekodige, a village in Koppa taluk of Chikmagalur district and raised in Kuppalli, a village in Shivamogga district of the erstwhile Kingdom of Mysore (now in Karnataka) into to a Kannada-speaking Vokkaliga family. His mother Seethamma hailed from Koppa, Chikmagalur, while his father Venkatappa was from Kuppali, a village in


title: Kuvempu

text: Thirthahalli taluk (in present-day Shimoga district), where he was raised. Early in his childhood, Kuvempu was home-schooled by an appointed teacher from South Canara. He joined the Anglo-Vernacular school in Thirthahalli to continue his middle school education. Kuvempu's father died when he was only twelve. He finished his lower and secondary education in Kannada and English languages in Thirthahalli and moved to Mysore for further education at the Wesleyan High School. Thereafter, he pursued college studies at the Maharaja College of Mysore and graduated in 1929, majoring in Kannada.


title: Kuvempu

text: Kuvempu married Hemavathi on 30 April 1937. He was forced into enter marital life on this faculty out of Ramakrishna Mission. Kuvempu has two sons, Poornachandra Tejaswi and Kokilodaya Chaitra, and two daughters, Indukala and Tharini. Tharini is married to K.Chidananda Gowda the former Vice-Chancellor of Kuvempu University. His home in Mysore is called "Udayaravi". His son Poornachandra Tejaswi was a polymath, contributing significantly to Kannada literature, photography, calligraphy, digital imaging, social movements, and agriculture.


title: Kuvempu

text: Kuvempu began his academic career as a lecturer of Kannada language at the Maharaja's College in Mysore in 1929. He worked as an assistant professor in the Central college, Bangalore from 1936. He re-joined Maharaja's college in Mysore in 1946 as a professor. He went on to become the principal of the Maharaja's college in 1955. In 1956 he was selected as the Vice-Chancellor of Mysore University where he served till retirement in 1960. He was the first graduate from Mysore University to rise to that position.


title: Kuvempu

text: The childhood home of Kuvempu at Kuppali has been converted into a museum by Rashtrakavi Kuvempu Pratishtana (a trust dedicated to Kuvempu). This trust has undertaken immense developmental works in Kuppali to showcase Kuvempu and his works to the external world. On 23 November 2015 night, many valuables including the Padma Shri and Padma Bhushan awards conferred on poet laureate Kuvempu were stolen from Kavimane.


title: Kuvempu

text: The entire museum has been ransacked. The surveillance cameras there have also been damaged. The Jnanapith award kept there has remained intact..


title: Kuvempu

text: The gradually rising hill south of the house is named Kavishaila, Kuvempu's mortal remains were placed at Kavishaila.


title: Kuvempu

text: The Kuvempu University in Shimoga, Karnataka was established in 1987. The Vishwamanava Express was named in honour of Kuvempu's idea of "Vishwa Manava" ("Universal Man").


title: Simon Bolivar Buckner Jr.

text: Simon Bolivar Buckner Jr. ( ; July 18, 1886 – June 18, 1945) was a lieutenant general in the United States Army during World War II who served in the Pacific Theater. As commanding general of Alaska Defense Command, Buckner commanded American-Canadian forces in the Aleutian Islands campaign, including the Battle of Attu and the Kiska Expedition. Following that assignment, he was promoted to command the Tenth Army, which conducted the amphibious invasion of the Japanese island of Okinawa in 1945. He was killed during the closing days of the Battle of Okinawa by enemy artillery fire, making him the highest-ranking United States military officer lost to enemy fire during World War II.


title: Simon Bolivar Buckner Jr.

text: Buckner, Lesley J. McNair, Frank Maxwell Andrews, and Millard Harmon, all lieutenant generals at the time of their deaths, were the highest-ranking Americans to be killed in World War II. Buckner and McNair were posthumously promoted to the rank of four-star general on July 19, 1954, by a Special Act of Congress (Public Law 83-508).


title: Simon Bolivar Buckner Jr.

text: Buckner was the son of Confederate general Simon Bolivar Buckner and his wife Delia Hayes Claiborne. Buckner and his father are named after the Venezuelan soldier and statesman, Simón Bolívar, who led what are currently the countries of Colombia, Venezuela, Ecuador, Panama, Peru, and Bolivia to independence from the Spanish Empire. His father was Governor of Kentucky from 1887 to 1891, and was the Gold Democratic Party's candidate for Vice President of the United States in 1896. Buckner was raised near Munfordville, Kentucky, and accompanied his father on his 1896 presidential campaign when he served as the running mate of ex-Union general John M. Palmer.


title: Simon Bolivar Buckner Jr.

text: Buckner attended the Virginia Military Institute. When he turned 18 in the summer of 1904, his father asked President Theodore Roosevelt to grant him an appointment to West Point. Roosevelt granted this request and Buckner graduated in the class of 1908. He served two military tours in the Philippines, and wrote about his adventures in "Tales of the Philippines – In the Early 1900s". During World War I, he served as a temporary major, drilling discipline into aviator cadets.


title: Simon Bolivar Buckner Jr.

text: For the 17 years beginning May 1919, Buckner's assignments were not with troops but with military schools as follows: four years as tactical officer at the United States Military Academy, West Point, New York; one year as student at The Infantry School at Fort Benning, Georgia; four years at the Command and General Staff School, Ft. Leavenworth, Kansas, with the first year as a student (distinguished graduate), then three years as instructor; four years at the Army War College, Washington, D.C., with year one as student then three years as Executive Officer; four more years at West Point, as Assistant Commandant and Commandant of Cadets. At West Point, "His rule is remembered for constructive progressiveness, with a share of severity tempered with hard, sound sense, and justice." However, one cadet's parent commented: "Buckner forgets cadets are born, not quarried".


title: Simon Bolivar Buckner Jr.

text: Buckner was with troops for the rest of his career. In September 1936 he became Executive Officer of the 23rd Infantry Regiment at Ft. Sam Houston in Texas. Promoted to colonel in January 1937, he was given command of the 66th Infantry (Light Tank) at Ft. Meade in Maryland. In September 1938, he commanded of the 22nd Infantry at Ft. McClellan, Alabama. From November 1939 to August 1940 he was Chief of Staff of the 6th Division at Camp Jackson in South Carolina, Ft. Benning in Georgia, and Camp Beauregard in Louisiana.


title: Simon Bolivar Buckner Jr.

text: Buckner was promoted to brigadier general in 1940 and was assigned to fortify and protect Alaska as commander of the Army's Alaska Defense Command. He was promoted to major general in August 1941. Alaskan waters, including areas along the Aleutian Islands and into the Bering Sea coastline, had previously been reconnoitered by Imperial Japanese Naval vessels in the 1930s.


title: Simon Bolivar Buckner Jr.

text: The potential for some kind of action was considered seriously by both US and Canadian Forces. When the US was finally drawn into World War II, the defense of Alaska had already been underway - but no one knew the where, when or how the Japanese would attack. It came in a stunning surprise attack on Dutch Harbor 3–5 June 1942; farther west, Imperial Japanese forces seized the islands Kiska and Attu, bringing ashore some 7,000 troops (at Kiska) and nearly 3,000 at Attu.


title: Simon Bolivar Buckner Jr.

text: American commanders, including Buckner, feared that the Japanese would use the islands as bases to strike within range along the rest of the US West Coast. The West Coast was previously attacked several times in the past six months (including unrestricted submarine warfare in coastal waters, the bombardment of Ellwood in California and the bombardment of Fort Stevens in Oregon). Lieutenant Paul Bishop of the 28th Bombardment Group recalled that:


title: Simon Bolivar Buckner Jr.

text: Buckner gave orders in June 1942 for the indigenous Aleut people to be evacuated and for their villages to be burned. The Aleut people were not allowed to return until 1945, after the war was over. Buckner furthermore objected to the deployment of African American troops in Alaska, writing to his superiors of his concern that they would remain after the war, "with the natural result that they would interbreed with the Indians and the Eskimos and produce an astonishingly objectionable race of mongrels which would be a problem".


title: Simon Bolivar Buckner Jr.

text: The campaign to take back Attu Island took nearly a year. The Battle for Attu, Operation Landcrab, occurred across three weeks in May 1943. The casualties on both sides were high. On shore, some 549 US soldiers were killed, 1148 were wounded, and 1,814 suffered cold and disease. Of the 2,900 Japanese garrison, only 28 survived. Off shore and in the air overhead, many dozens of airmen and sailors of both sides lost their lives during the months of the Aleutian Campaign.


title: Simon Bolivar Buckner Jr.

text: Subsequently, in August 1943, Kiska was invaded by Canadian and US soldiers. Just as at Attu, the weather conspired to aid the enemy. An estimated 5,400 soldiers and sailors had been secretly withdrawn by the Imperial Navy under cover of fog prior to the arrival of allied forces. Allied commanders refused to believe that the Japanese could have completely evacuated Kiska. For eight days, troops searched the island, firing into the dense fog and sometimes accidentally shooting their comrades. 24 Allied soldiers were killed by friendly fire, four by Japanese booby traps, and a further 71 died when the ship "Abner Read" struck a floating mine. 168 Allied soldiers were wounded or fell ill on Kiska. The bombardment and invasion of the deserted island was written off as a “training exercise,” and the Aleutian Campaign officially ended after 439 days of warfare. This constituted the Aleutian Islands campaign. In 1943, he was promoted to lieutenant general.


title: Simon Bolivar Buckner Jr.

text: In July 1944, Buckner was sent to Hawaii to organize the Tenth Army, which was composed of both Army and Marine Corps units. The original mission of the Tenth Army was to prepare for the invasion of Taiwan; however, this operation was canceled, and Buckner's command was instead ordered to prepare for the Battle of Okinawa. Beginning on April 1, 1945, this turned out to be one of the largest, slowest, and bloodiest sealandair battles in American military history. Despite historic amphibious assets, Buckner insisted on a frontal assault on the dug-in Japanese, although extremely costly in American lives, his strategy was ultimately successful. Late in the battle, Buckner failed to realize that the Japanese were pulling back to a secondary defensive line, allowing the Japanese to avoid destruction and escape with a significant force. Reducing this force in the southern part of the island cost enormous casualties, especially among the civilian population, who were trapped in the battle zone.


title: Simon Bolivar Buckner Jr.

text: A quote of his from 1945 was reported in the newspapers back home when he said that he intended to Christianize the Japanese and that "the best way to do that was to give them a Christian burial".


title: Simon Bolivar Buckner Jr.

text: On June 18, Buckner arrived in his command jeep which was flying its standard 3-star flag to visit a forward observation post on a ridge approximately behind the front lines, as Marine infantry advanced on the Japanese-held Ibaru Ridge. Visits from the general were not always welcome as his presence frequently drew enemy fire, usually as he was departing. Buckner had arrived with his standard three stars showing on the front of his steel helmet and a nearby Marine outpost sent a signal to Buckner's position stating that they could clearly see the general's three stars on his helmet. Told of this, Buckner replaced his own helmet with an unmarked one.


title: Simon Bolivar Buckner Jr.

text: As Buckner stood at the outpost, a small flat-trajectory Japanese artillery shell of unknown caliber (estimated to have been 47mm) struck a coral rock outcrop near him, and fragments pierced his chest. Buckner was carried by stretcher to a nearby aid station, where he died on the operating table. He was succeeded in command by Marine General Roy Geiger. Total American deaths during the battle of Okinawa were 12,513.


title: Simon Bolivar Buckner Jr.

text: Buckner was married to Adele Blanc Buckner (1893–1988). They had three children: Simon Bolivar Buckner III, Mary Blanc Buckner, and William Claiborne Buckner.


title: My Summer Car

text: My Summer Car is a vehicle simulation game in development by Amistech Games. It was released in early access in October 2016.


title: My Summer Car

text: "My Summer Car" is set in the fictional area of Peräjärvi, Finland, during the summer of 1995. The main character is an 18-year-old who has the family home to himself while his parents are on holiday in Tenerife. The player attempts to assemble, restore, and upgrade a car, the Satsuma AMP (modeled after the Datsun 100A). In order to do this, the player must use the car parts that are inside the garage, as well as occasionally order new parts from a catalog.<br>


title: My Summer Car

text: At the start of the game, the car is entirely disassembled, and the player must place each part in its correct location, screwing in the bolts with the correct sized spanners. The player is not given any direction by the game as to how to build the car. While most parts only fit together correctly, it is possible to assemble the car incorrectly by leaving out or improperly placing parts such as an engine gasket or a bolt. Failing to assemble the car properly can lead to vehicle failure if the car is driven. In addition to assembly, the player must provide the car with gasoline, motor oil, radiator coolant, and brake fluid.<br>


title: My Summer Car

text: In addition to building the vehicle, the player must address the various survival aspects of the game, such as balancing hunger, thirst, fatigue, urine, stress, and dirtiness. In order to take care of his needs, the player can buy food, beverages, and other supplies from the store. The player may also use the facilities at his house, such as the sink, shower, sauna, toilet, and bed. The player's needs can also be addressed through swimming in the lake, drinking alcohol, smoking, or successfully performing tasks related to the completion of the car.<br>


title: My Summer Car

text: To earn money for car parts, fuel, and shopping at the store, the player can perform various side-tasks for people around the area. The tasks are performed either using materials from the player's property, or with the various pre-assembled vehicles that the player can access. The tasks include taking junk cars to the mechanic, delivering firewood on a tractor-pulled trailer, using a vacuum truck to empty the septic tanks of neighbors, making and selling kilju (Finnish homebrew sugar wine), and picking up an intoxicated neighbor from the town pub early in the morning.


title: My Summer Car

text: After the Satsuma passes inspection at the vehicle inspection office, the player can install certain aftermarket parts that enable the player to enter a weekly amateur rally for a chance to win a trophy and prize money.<br>


title: My Summer Car

text: In addition to these vehicles, there are several other vehicles that the player can obtain in the game. The player has access to a cargo van with a large carrying capacity, a two-stroke moped, and a two-stroke launch at a nearby dock that allows for travel across the map's lake. The player can borrow a muscle car from the local mechanic while he is servicing the player's vehicle, but the mechanic will trash the player's vehicle if the muscle car isn't returned on time. The player can also win a dilapidated station wagon that's infested with a wasp's nest from a ventti dealer.<br>


title: My Summer Car

text: "My Summer Car" is primarily developed by a small independent development team consisting of Johannes Rojola ("ToplessGun"/"RoyalJohnLove") and Kaarina Rojola, with third parties assisting on music and voiceovers. Closed development and beta testing of the game had been documented as early as December 2013, with snippets of the development's progress seen on Rojola's YouTube channel and Twitter account. The game was released as an early access game via Steam's Greenlight program on October 24, 2016. Since then, the game has been incrementally updated with new features and overhauls several times.<br>


title: My Summer Car

text: A sequel, "My Winter Car", was originally announced on May 29, 2020, but the release of the game has been delayed. In 2022, the game's developer published cryptically interpretable information about the game's possible release date on Steam.


title: My Summer Car

text: The game received generally positive reviews. Writing for "Rock, Paper, Shotgun", Brendan Caldwell called the game "Funny, detailed and thoroughly confusing." Nathan Grayson, in an article for "Kotaku", called the game "Janky and weird as fuck, but fun." Both the "Rock, Paper, Shotgun" article and "Eurogamer"'s Martin Robinson compared the game's difficulty curve to "Dark Souls".


title: My Summer Car

text: "My Summer Car" has also received a number of awards and honors from the Finnish gaming community. At the 2017 , the game won the People's Choice Game of the Year 2016 "Kyöpelit" award. In 2018, "My Summer Car" was inducted into the Finnish Museum of Games among the museum's 100 game entries of that year.


title: Bix Beiderbecke

text: Leon Bismark "Bix" Beiderbecke (March 10, 1903 – August 6, 1931) was an American jazz cornetist, pianist and composer.


title: Bix Beiderbecke

text: Beiderbecke was one of the most influential jazz soloists of the 1920s, a cornet player noted for an inventive lyrical approach and purity of tone, with such clarity of sound that one contemporary famously described it like "shooting bullets at a bell. His solos on seminal recordings such as "Singin' the Blues" and "I'm Coming, Virginia" (both 1927) demonstrate a gift for extended improvisation that heralded the jazz ballad style, in which jazz solos are an integral part of the composition. Moreover, his use of extended chords and an ability to improvise freely along harmonic as well as melodic lines are echoed in post-WWII developments in jazz. "In a Mist" (1927) is the best known of Beiderbecke's published piano compositions and the only one that he recorded. His piano style reflects both jazz and classical (mainly impressionist) influences. All five of his piano compositions were published by Robbins Music during his lifetime.


title: Bix Beiderbecke

text: A native of Davenport, Iowa, Beiderbecke taught himself to play the cornet largely by ear, leading him to adopt a non-standard fingering technique that informed his unique style. He first recorded with Midwestern jazz ensemble The Wolverines in 1924, after which he played briefly for the Detroit-based Jean Goldkette Orchestra before joining Frankie "Tram" Trumbauer for an extended engagement at the Arcadia Ballroom in St. Louis, also under the auspices of Goldkette's organisation. Beiderbecke and Trumbauer joined Goldkette's main band at the Graystone Ballroom in Detroit in 1926. The band toured widely and famously played a set opposite Fletcher Henderson at the Roseland Ballroom in New York City in . He made his greatest recordings in 1927. The Goldkette band folded in September 1927 and, after briefly joining bass saxophone player Adrian Rollini's band in New York, Trumbauer and Beiderbecke joined America's most popular dance band: Paul Whiteman and his Orchestra.


title: Bix Beiderbecke

text: Beiderbecke's most influential recordings date from his time with Goldkette and Whiteman, although he also recorded under his own name and that of Trumbauer's. The Whiteman period marked a precipitous decline in his health due to his increasing use of alcohol. Treatment for alcoholism in rehabilitation centers, with the support of Whiteman and the Beiderbecke family, failed to stop his decline. He left the Whiteman band in 1929 and in the summer of 1931 died aged 28 in his Sunnyside, Queens, New York apartment.


title: Bix Beiderbecke

text: His death, in turn, gave rise to one of the original legends of jazz. In magazine articles, musicians' memoirs, novels, and Hollywood films, Beiderbecke has been envisaged as a Romantic hero, the "Young Man with a Horn" (a novel, later made into a movie starring Kirk Douglas, Lauren Bacall, Doris Day, and his friend Hoagy Carmichael). His life has often been portrayed as that of a jazz musician who had to compromise his art for the sake of commercialism. Beiderbecke remains the subject of scholarly controversy regarding his full name, the cause of his death and the importance of his contributions to jazz.


title: Bix Beiderbecke

text: He composed or played on recordings that are jazz classics and standards such as "Davenport Blues", "In a Mist", "Copenhagen", "Riverboat Shuffle", "Singin' the Blues", and "Georgia on My Mind".


title: Bix Beiderbecke

text: The son of Bismark Herman Beiderbecke and Agatha Jane Hilton, Bix Beiderbecke was born on March 10, 1903, in Davenport, Iowa. There is disagreement over whether Beiderbecke was christened Leon Bix or Leon Bismark and nicknamed "Bix". His father was nicknamed "Bix", as was his older brother, Charles Burnette "Burnie" Beiderbecke. Burnie Beiderbecke claimed that the boy was named Leon Bix and biographers have reproduced birth certificates that agree. More recent research — which takes into account church and school records in addition to the will of a relative — suggests he was named Leon Bismark. Regardless, his parents called him Bix, which seems to have been his preference. In a letter to his mother when he was nine years old, Beiderbecke signed off, "frome your Leon Bix Beiderbecke not Bismark Remeber ".


title: Bix Beiderbecke

text: The son of German immigrants, Beiderbecke's father was a well-to-do coal and lumber merchant named after Otto von Bismarck of his native Germany. Beiderbecke's mother was the daughter of a Mississippi riverboat captain. She played the organ at Davenport's First Presbyterian Church and encouraged young Beiderbecke's interest in the piano.


title: Bix Beiderbecke

text: Beiderbecke was the youngest of three children. His brother, Burnie, was born in 1895, and his sister, Mary Louise, in 1898. He began playing piano at age two or three. His sister recalls that he stood on the floor and played it with his hands over his head. Five years later, he was the subject of an admiring article in the "Davenport Daily Democrat" that proclaimed, "Seven-year-old boy musical wonder! Little Bickie Beiderbecke plays any selection he hears."


title: Bix Beiderbecke

text: Burnie recalled that he stopped coming home for supper to hurry to the riverfront, slip aboard an excursion boat, and play the calliope. A friend remembered that Beiderbecke showed little interest in the Saturday matinees they attended, but as soon as the lights came on he rushed home to duplicate the melodies the accompanist had played.


title: Bix Beiderbecke

text: When Burnie returned to Davenport at the end of 1918 after serving stateside during World War I, he brought with him a Victrola phonograph and several records, including "Tiger Rag" and "Skeleton Jangle" by the Original Dixieland Jazz Band. From these records, Beiderbecke learned to love hot jazz; he taught himself to play cornet by listening to Nick LaRocca's horn lines. He also listened to jazz from the riverboats that docked in downtown Davenport. Louis Armstrong and the drummer Baby Dodds claimed to have met Beiderbecke when their excursion boat stopped in Davenport. Historians disagree over whether such an event occurred.


title: Bix Beiderbecke

text: Beiderbecke attended Davenport High School from 1918 to 1921. During this time, he sat in and played professionally with various bands, including those of Wilbur Hatch, Floyd Bean, and Carlisle Evans. In the spring of 1920 he performed for the school's Vaudeville Night, singing in a vocal quintet called the Black Jazz Babies and playing his cornet. At the invitation of his friend Fritz Putzier, he subsequently joined Neal Buckley's Novelty Orchestra. The group was hired for a gig in December 1920, but a complaint was lodged with the American Federation of Musicians, Local 67, that the boys did not have union cards. In an audition before a union executive, Beiderbecke was forced to sight read and failed. He did not earn his card.


title: Bix Beiderbecke

text: On April 22, 1921, a month after he turned 18, Beiderbecke was arrested by two Davenport police officers on an accusation that he had taken a five-year-old girl named Sarah Ivens into a neighbor's garage and committed a lewd and lascivious act with her—a statutory felony in Iowa. According to the police ledger, the girl accused Beiderbecke of "putting his hands on her person outside of her dress." The ledger went on to state that Beiderbecke and the girl "were in an auto in the garage and he closed the door on the girl and she hollered," attracting the attention of two young men who were across the street. The young men "went over [to the garage] and the girl went home." Beiderbecke was released after a $1,500 bail bond was posted. Sarah's father, Preston Ivens, requested that the Scott County grand jury drop the charge to avoid "harm that would result to her in going over this case," and in September 1921, the grand jury returned no indictment, whereupon the County Attorney filed a dismissal of the case. It is not clear from the official documents if Sarah herself had identified Beiderbecke, but the two young men had told her father, when he questioned them a day after the alleged incident, that they had seen Beiderbecke take the girl into the garage. The surviving official documents concerning the arrest and its aftermath – including two police entries and Preston Ivens' grand jury testimony – were first made available in 2001 by Professor Albert Haim on the Bixography website. Jean Pierre Lion in his 2005 biography discussed the incident briefly and printed the texts of the documents. Earlier biographies had not reported the alleged incident.


title: Bix Beiderbecke

text: In September 1921, Beiderbecke enrolled at the Lake Forest Academy, a boarding school north of Chicago in Lake Forest, Illinois. While historians have traditionally suggested that his parents sent him to Lake Forest to discourage his interest in jazz, others believe that he may have been sent away in response to his arrest. Regardless, Mr. and Mrs. Beiderbecke apparently felt that a boarding school would provide their son with both the faculty attention and discipline required to improve his academic performance, necessitated by the fact that Bix had failed most courses in high school, remaining a junior in 1921 despite turning 18 in March of that year. His interests, however, remained limited to music and sports. In pursuit of the former, Beiderbecke often visited Chicago to listen to jazz bands at night clubs and speakeasies, including the infamous Friar's Inn, where he sometimes sat in with the New Orleans Rhythm Kings. He also traveled to the predominantly African-American South Side to listen to classic black jazz bands such as King Oliver's Creole Jazz Band, which featured Louis Armstrong on second cornet. "Don't think I'm getting hard, Burnie," he wrote to his brother, "but I'd go to hell to hear a good band." On campus, he helped organize the Cy-Bix Orchestra with drummer Walter "Cy" Welge and almost immediately got into trouble with the Lake Forest headmaster for performing indecorously at a school dance.


title: Bix Beiderbecke

text: Beiderbecke often failed to return to his dormitory before curfew, and sometimes stayed off-campus the next day. In the early morning hours of May 20, 1922, he was caught on the fire escape to his dormitory, attempting to climb back into his room. The faculty voted to expel him the next day, due both to his academic failings and his extracurricular activities, which included drinking. The headmaster informed Beiderbecke's parents by letter that following his expulsion school officials confirmed that Beiderbecke "was drinking himself and was responsible, in part at least, in having liquor brought into the School." Soon after, Beiderbecke began pursuing a career in music.


title: Bix Beiderbecke

text: He returned to Davenport briefly in the summer of 1922, then moved to Chicago to join the Cascades Band, working that summer on Lake Michigan excursion boats. He gigged around Chicago until the fall of 1923, at times returning to Davenport to work for his father.


title: Bix Beiderbecke

text: Beiderbecke joined the Wolverine Orchestra late in 1923, and the seven-man group first played a speakeasy called the Stockton Club near Hamilton, Ohio. Specializing in hot jazz and recoiling from so-called sweet music, the band took its name from one of its most frequent numbers, Jelly Roll Morton's "Wolverine Blues." During this time, Beiderbecke also took piano lessons from a young woman who introduced him to the works of Eastwood Lane. Lane's piano suites and orchestral arrangements were self-consciously American whilst also having French Impressionist allusions, and influenced Beiderbecke's style, especially on "In a Mist." A subsequent gig at Doyle's Dance Academy in Cincinnati became the occasion for a series of band and individual photographs that resulted in the image of Beiderbecke—sitting fresh-faced, his hair perfectly combed and his cornet resting on his right knee.


title: Bix Beiderbecke

text: On February 18, 1924, the Wolverines made their first recordings. Two sides were waxed that day at the Gennett Records studios in Richmond, Indiana: "Fidgety Feet", written by Nick LaRocca and Larry Shields from the Original Dixieland Jazz Band, and "Jazz Me Blues", written by Tom Delaney. Beiderbecke's solo on the latter heralded something new and significant in jazz, according to biographers Richard M. Sudhalter and Philip R. Evans:


title: Bix Beiderbecke

text: Both qualities—complementary or "correlated" phrasing and cultivation of the vocal, "singing" middle-range of the cornet—are on display in Bix's "Jazz Me Blues" solo, along with an already discernible inclination for unusual accidentals and inner chordal voices. It is a pioneer record, introducing a musician of great originality with a pace-setting band. And it astonished even the Wolverines themselves.


title: Bix Beiderbecke

text: The Wolverines recorded 15 sides for Gennett Records between February and October 1924. The titles revealed a strong and well-formed cornet talent. His lip had strengthened from earlier, more tentative years; on nine of the Wolverines' recorded titles he proceeds commandingly from lead to opening solo without any need for a respite from playing.


title: Bix Beiderbecke

text: In some respects, Beiderbecke's playing was "sui generis", but he nevertheless listened to, and learned from, the music around him: from the Dixieland jazz as exemplified by the Original Dixieland Jazz Band; to the hotter Chicago style of the New Orleans Rhythm Kings and the south-side bands of King Oliver and other black artists; to the classical compositions of Claude Debussy and Maurice Ravel.


title: Bix Beiderbecke

text: Louis Armstrong also provided a source of inspiration, though Beiderbecke's style was very different from that of Armstrong, according to The Oxford Companion to Jazz:Where Armstrong's playing was bravura, regularly optimistic, and openly emotional, Beiderbecke's conveyed a range of intellectual alternatives. Where Armstrong, at the head of an ensemble, played it hard, straight, and true, Beiderbecke, like a shadowboxer, invented his own way of phrasing "around the lead." Where Armstrong's superior strength delighted in the sheer power of what a cornet could produce, Beiderbecke's cool approach invited rather than commanded you to listen.Armstrong tended to accentuate showmanship and virtuosity, whereas Beiderbecke emphasized melody, even when improvising, and rarely strayed into the upper reaches of the register. Mezz Mezzrow recounted in his autobiography driving 53 miles to Hudson Lake, Indiana with Frank Teschemacher in order to play Armstrong's "Heebie Jeebies" for Beiderbecke when it was released. In addition to listening to Armstrong's records, Beiderbecke and other white musicians patronized the Sunset Café on Fridays to listen to Armstrong and his band. Paul Mares of the New Orleans Rhythm Kings insisted that Beiderbecke's chief influence was the New Orleans cornetist Emmett Hardy, who died in 1925 at the age of 23. Indeed, Beiderbecke had met Hardy and the clarinetist Leon Roppolo in Davenport in 1921 when the two joined a local band and played in town for three months. Beiderbecke apparently spent time with them, but it is difficult to discern the degree to which Hardy's style influenced Beiderbecke's—especially since there is no publicly known recording of a Hardy performance.


title: Bix Beiderbecke

text: Beiderbecke certainly found a kindred musical spirit in Hoagy Carmichael, whose amusingly unconventional personality he also appreciated. The two became firm friends. A law student and aspiring pianist and songwriter, Carmichael invited the Wolverines to play at the Bloomington campus of Indiana University in the spring of 1924. On May 6, 1924, the Wolverines recorded a tune Carmichael had written especially for Beiderbecke and his colleagues: "Riverboat Shuffle".


title: Bix Beiderbecke

text: During an engagement at the Cinderella Ballroom in New York during September–October 1924, Bix tendered his resignation with the Wolverines, leaving to join Jean Goldkette and his Orchestra in Detroit, but Beiderbecke's tenure with the band proved to be short-lived. Goldkette recorded for the Victor Talking Machine Company, whose musical director, Eddie King, objected to Beiderbecke's modernistic style of jazz playing. Moreover, despite the fact that Beiderbecke's position within the Goldkette band was "third trumpet", a less taxing role than 1st or 2nd trumpet, he struggled with the complex ensemble passages due to his limited reading abilities. After a few weeks, Beiderbecke and Goldkette agreed to part company, but to keep in touch, with Goldkette advising Beiderbecke to brush up on his reading and learn more about music. Some six weeks after leaving the band, Bix arranged a Gennett recording session back in Richmond with some of the Goldkette band members, under the name Bix and His Rhythm Jugglers. On January 26, 1925, they set two tunes to wax: "Toddlin' Blues", another number by LaRocca and Shields, and Beiderbecke's own composition, "Davenport Blues", which subsequently became a classic jazz number, recorded by musicians ranging from Bunny Berigan to Ry Cooder and Geoff Muldaur. An arrangement of "Davenport Blues" as a piano solo was published by Robbins Music in 1927.


title: Bix Beiderbecke

text: In February 1925, Beiderbecke enrolled at the University of Iowa in Iowa City. His stint in academia was even briefer than his time in Detroit, however. When he attempted to pack his course schedule with music, his guidance counselor forced him instead to take religion, ethics, physical education, and military training. It was an institutional blunder that Benny Green described as being, in retrospect, "comical," "fatuous," and "a parody." Beiderbecke promptly began to skip classes, and after he participated in a drunken incident in a local bar, he was expelled. According to Lion, he was not expelled, but quit (pp. 94–95).</ref> That summer he played with his friends Don Murray and Howdy Quicksell at a lake resort in Michigan. The band was run by Goldkette, and it put Beiderbecke in touch with another musician he had met before: the C-melody saxophone player Frankie Trumbauer. The two hit it off, both personally and musically, despite Trumbauer having been warned by other musicians: "Look out, he's trouble. He drinks and you'll have a hard time handling him." They were inseparable for much of the rest of Beiderbecke's career, with Trumbauer acting as something of a guardian to Beiderbecke. When Trumbauer organized a band for an extended run at the Arcadia Ballroom in St. Louis, Beiderbecke joined him. There he also played alongside the clarinetist Pee Wee Russell, who praised Beiderbecke's ability to drive the band. "He more or less made you play whether you wanted to or not," Russell said. "If you had any talent at all he made you play better."


title: Bix Beiderbecke

text: In the spring of 1926, Bix and Trumbauer joined Goldkette's main dance band, splitting the year between playing a Summer season at a Goldkette-owned resort on Lake Hudson, Indiana and headlining at Detroit's Graystone Ballroom, which was also owned by Goldkette. In October 1926, Goldkette's "Famous Fourteen", as they came to be called, opened at the Roseland Ballroom in New York City opposite the Fletcher Henderson Orchestra, one of the East Coast's outstanding African American big bands. The Roseland promoted a "Battle of the Bands" in the local press and, on October 12, after a night of furious playing, Goldkette's men were declared the winners. "We […] were amazed, angry, morose, and bewildered," Rex Stewart, Fletcher's lead trumpeter, said of listening to Beiderbecke and his colleagues play. He called the experience "most humiliating". On October 15, 1931, a few months after Beiderbecke's death, the Fletcher Henderson Orchestra recorded a version of "Singin' the Blues" that included Rex Stewart performing a nearly note-for-note homage to Beiderbecke's most famous solo.


title: Bix Beiderbecke

text: Although the Goldkette Orchestra recorded numerous sides for Victor during this period, none of them showcases Beiderbecke's most famous solos. The band found itself subjected to the commercial considerations of the popular music sector that Victor deliberately targeted the band's recordings at. The few exceptions to the policy include "My Pretty Girl" and "Clementine", the latter being one of the band's final recordings and its effective swan song. In addition to these commercial sessions with Goldkette, Beiderbecke and Trumbauer also recorded under their own names for the OKeh label; Bix waxed some of his best solos as a member of Trumbauer's recording band, starting with "Clarinet Marmalade" and "Singin' the Blues", recorded on February 4, 1927. Again with Trumbauer, Beiderbecke re-recorded Carmichael's "Riverboat Shuffle" in May and delivered two further seminal solos a few days later on "I'm Coming, Virginia" and "Way Down Yonder in New Orleans". Beiderbecke earned co-writing credit with Trumbauer on "For No Reason at All in C", recorded under the name Tram, Bix and Eddie (in their Three Piece Band). Beiderbecke switched between cornet and piano on that number, and then in September played only piano for his recording of "In A Mist". This was perhaps the most fruitful year of his short career.


title: Bix Beiderbecke

text: Under financial pressure, Goldkette folded his premier band in September 1927 in New York. Paul Whiteman hoped to snatch up Goldkette's best musicians for his traveling orchestra, but Beiderbecke, Trumbauer, Murray, Bill Rank, Chauncey Morehouse, and Frank Signorelli instead joined the bass saxophone player Adrian Rollini at the Club New Yorker. The band also included guitarist Eddie Lang and violinist Joe Venuti, who had often recorded on a freelance basis with the Goldkette Orchestra. Another newcomer was Sylvester Ahola, a schooled trumpeter who could play improvised jazz solos and read complex scores. When Ahola introduced himself, Beiderbecke famously stated "Hell, I'm only a musical degenerate". When that job ended sooner than expected, in October 1927, Beiderbecke and Trumbauer signed on with Whiteman. They joined his orchestra in Indianapolis on October 27.


title: Bix Beiderbecke

text: Benny Green, in particular, derided Whiteman for being a mere "mediocre vaudeville act", and suggesting that "today we only tolerate the horrors of Whiteman's recordings at all in the hope that here and there a Bixian fragment will redeem the mess." Richard Sudhalter has responded by suggesting that Beiderbecke saw the Whiteman band as an opportunity to pursue musical ambitions that did not stop at jazz:


title: Bix Beiderbecke

text: Colleagues have testified that, far from feeling bound or stifled by the Whiteman orchestra, as Green and others have suggested, Bix often felt a sense of exhilaration. It was like attending a music school, learning and broadening: formal music, especially the synthesis of the American vernacular idiom with a more classical orientation, so much sought-after in the 1920s, were calling out to him.


title: Bix Beiderbecke

text: Beiderbecke is featured on a number of Whiteman recordings, including "From Monday On", "Back In Your Own Back Yard", "You Took Advantage Of Me", "Sugar", "Changes" and "When". These feature specially written arrangements that emphasize Beiderbecke's improvisational skills. Bill Challis, an arranger who had also worked in this capacity for Jean Goldkette, was particularly sympathetic in writing scores with Beiderbecke in mind, sometimes arranging entire ensemble passages based on solos that Bix played. Beiderbecke also played on several notable hit records recorded by Whiteman, such as "Together", "Ramona" and "Ol' Man River", the latter featuring Bing Crosby on vocals.


title: Bix Beiderbecke

text: The heavy touring and recording schedule with Whiteman's orchestra may have exacerbated Beiderbecke's long-term alcoholism, though this is a contentious point. Whiteman's violinist Matty Malneck said "The work was so hard, you almost had to drink" adding "He didn't get to play the things he loved with the Whiteman band because we were a symphonic band and we played the same thing every night, and it got to be tiresome."


title: Bix Beiderbecke

text: On November 30, 1928, whilst on tour in Cleveland, Beiderbecke suffered what Lion terms "a severe nervous crisis" and Sudhalter and Evans suggest "was in all probability an acute attack of delirium tremens", presumably triggered by Beiderbecke's attempt to curb his alcohol intake. "He cracked up, that's all", trombonist Bill Rank said. "Just went to pieces; broke up a roomful of furniture in the hotel."


title: Bix Beiderbecke

text: In February 1929, Beiderbecke returned home to Davenport to convalesce and was hailed by the local press as "the world's hottest cornetist". He then spent the summer with Whiteman's band in Hollywood in preparation for the shooting of a new talking picture, "The King of Jazz". Production delays prevented any real work from being done on the film, leaving Beiderbecke and his pals plenty of time to drink heavily. By September, he was back in Davenport, where his parents helped him to seek treatment. He spent a month, from October 14 until November 18, at the Keeley Institute in Dwight, Illinois. According to Lion, an examination by Keeley physicians confirmed the damaging effects of Bix's long-term reliance on alcohol: "Bix admitted to having used liquor 'in excess' for the past nine years, his daily dose over the last three years amounting to three pints of 'whiskey' and twenty cigarettes...A Hepatic dullness was obvious, 'knee jerk could not be obtained' – which confirmed the spread of the polyneuritis, and Bix was 'swaying in Romberg position' – standing up with his eyes closed".


title: Bix Beiderbecke

text: While he was away, Whiteman famously kept his chair open in Beiderbecke's honor, in the hope that he would occupy it again. However, when he returned to New York at the end of January 1930, Beiderbecke did not rejoin Whiteman and performed only sparingly. On his last recording session, in New York, on September 15, 1930, Beiderbecke played on the original recording of Hoagy Carmichael's new song, "Georgia on My Mind", with Carmichael doing the vocals, Eddie Lang on guitar, Joe Venuti on violin, Jimmy Dorsey on clarinet and alto saxophone, Jack Teagarden on trombone, and Bud Freeman on tenor saxophone. The song would go on to become a jazz and popular music standard. In 2014, the 1930 recording of "Georgia on My Mind" was inducted into the Grammy Hall of Fame.


title: Bix Beiderbecke

text: Beiderbecke's playing had an influence on Carmichael as a composer. One of his compositions, "Stardust", was inspired by Beiderbecke's improvisations, with a cornet phrase reworked by Carmichael into the song's central theme. Bing Crosby, who sang with Whiteman, also cited Beiderbecke as an important influence. "Bix and all the rest would play and exchange ideas on the piano", he said.


title: Bix Beiderbecke

text: With all the noise [of a New York pub] going on, I don't know how they heard themselves, but they did. I didn't contribute anything, but I listened and learned […] I was now being influenced by these musicians, particularly horn men. I could hum and sing all of the jazz choruses from the recordings made by Bix, Phil Napoleon, and the rest.


title: Bix Beiderbecke

text: Following the Wall Street Crash of 1929, the once-booming music industry contracted and work became more difficult to find. For a while, Beiderbecke's only regular income came from his work as a member of Nat Shilkret's orchestra on "The Camel Pleasure Hour" NBC radio show. However, during a live broadcast on October 8, 1930, Beiderbecke's seemingly limitless gift for improvisation finally failed him: "He stood up to take his solo, but his mind went blank and nothing happened", recalled a fellow musician, Frankie Cush. The cornetist spent the rest of the year at home in Davenport and then, in February 1931, he returned to New York one last time.


title: Bix Beiderbecke

text: Beiderbecke died in his apartment, No. 1G, 43–30 46th Street, in Sunnyside, Queens, New York, on August 6, 1931. The week had been stiflingly hot, making sleep difficult. Suffering from insomnia, Beiderbecke played the piano late into the evenings, to both the annoyance and the delight of his neighbors. On the evening of August 6, at about 9.30 pm, his rental agent, George Kraslow, heard noises coming from across the hallway. "His hysterical shouts brought me to his apartment on the run," Kraslow told Philip Evans in 1959, continuing:


title: Bix Beiderbecke

text: Historians have disagreed over the identity of the doctor who pronounced Beiderbecke dead, with several sources stating that it was Dr. John Haberski (the husband of the woman Kraslow identified) who pronounced Beiderbecke dead in his apartment. The official cause of death, as indicated on the death certificate, was lobar pneumonia. Unofficially, edema of the brain, coupled with the effects of long-term alcoholism, have been cited as contributory factors. Beiderbecke's mother and brother took the train to New York and arranged for his body to be taken home to Davenport. He was buried there on August 11, 1931, in the family plot at Oakdale Cemetery.


title: Bix Beiderbecke

text: Critical analysis of Beiderbecke's work during his lifetime was sparse. His innovative playing initially received greater attention and appreciation among European critics than those in the country of his birth. The British music trade magazine "Melody Maker" published a number of reviews of his recordings and assessments of his cornet playing. In the April 1927 issue, bandleader Fred Elizalde stated: "Bix Bidlebeck (sic) is considered by Red Nichols himself and every other trumpet player in the States, for that matter, as the greatest trumpet player of all time". The magazine's editor, Edgar Jackson, was equally fulsome in his praise: "Bix has a heart as big as your head, which shines through his playing with the warmth of the sun's rays" (September 1927 issue); "The next sixteen bars are a trumpet solo by Bix, and if this doesn't get you right in the heart, you'd better see a vet…."


title: Bix Beiderbecke

text: At the time of his death, Beiderbecke was still little known by the public at large, though his appreciation among fellow musicians and the collegiate set is indicated by contemporary news reports:To a large circle of those boys and girls of high school and college age whom a staid world likes to label "the jazz-mad generation," the news that Leon Bix Beiderbecke is dead will mean something, however lacking in significance it might be to their critical elders. "Bixie" was a symbol of that jazz generation, expressing its wistful, restless temperament through the medium of the unconventional dance music which constitutes its theme song. In his mind were conceived the wild, strange contortions of rhythm and harmony which established the basic motif of the popular music of a year ago...To most youngsters in college, however, the weird flourishes that "Bixie's" fingers executed on trumpet and piano were expressive. They could hear the lilting melody of youth that formed a smooth background for his fantastic caricatures in sound. Hundreds of young collegians who couldn't recall a strain of Beethoven or Wagner could whistle Bix Beiderbecke choruses. In the world of professional popular music, "Bixie" was an artist comparable to Kreisler in the field of conventional music. Paul Whiteman called him "the finest trumpet player in the country".Perhaps "Bixie's" death at the age of twenty-eight also is symbolical of the futility of the "jazz-mad generation's" quest for self-expression. However that may be, if it is true, as some critics contend, that "jazz" music is establishing foundations on which a distinctive and thoroughly legitimate American music eventually will be built, Bix Beiderbecke has left his mark on the future culture of the nation.One of the first serious, analytical obituaries to have been published in the months after his death was by the French jazz writer Hugues Panassié. The notice appeared in October 1931.


title: Bix Beiderbecke

text: The "New Republic" critic Otis Ferguson wrote two short articles for the magazine, "Young Man with a Horn" and "Young Man with a Horn Again", that worked to revive interest not only in Beiderbecke's music but also in his biography. Beiderbecke "lived very briefly […] in what might be called the servants' entrance to art", Ferguson wrote. "His story is a good story, quite humble and right." The romantic notion of the short-lived, doomed jazz genius can be traced back at least as far as Beiderbecke, and lived on in Glenn Miller, Charlie Parker, Billie Holiday, Jaco Pastorius and many more.


title: Bix Beiderbecke

text: Ferguson's sense of what was "right" became the basis for the Beiderbecke Romantic legend, which has traditionally emphasized the musician's Iowa roots, his often careless dress, his difficulty sight reading, the purity of his tone, his drinking, and his early death. These themes were repeated by Beiderbecke's friends in various memoirs, including "The Stardust Road" (1946) and "Sometimes I Wonder" (1965) by Hoagy Carmichael, "Really the Blues" (1946) by Mezz Mezzrow, and "We Called It Music" (1947) by Eddie Condon. Beiderbecke was portrayed as a tragic genius along the lines of Ludwig van Beethoven. "For his talent there were no conservatories to get stuffy in, no high-trumpet didoes to be learned doggedly, note-perfect as written," Ferguson wrote, "because in his chosen form the only writing of any account was traced in the close shouting air of Royal Gardens, Grand Pavilions, honkeytonks, etc." He was "this big overgrown kid, who looked like he'd been snatched out of a cradle in the cornfields", Mezzrow wrote. "The guy didn't have an enemy in the world," recalled fellow musician Russ Morgan, "[b]ut he was "out of this world" most of the time." [Italics in original.] According to Ralph Berton, he was "as usual gazing off into his private astronomy", but his cornet, Condon famously quipped, sounded "like a girl saying yes".


title: Bix Beiderbecke

text: In 1938, Dorothy Baker borrowed the title of her friend Otis Ferguson's first article and published the novel "Young Man with a Horn". Her story of the doomed trumpet player Rick Martin was inspired, she wrote, by "the music, but not the life" of Beiderbecke, but the image of Martin quickly became the image of Beiderbecke: his story is about "the gap between the man's musical ability and his ability to fit it to his own life." In 1950, Michael Curtiz directed the film "Young Man with a Horn", starring Kirk Douglas, Lauren Bacall, and Doris Day. In this version, in which Hoagy Carmichael also plays a role, the Rick Martin character lives.


title: Bix Beiderbecke

text: In "Blackboard Jungle", a 1955 film starring Glenn Ford and Sidney Poitier, Beiderbecke's music is briefly featured, but as a symbol of cultural conservatism in a nation on the cusp of the rock and roll revolution.


title: Bix Beiderbecke

text: Brendan Wolfe, the author of "Finding Bix", spoke of Beiderbecke's lasting influence on Davenport, Iowa: "His name and face are still a huge part of the city's identity. There's an annual Bix Beiderbecke Memorial Jazz Festival, and a Bix 7 road race with tens of thousands of runners, Bix T-shirts, bumper stickers, bobble-head dolls, the whole works." In 1971, on the 40th anniversary of Beiderbecke's death, the Bix Beiderbecke Memorial Jazz Festival was founded in Davenport, Iowa, to honor the musician. In 1974, Sudhalter and Evans published their biography, "Bix: Man and Legend", which was nominated for a National Book Award. In 1977, the Beiderbecke childhood home at 1934 Grand Avenue in Davenport was added to the National Register of Historic Places.


title: Bix Beiderbecke

text: "Bix: 'Ain't None of Them Play Like Him Yet", a 1981 film documentary on Beiderbecke's life directed and produced by Brigitte Berman, featured interviews with Hoagy Carmichael, Bill Challis and others, who knew and worked with Bix.


title: Bix Beiderbecke

text: Beiderbecke's music was featured in three British comedy drama television series, all written by Alan Plater: "The Beiderbecke Affair" (1984), "The Beiderbecke Tapes" (1987), and "The Beiderbecke Connection" (1988). In 1991, the Italian director Pupi Avati released "Bix: An Interpretation of a Legend". Filmed partially in the Beiderbecke home, which Avati had purchased and renovated, "Bix" was screened at the Cannes Film Festival.


title: Bix Beiderbecke

text: At the beginning of the 21st century, Beiderbecke's music continued to reside mostly out of the mainstream and some of the facts of his life are still debated, but scholars largely agree due in part to the influence of Sudhalter and Evans that he was an important innovator in early jazz; jazz cornetists, including Sudhalter (who died in 2008), and Tom Pletcher, closely emulate his style. In 2003, to mark the hundredth anniversary of his birth, the Greater Astoria Historical Society and other community organizations, spearheaded by Paul Maringelli and The Bix Beiderbecke Sunnyside Memorial Committee, erected a plaque in Beiderbecke's honor at the apartment building in which he died in Queens. That same year, Frederick Turner published his novel "1929", which followed the facts of Beiderbecke's life fairly closely, focusing on his summer in Hollywood and featuring appearances by Al Capone and Clara Bow. The critic and musician Digby Fairweather sums up Beiderbecke's musical legacy, arguing that "with Louis Armstrong, Bix Beiderbecke was the most striking of jazz's cornet (and of course, trumpet) fathers; a player who first captivated his 1920s generation and after his premature death, founded a dynasty of distinguished followers beginning with Jimmy McPartland and moving on down from there."


title: Bix Beiderbecke

text: In New Orleans, jazz had traditionally been expressed through polyphonic ensemble playing, with the various instruments weaving their parts into a single and coherent aural tapestry. By the early 1920s, developments in jazz saw the rise of the jazz soloist, with solos becoming longer and more complex. Both Beiderbecke and Armstrong were key figures in this evolution, as can be heard on their earliest recordings. According to the critic Terry Teachout, they are "the two most influential figures in the early history of jazz" and "the twin lines of descent from which most of today's jazz can be traced."


title: Bix Beiderbecke

text: Beiderbecke's cornet style is often described by contrasting it with Armstrong's markedly different approach. Armstrong was a virtuoso on his instrument, and his solos often took advantage of that fact. Beiderbecke was largely, although not completely, self-taught, and the constraints imposed by that fact were evident in his music. While Armstrong often soared into the upper register, Beiderbecke stayed in the middle range, more interested in exploring the melody and harmonies than in dazzling the audience. Armstrong often emphasized the performance aspect of his playing, while Beiderbecke tended to stare at his feet while playing, uninterested in personally engaging his listeners. Armstrong was deeply influenced by the blues, while Beiderbecke was influenced as much by modernist composers such as Debussy and Ravel as by his fellow jazzmen.


title: Bix Beiderbecke

text: Beiderbecke's most famous solo was on "Singin' the Blues", recorded February 4, 1927. It has been hailed as an important example of the "jazz ballad style"—"a slow or medium-tempo piece played gently and sweetly, but not cloyingly, with no loss of muscle." The tune's laid-back emotions hinted at what would become, in the 1950s, the cool jazz style, personified by Chet Baker and Bill Evans. More than that, though, "Singin' the Blues" has been noted for the way its improvisations feel less improvised than composed, with each phrase building on the last in a logical fashion. Benny Green describes the solo's effect on practiced ears:


title: Bix Beiderbecke

text: 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.


title: Bix Beiderbecke

text: Like Green, who made particular mention of Beiderbecke's "amount of teaching," the jazz historian Ted Gioia also has emphasized Beiderbecke's lack of formal instruction, suggesting that it caused him to adopt "an unusual, dry embouchure" and "unconventional fingerings," which he retained for the rest of his life. Gioia points to "a characteristic streak of obstinacy" in Beiderbecke that provokes "this chronic disregard of the tried-and-true." He argues that this stubbornness was behind Beiderbecke's decision not to switch from cornet to trumpet when many other musicians, including Armstrong, did so. In addition, Gioia highlights Beiderbecke's precise timing, relaxed delivery, and pure tone, which contrasted with "the dirty, rough-edged sound" of King Oliver and his protégé Armstrong, whose playing was often more energetic and whose style held more sway early in the 1920s than Beiderbecke's.


title: Bix Beiderbecke

text: Beiderbecke's playing – both as a cornetist and a pianist – had a profound effect on a number of his contemporaries. Eddie Condon, for instance, described Beiderbecke's cornet playing as "like a girl saying yes" and also wrote of being amazed by Beiderbecke's piano playing: "All my life I had been listening to music […] But I had never heard anything remotely like what Beiderbecke played. For the first time I realized music isn't all the same, it had become an entirely new set of sounds" "I tried to explain Bix to the gang," Hoagy Carmichael wrote, but "[i]t was no good, like the telling of a vivid, personal dream […] the emotion couldn't be transmitted."


title: Bix Beiderbecke

text: Mezz Mezzrow described Beiderbecke's tone as being "pickled in alcohol […] I have never heard a tone like he got before or since. He played mostly open horn, every note full, big, rich and round, standing out like a pearl, loud but never irritating or jangling, with a powerful drive that few white musicians had in those days."


title: Bix Beiderbecke

text: Some critics have highlighted "Jazz Me Blues", recorded with the Wolverines on February 18, 1924, as being particularly important to understanding Beiderbecke's style. Although it was one of his earliest recordings, the hallmarks of his playing are evident. "The overall impression we get from this solo, as in all of Bix at his best," writes the trumpeter Randy Sandke, "is that every note is spontaneous yet inevitable." Richard Hadlock describes Beiderbecke's contribution to "Jazz Me Blues" as "an ordered solo that seems more inspired by clarinetists Larry Shields of the ODJB and Leon Roppolo of the NORK than by other trumpet players." He goes on to suggest that clarinetists, by virtue of their not being tied to the melody as much as cornetists and trumpet players, could explore harmonies.


title: Bix Beiderbecke

text: "Jazz Me Blues" was also important because it introduced what has been called the "correlated chorus", a method of improvising that Beiderbecke's Davenport friend Esten Spurrier attributed to both Beiderbecke and Armstrong. "Louis departed greatly from all cornet players in his ability to compose a close-knit individual 32 measures with all phrases compatible with each other", Spurrier told the biographers Sudhalter and Evans, "so Bix and I always credited Louis as being the father of the correlated chorus: play two measures, then two related, making four measures, on which you played another four measures related to the first four, and so on ad infinitum to the end of the chorus. So the secret was simple—a series of related phrases."


title: Bix Beiderbecke

text: Beiderbecke plays piano on his recordings "Big Boy" (October 8, 1924), "For No Reason at All in C" (May 13, 1927), "Wringin' and Twistin'" (September 17, 1927)—all with ensembles—and his only solo recorded work, "In a Mist" (September 8, 1927). Critic Frank Murphy argues that many of the same characteristics that mark Beiderbecke on the cornet are also reflected in his piano playing: the uncharacteristic fingering, the emphasis on inventive harmonies, and the correlated choruses. Those inventive harmonies, on both cornet and piano, pointed the way to future developments in jazz, particularly bebop.


title: Bix Beiderbecke

text: "Candlelights", "Flashes", and "In the Dark" are piano compositions transcribed with the help of Bill Challis but never recorded by Beiderbecke. Two additional compositions were attributed to him by two other jazz composers: "Betcha I Getcha", attributed to Beiderbecke as a co-composer by Joe Venuti, the composer of the song, and "Cloudy", attributed to Beiderbecke by composer as a composition from circa 1924.


title: Bix Beiderbecke

text: Bix Beiderbecke was posthumously inducted into the Grammy Hall of Fame, which is a special Grammy award established in 1973 to honor recordings that are at least 25 years old and that have "qualitative or historical significance."


title: Order of precedence

text: An order of precedence is a sequential hierarchy of nominal importance and can be applied to individuals, groups, or organizations. Most often it is used in the context of people by many organizations and governments, for very formal and state occasions, especially where diplomats are present. It can also be used in the context of decorations, medals and awards. Historically, the order of precedence had a more widespread use, especially in court and aristocratic life.


title: Order of precedence

text: A person's position in an order of precedence is not necessarily an indication of functional importance, but rather an indication of ceremonial or historical relevance; for instance, it may dictate where dignitaries are seated at formal dinners. The term is occasionally used to mean the order of succession—to determine who replaces the head of state in the event they are removed from office or incapacitated—as they are often identical, at least near the top.


title: Order of precedence

text: What follows are the general orders of precedence for different countries for state purposes, such as diplomatic dinners, and are made under the assumption that such functions are held in the capital. When they are held in another city or region, local officials such as governors would be much higher up the order. There may also be more specific and local orders of precedence, for particular occasions or within particular institutions. Universities and the professions often have their own rules of precedence applying locally, based (for example) on university or professional rank, each rank then being ordered within itself on the basis of seniority (i.e. date of attaining that rank). Within an institution, the officials of that institution are likely to rank much higher in the order than in a general order of precedence—the chancellor or president of a university may well precede anyone except a head of state, for example. The same might be true for a mayor in their own city.


title: Al-Hajjaj ibn Yusuf

text: Abu Muhammad al-Hajjaj ibn Yusuf ibn al-Hakam ibn Abi Aqil al-Thaqafi (; ), known simply as al-Hajjaj ibn Yusuf (), was probably the most notable governor who served the Umayyad Caliphate. He began his service under Caliph Abd al-Malik (), who successively promoted him as the head of the caliph's (select troops), the governor of the Hejaz (western Arabia) in 692–694, and the practical viceroy of a unified Iraqi province and the eastern parts of the Caliphate in 694. Al-Hajjaj retained the last post under Abd al-Malik's son and successor al-Walid I (), whose decision-making was highly influenced by al-Hajjaj, until his death in 714.


title: Al-Hajjaj ibn Yusuf

text: As governor of Iraq and the east, al-Hajjaj instituted key reforms. Among these were the minting of silver dirhams with strictly Muslim religious formulas instead of the coins' traditional, pre-Islamic Sasanian design; changing the language of the (tax registers) of Iraq from Persian to Arabic; and the introduction of a uniform version of the Quran. To revive agricultural production and increase tax revenue, al-Hajjaj expelled non-Arab, Muslim converts from the garrison cities of Kufa and Basra to their rural villages of origin and collected from them the (poll tax) nominally reserved for non-Muslim subjects and oversaw large-scale canal digging projects. In 701, al-Hajjaj, with reinforcements from Syria, crushed a mass rebellion led by the Kufan Arab nobleman Ibn al-Ash'ath whose ranks spanned the Arab troops, Muslim converts and religious elites of Iraq. Consequently, al-Hajjaj further tightened control over the province, founding the city of Wasit to house the loyalist Syrian troops whom he thereafter relied on to enforce his rule.


title: Al-Hajjaj ibn Yusuf

text: Al-Hajjaj was a highly capable though ruthless statesman, strict in character, and a harsh and demanding master. Widely feared by his contemporaries, he became a deeply controversial figure and an object of deep-seated enmity among later, pro-Abbasid writers, who ascribed to him persecutions and mass executions.


title: Al-Hajjaj ibn Yusuf

text: Al-Hajjaj was born in ca. 661 in the city of Ta'if in the Hejaz. He belonged to the clan of Abu Aqil, called after al-Hajjaj's paternal great-grandfather. The clan was part of the Banu Awf branch of the Banu Thaqif tribe. Members of the Thaqif attained high military and administrative ranks in the nascent Caliphate and played important command and economic roles during and after the early Muslim conquests, particularly in Iraq. The tribe's political influence continued to grow with the advent of the Umayyad Caliphate in 661. Al-Hajjaj's ancestry was not particularly distinguished: the Abu Aqil family was poor and its members had worked as stone carriers and builders. His mother, al-Fari'a, had been married and divorced by al-Mughira ibn Shu'ba, a member of the Thaqif who was appointed governor of Kufa by the first Umayyad caliph, Mu'awiya I ().


title: Al-Hajjaj ibn Yusuf

text: As a boy, al-Hajjaj acquired the nickname ('little dog'), with which he was later derisively referred to. His early life is obscure, except for his having been a schoolmaster in his hometown—another source of derision to his enemies—where he taught his pupils to copy and recite the Quran. His father Yusuf ibn al-Hakam and elder brother Muhammad were also teachers in Ta'if.


title: Al-Hajjaj ibn Yusuf

text: After a short, undetermined period, al-Hajjaj and his father left their teaching jobs and took up military service under Caliph Yazid I (), who was facing increasing opposition to his rule in the Hejaz. He participated in the Second Muslim Civil War, fighting in the battles of al-Harra (682) and of al-Rabadha (684)—both near Medina—but without particular distinction. At al-Harra, where a Syrian army dispatched by Yazid defeated the local defenders of Medina who had discarded the Caliph's authority, al-Hajjaj fought in the brigade of Hubaysh ibn Dulja al-Qayni. He fled the field in that engagement. According to verses recorded in the , al-Hajjaj acknowledged: "I took to flight ... but later, I made good my fault by renewing the attack. For a sheikh takes to flight only once". He and his father were among the few to survive the battle at al-Rabadha, where Hubaysh ibn Dulja, the commander of the expedition, was slain fighting forces loyal to the Mecca-based anti-Umayyad caliph Abd Allah ibn al-Zubayr. Al-Hajjaj's first public post, as governor of Tabala in the Tihama region south of Ta'if, was unremarkable. Al-Hajjaj abandoned the post, considering it beneath his ambition. An Arabic proverb later developed out of this anecdote: ("as insignificant as Tabala is to al-Hajjaj").


title: Al-Hajjaj ibn Yusuf

text: Soon after Abd al-Malik () acceded to the caliphate, al-Hajjaj left his hometown and went to the Umayyad capital, Damascus, where he entered the (select troops) of the Caliph. However, according to a different account, by Ibn Qutayba (d. 889), al-Hajjaj started his career in the of Aban ibn Marwan, Abd al-Malik's half-brother and one-time governor of Palestine. The commander of the , the Caliph's main adviser Rawh ibn Zinba al-Judhami, was impressed with al-Hajjaj's military capabilities and thinking. Upon Rawh's recommendation, Abd al-Malik appointed al-Hajjaj to enforce the Caliph's authority over a large army he mobilized for an expedition against the Zubayrid ruler of Iraq, Ibn al-Zubayr's brother Mus'ab, in 689/90. The Caliph was satisfied by the rapidity and efficiency with which al-Hajjaj restored discipline during a mutiny by the troops. During Abd al-Malik's siege of the rebel leader of the Qays tribes of the Jazira (Upper Mesopotamia), Zufar ibn al-Harith al-Kilabi, in al-Qariqisiya in the summer of 691, al-Hajjaj was sent as an emissary of the Caliph alongside the theologian Raja ibn Haywa to negotiate a reconciliation with Zufar.


title: Al-Hajjaj ibn Yusuf

text: As a result of his success suppressing the Caliph's mutinous troops, Abd al-Malik entrusted al-Hajjaj with command of the army's rear-guard. He achieved further feats of valour, so that after the defeat of Mus'ab at the Battle of Maskin, Abd al-Malik entrusted him to subdue Ibn al-Zubayr in Mecca. In late 691 he set out from Kufa at the head of 2,000 Syrian troops. After taking over Ta'if unopposed, he halted there as Abd al-Malik had charged him to try to secure Ibn al-Zubayr's capitulation by diplomatic means if possible, and to avoid the shedding of blood in Mecca. Ibn al-Zubayr rejected the Umayyad offers, and al-Hajjaj, after receiving reinforcements and the Caliph's permission, moved to attack Mecca. The Umayyad troops bombarded the city with catapults from Mount Abu Qubays, not letting up even during the Hajj pilgrimage; the Ka'aba was also targeted, despite the presence of the assembled pilgrims. When a sudden thunderstorm broke out, which his soldiers interpreted as divine wrath, he was able to rally them and convince them that it was actually a sign of victory. Finally, in October 692, after seven months of siege and the defection of several thousand of his supporters, including two of his sons, Ibn al-Zubayr was killed alongside his last remaining loyal followers, fighting around the Ka'aba.


title: Al-Hajjaj ibn Yusuf

text: As a reward, Abd al-Malik gave al-Hajjaj the governorship of the Hejaz, Yemen, and al-Yamama (central Arabia). As governor, al-Hajjaj led the Hajj in person in the years 73 and 74 AH (693 and 694 CE), and restored the Ka'aba to the shape and dimensions it had originally, rejecting the alterations made by Ibn al-Zubayr following the first Umayyad siege in 683. Al-Hajjaj was able to restore peace in the Hejaz, but his severity occasioned the frequent personal intervention of the Caliph.


title: Al-Hajjaj ibn Yusuf

text: In early 694, Abd al-Malik sent al-Hajjaj to govern Iraq. This involved combining the governorships of Kufa and Basra, which had not been done since the days of Ziyad ibn Abi Sufyan twenty years earlier. The caliph had previously appointed his brother Bishr ibn Marwan governor of Kufa, but when he died in early 694, this "experiment in family rule" (Hugh N. Kennedy) had clearly not been a success, and al-Hajjaj, whose ability and loyalty had been amply demonstrated, was appointed to this crucial post. The governorship of Iraq was indeed "the most important and responsible administrative post of the Islamic state" (A. Dietrich), as it comprised not only Iraq proper, but also included the lands conquered by troops from the two 'garrison towns' () of Kufa and Basra, i.e. Persia, Khurasan and the other eastern provinces of the Caliphate. The governor of Iraq was therefore in charge of a huge super-province or vice-royalty stretching from Mesopotamia to the still expanding borders in Central Asia and the Indian subcontinent, comprising half of the Caliphate's territory and producing more than half its income. In addition, the post was of particular political sensitivity due to the long history of Kharijism and political dissent in Iraq, particularly in Kufa. This discontent was driven by various tribal, economic, and political factors. The population of Kufa contained people from almost all Arab tribes, but also many of those undesired elsewhere, such as the vanquished of the Ridda wars. Although it dominated the fertile lands of the Sawad, many of these were assigned by the Umayyads to princes of the dynasty, while the average Kufan was given land as a stipend for military service; but as the size of the stipend was determined by the earliness of conversion to Islam, many received only minuscule grants. Finally, the Kufans were largely left out of the spoils of conquest in the East; it was the Basrans who secured the lion's share, taking over far more extensive and richer territory like Khurasan or Sindh, while the Kufans were left with the mountains of Jibal and central Persia as their city's sole dependencies. Al-Hajjaj's purview originally excluded Khurasan and Sistan, which were governed by the largely ineffectual Umayyad prince Umayya ibn Abdallah ibn Khalid ibn Asid, but in 697/8 he received these two provinces as well, expanding his rule over the entire eastern half of the Caliphate. He remained in this post until his death in 714, and throughout this period, encompassing the remainder of Abd al-Malik's reign and most of that of his successor al-Walid (r. 705–715), he would be "the dominant feature in the sources" (G. R. Hawting).


title: Al-Hajjaj ibn Yusuf

text: Al-Hajjaj was, in the words of A. Dietrich, "the most loyal servant that a dynasty could wish for", and his loyalty was reciprocated by Abd al-Malik with his full trust. The relationship was further strengthened through family ties: al-Hajjaj's daughter wed Masrur, son of al-Walid I (), while the daughter of his brother Muhammad was wed to the future Yazid II (); the latter named his first-born son after al-Hajjaj, who in turn named three of his sons after members of the dynasty. Abd al-Malik named one of his sons al-Hajjaj. This close relationship is further evidenced by the many surviving letters exchanged between the two men. Al-Hajjaj's relationship with Abd al-Malik was much different than with the latter's successor, al-Walid, with whom the correspondence was restricted to their official functions. On the other hand, while Abd al-Malik was able to restrain his over-zealous governor whenever he was "extortionate in the raising of taxes, was too liberal with public resources, or was shedding more blood than was necessary" (A. Dietrich), al-Walid considered himself in al-Hajjaj's debt because he had championed the succession of al-Walid against Abd al-Malik's brother Abd al-Aziz ibn Marwan, and the new Caliph allowed his powerful governor free rein and relied heavily on his counsel even in the appointment and dismissal of officials. If his meddling in the succession had secured him the favour of al-Walid, it had also caused the declared enmity of al-Walid's brother Sulayman (r. 715–717). Sulayman furthermore had championed the cause of Yazid ibn al-Muhallab, whom al-Hajjaj had imprisoned. The possibility of Sulayman's accession so frightened al-Hajjaj that he wished not to outlive al-Walid.


title: Al-Hajjaj ibn Yusuf

text: Arriving at Kufa, al-Hajjaj gave an inaugural sermon at the local mosque that has become famous and is "often cited as an example of Arab eloquence" (G. R. Hawting). The situation he found there was one of disorder. The troops of Basra and Kufa, ostensibly garrisoned at Ramhurmuz under al-Muhallab ibn Abi Sufra had instead, upon the death of Bishr, left the camp and were idling in the cities. In order to restore discipline, al-Hajjaj announced that any man who did not within three days return to the camp would be put to death and his property be left open to plunder. This proved effective, but when he went to the troops to distribute the pay, al-Hajjaj faced another mutiny under Ibn al-Jarud for making pay cuts that the troops refused to accept. These problems overcome, al-Hajjaj sent the troops against the Kharijites. In 696 al-Muhallab defeated the Azariqa who had rallied around Qatari ibn al-Fuja'a as their anti-caliph, and in spring 697 another Kharijite leader, Shabib ibn Yazid al-Shaybani, was defeated on the Dujayl river in Khuzistan with the aid of Syrian troops. In the same year, al-Hajjaj suppressed the rebellion of the governor of Mada'in, al-Mutarrif ibn al-Mughira ibn Shu'ba, who had allied with the Kharijites.


title: Al-Hajjaj ibn Yusuf

text: These campaigns eradicated the Kharijite rebellion, but came at a cost to his relationship with the Iraqis: the campaigns against the Kharijites were extremely unpopular, and measures like the reductions in pay, according to Hugh N. Kennedy, "[seem] almost to have goaded the Iraqis into rebellion, as if looking for an excuse to break them". The explosion came in 699: when he had been conferred the governorships of Khurasan and Sistan, al-Hajjaj had given it to al-Muhallab, but in Sistan, the situation was far more unstable, and the country had to be essentially reconquered. An army under the local governor Ubayd Allah ibn Abi Bakra had suffered a heavy defeat against the ruler of the kingdom of Zabulistan, known as the Zunbil, and now al-Hajjaj ordered Abd al-Rahman ibn Muhammad ibn al-Ash'ath, the most pre-eminent member of the Kufan aristocracy (the ) to lead an army against the Zunbil. This army was drawn from the Kufan soldiery, and such was the splendour of its equipment, or perhaps the "proud and haughty manner of the Kufan soldiers and who composed it" (G. R. Hawting), that it became known in history as the "Peacock Army". This expedition marked the beginning of a rebellion that came close to destroying not only al-Hajjaj's, but also Umayyad, power in Iraq.


title: Al-Hajjaj ibn Yusuf

text: Ibn al-Ash'ath led his army to Sistan, and, as A. Dietrich writes, "at first carried out his campaign carefully and according to orders; he pacified each territory as it was conquered, ensured supplies and accustomed his troops gradually to the different climatic conditions". Al-Hajjaj, however, sent letter after letter to his commander, demanding an immediate assault against the Zunbil. The tone of these letters was extremely offensive, and he threatened to dismiss Ibn al-Ash'ath and appoint his own brother Ishaq to command the expedition instead. Al-Hajjaj's harsh tone and unreasonable demands, as well as the army's evident reluctance to continue such a protracted and arduous campaign so far from their homes, provoked a widespread mutiny, led by Ibn al-Ash'ath himself. The rebel army marched back to Iraq, growing to over 100,000 strong in the process as they were joined by other malcontents, and being transformed from a mutiny against al-Hajjaj—denounced as an enemy of God and a latter-day Pharaoh—to a full-blown anti-Umayyad movement.


title: Al-Hajjaj ibn Yusuf

text: Al-Hajjaj tried to stop the rebels at Tustar, but the rebels were victorious (early 701). Al-Hajjaj abandoned Basra to the rebels, and Ibn al-Ash'ath entered the city in triumph. Reinforced with Syrian troops, al-Hajjaj managed to score a minor victory, after which the bulk of the rebel army left Basra for their natural stronghold, Kufa. Al-Hajjaj recaptured Basra and pursued Ibn al-Ash'ath to Kufa, encamping near the city. Ibn al-Ash'ath's progress had sufficiently alarmed the Umayyad court that they sought a negotiated settlement, even though they kept sending Syrian reinforcements to al-Hajjaj. Abd al-Malik offered to dismiss al-Hajjaj, appoint Ibn al-Ash'ath as governor over one of the Iraqi towns, and raise the Iraqis' pay so that they received the same amount as the Syrians. Ibn al-Ash'ath was inclined to accept, but the more radical of his followers, especially the scholars known as , refused, believing that the offered terms revealed the government's weakness, and pushed for outright victory. The two armies eventually met in the Battle of Dayr al-Jamajim in April 701, which resulted in a crushing victory for al-Hajjaj and his more disciplined Syrians. Kufa surrendered after that, and al-Hajjaj further undercut Ibn al-Ash'ath's support by promising amnesty to those who surrendered, providing however that they acknowledged that their rebellion had been tantamount to renouncing Islam; those who refused were executed. The remnants of the rebel army fled to Basra, but were soon evicted and pursued by the Syrians to Khuzistan and Sistan. There Ibn al-Ash'ath sought refuge with the Zunbil, but was either assassinated by the latter or committed suicide to avoid being surrendered to al-Hajjaj. Most of his remaining followers tried to reach Herat, but were defeated by al-Muhallab's son, Yazid ibn al-Muhallab, who surrendered those of north Arab provenance (Mudaris) but let the southern Arab (Yemeni) go.


title: Al-Hajjaj ibn Yusuf

text: The failure of Ibn al-Ash'ath's revolt led to the tightening of Umayyad control over Iraq. In 702 al-Hajjaj founded the city of Wasit, situated midway between Basra and Kufa, where he moved his seat. There he gathered all Syrian troops present in Iraq, ostensibly in order to rein in the Syrians and prevent excess at the expense of the populace, but in reality his aim was to isolate the Syrians from the locals and solidify their loyalty to him. Henceforth Iraq passed under virtual Syrian occupation, and the Iraqis, regardless of social status, were deprived of any real power in the governance of the region. Al-Hajjaj was now the undisputed master not only of Iraq, but of the entire Islamic East; only the governor of Khurasan, Yazid ibn al-Muhallab, retained some autonomy. Although Yazid was able to refuse several summons to Wasit, finally in 704 al-Hajjaj persuaded the Caliph to dismiss him, and Yazid was put in prison.


title: Al-Hajjaj ibn Yusuf

text: As governor of Iraq and viceroy of the East, al-Hajjaj supervised a major wave of expansion. He appointed Muhammad ibn al-Qasim al-Thaqafi to lead the conquest of northwestern India, Qutayba ibn Muslim to conquer Transoxiana, and Mujja'a ibn Si'r to Oman. Although al-Hajjaj himself undertook no campaign during these years, his role was essential: not only did he select the generals who carried out these campaigns, but also "prepared them very carefully, sparing no expense, since he calculated that with victory he would recover his expenses many times over" (A. Dietrich).


title: Al-Hajjaj ibn Yusuf

text: The relationship between al-Hajjaj and Muhammad ibn Qasim has always been one of great debate. Many accounts list al-Hajjaj as being his uncle or father in law. According to the "Chach Nama", the oldest chronicle of the Arab conquest of Sindh, the primary reason al-Hajjaj ordered an expedition against Raja Dahir, was the pirate raid off the coast of Debal, resulting in the capturing both gifts to the caliph from the King of Serendib (modern Sri Lanka) as well as the female pilgrims on board who were captured. Upon hearing of the matter, al-Hajjaj wrote a letter to the Raja, and upon unsuccessful resolution being reached, launched a military attack. Other reasons attributed to al-Hajjaj's interest was in (1) gaining a foothold in the Makran, Balochistan and Sindh regions, (2) protecting the maritime interests of the caliphate, and (3) to punish the armies from Sindh for participating alongside the Persians in various battles such as those at Salasal, Qādisiyyah and Nahawand and also the granting of refuge to fleeing rebel chieftains.


title: Al-Hajjaj ibn Yusuf

text: Already in 695, al-Hajjaj began minting the new gold and silver coins, which superseded the Byzantine and Sasanian coins still used until then. He established mints at Kufa and later in Wasit and decreed strict punishments for counterfeiters. The new coins contained the name of Allah, and hence were initially opposed by many theologians who argued that they would also be used by infidels, but they quickly became a success and "helped to promote the circulation of money and the stabilization of economic conditions" (A. Dietrich). Al-Hajjaj also ordered the translation of the tax registers () into Arabic from the Persian in which it had hitherto been kept, so that he could supervise it personally.


title: Al-Hajjaj ibn Yusuf

text: Following his victory over the Iraqis, al-Hajjaj began a series of reforms aimed at restoring tranquility and prosperity to the troubled state after almost twenty years of civil war and rebellions. He invested much effort in reviving agriculture, especially in the Sawad, and thereby increasing revenue through the (land tax). He began to restore and expand the network of canals in lower Iraq. According to al-Baladhuri, he spared no expense to repair embankments when they broke, awarded uncultivated lands to deserving Arabs, and took measures to reverse the flow of the rural population to the cities, especially the new converts (). According to the historian Ibn Abd al-Hakam (d. 871), al-Hajjaj, with the support of Abd al-Malik, was the first to collect the (poll tax) from the , though its imposition was nominally restricted to non-Muslim subjects of the Caliphate.


title: Al-Hajjaj ibn Yusuf

text: As part of his efforts to strengthen uniformity in the state, he also tried to introduce a definitive, uniform version of the Quran. Al-Hajjaj's version also probably included new vowel diacritics. He declared this version to be the only valid one, while prohibiting the use of Ibn Mas'ud's ('readings'). On the other hand, a number of authors argue that it is difficult to assess any role had by al-Hajjaj, though they argue for the plausibility of a widely known account that has him ordering the grammarian and Nasr ibn Asim al-Laythi to introduce new vowel diacritics, a story that is unchallenged, despite the strong hostility of Muslim sources towards al-Hajjaj.


title: Al-Hajjaj ibn Yusuf

text: The orientalist Arthur Jeffery argued that al-Hajjaj seemed "to have made an entirely new recension of the Qur'an", basing his argument on a Muslim source and two Christian sources. The Muslim source is a hadith report in Sunan Abu Dawood, which details eleven changes. Researcher Umar Ibn Ibrahim Radwan, argues that the changes could be categorised as differences in the . Doubting the authenticity of the hadith report, Radwan argues that the codex of Uthman, a caliph favored by al-Hajjaj, had already been memorised by thousands of Muslims and that the Abbasid dynasty, which was known for polemically showcasing the negative aspects of Umayyad rule, would have taken the opportunity to show that the Umayyads had corrupted the Quran. One of the Christian sources was a letter reported by the 8th-century Armenian priest Levond to have been written by the Byzantine emperor Leo III addressed to Caliph Umar II. Jeffrey notes the authenticity of the letter is disputed by historians, including John Wansbrough, who denied that Levond had reported it. Neal Robinson argues that even if the letter was authentic, the activity of al-Hajjaj would have been limited to destroying sectarian writings and early codices which preserved the suras (Quranic chapters) in a different order. The other Christian source is an apologetic letter attributed to Abd al-Masih al-Kindi. The dating of the letter is disputed, the Arabist Paul Kraus concluding that its composition dated to the beginning of the 10th century. Moreover, other authors have rejected that the letter had any factual basis, arguing that it was a polemical work.


title: Al-Hajjaj ibn Yusuf

text: According to the Islamic historical tradition, in , al-Hajjaj improved written Arabic by adding diacritical marks to the bare ('script') of early "defective" Arabic so that consonants such as these five letters ـبـ ـتـ ـثـ ـنـ ـيـ (y, n, th, t, b) could be distinguished from one another. However, some historians believe these language reforms occurred earlier in Syria or Iraq before the advent of Islam.


title: Al-Hajjaj ibn Yusuf

text: Al-Hajjaj died in Wasit in May or June 714 at the age of 53 or 54. On his deathbed, he appointed his son Abd Allah to replace him as leader of the Friday prayers. He penned a letter to al-Walid, which concluded as follows:When I meet God and find favour with Him, therein shall be the joy of my soul. The eternity of God sufficeth me, and I therefore place not my hopes on mortals. Those who were before us have tasted of death, and after them we also shall taste it.


title: Al-Hajjaj ibn Yusuf

text: The cause of his death, according to the medieval historian Ibn Khallikan (d. 1282), was a stomach cancer. The following year, al-Walid died as well, and his brother Sulayman came to power. As the heir apparent, Sulayman had allied with many of al-Hajjaj's opponents, particularly Yazid ibn al-Muhallab, whom he appointed governor of Iraq shortly after his accession. Possibly having been convinced by such allies that al-Hajjaj had provoked hatred among the Iraqis toward the Umayyads as opposed to fostering their loyalty, the caliph deposed the late viceroy's appointees and allies in the province and throughout the eastern Caliphate. This was likely due to their connection with al-Hajjaj personally. Among those who fell from grace was al-Hajjaj's kinsman, Muhammad ibn al-Qasim, who was dismissed from his governorship of Sindh and executed in Wasit.


title: Al-Hajjaj ibn Yusuf

text: In the assessment of historian Julius Wellhausen, al-Hajjaj was "harsh and at times hard, but not cruel; neither was he petty or bigoted". Though he was criticized in the early Muslim sources for his bombardment of Mecca and the Ka'aba during his siege of Ibn al-Zubayr, "other shameful deeds" al-Hajjaj was held responsible for are the "inventions and fabrications of the hatred of his enemies". Among these was a charge by an anonymous source recorded by al-Tabari that al-Hajjaj massacred between 11,000 and 130,000 men in Basra following his suppression of Ibn al-Ash'ath's revolt, in contrast to the older traditional Muslim sources, which held that al-Hajjaj granted a general pardon in Kufa and Basra after his victory for rebels who renounced Ibn al-Ash'ath.