Pat Ciricillo's Piano:
 Bix Beiderbecke's  
Flashes and In the Dark

Introduction.

The Robbins Music Corporation copyrighted Bix Beiderbecke's compositions Flashes (E22489) and In the Dark (E22490) on April 18, 1931. [1]

Bix composed these impressionistic pieces in the winter and spring of 1931 on a Wurlitzer piano that belonged to Pasquale "Pat" Ciricillo.

After blacking out in the middle of a solo during the October 8, 1930 Camel Pleasure Hour broadcast, Bix Beiderbecke went home for rest and recuperation. Bix spent the rest of the fall and the first two monts of the winter of 1930-1931 in his parents' home in Davenport. He retuned to New York on February 11, 1931 and moved back into room 605 of the 44th Street Hotel at 120 West 44th Street, New York City, New York, his usual place of residence while in New York City since the fall of 1926. Although Bix may have developed ideas for the two compositions while he was in Davenport, the bulk of the work was done in New York in Pat Ciricillo’s piano and in the apartment of Bill Challis’s sister, Marian, at West 81^st Street and Riverside Drive. Bill Challis, arranger for the Jean Goldkette and Paul Whiteman orchestras,  recalled, in a letter to Philip Evans dated 9/24/73, “The next two, In The Dark and Flashes were notated in considerably less time since they were much shorter in length and more repetitious.” [1]

Pat Ciricillo's Piano in the 44th Street Hotel and Bix, 1930-1931.

Bix's next door neighbor in the 44th Street Hotel in 1930-1931 was Pat Ciricillo. Bix occupied room 605 while Pat lived in room 606. At that time, Pat Ciricillo was a student at Columbia University and a professional trumpet player. He owned an upright Wurlitzer piano which Bix used fequently in 1930 and 1931. Here is a photo of Pat sitting at his piano in the 1970s. (Courtesy of Joe Giordano.)



Pat wrote to Philip Evans, the Bix biographer, on February 21, 1973, [1]

"I met Bix around April 1930 when I lived in the 44th Street Hotel until June, and then again from September 1930 to June 1931. I lived in room 606 and Bix lived in 605.
For the month of July [1931] I was in Italy and Bix rented my piano. [Wurlitzer upright, serial number 112635]. I still have that piano with the upper octaves burnt by Bix's cigarettes. Bix wrote his last two piano compositions, "Flashes" and "In the Dark"  on my piano earlier in the year. The piano was returned to me in August, the month Bix died."

Pat's piano is currently in the Museum in New Orleans, US Mint. (Courtesy of Bixography Website).

The information on the card next to the piano reads as follows.

"Piano Played by Bix Beiderbecke.
Wurtlitzer Console. 1920's
This piano was owned by Pat Ciricillo when he lived in room 606 at the 44th Street Hotel in New York City from 1929 to 1931. Bix Beiderbecke was in room 605 and rented this piano in July 1931. It was on this piano that he wrote "Candlelights" and "Flashes". [2]
Bix joined in jam sessions Tommy and Jimmy Dorsey, Red Nichols, Adrian Rollini, Bud Freeman, Mildred Bailey, Eddie Condon, Hoagy Carmichael, Pee Wee Russell and others, often as late as 3 a.m. They stuffed paper around the hammers to keep the noise down.
Bix died on August 6, 1931.
Gift of Mr. and Mrs. Frank V. Smith"


From my conversations with Joe Giordano and his interview of Pat Ciricillo, [3] I pasted together the following information about the piano.

At the end of April 1930, Bix took residence in room 605 of the 44th Street Hotel. His neighbor in room 606 was trumpet player and Columbia University music student Pasquale "Pat" Ciricillo. Pat had moved to the hotel in late 1929 and had purchased a Wurlitzer upright piano. Pat told Joe, "I remember that about 3 o'clock in the morning there would be people such as the Dorseys or Adrian Rollini with their flasks. They would first wake Bix up and then bang on my door so they could get at the piano and have a jam session. When they'd get hold of it they would deaden the hammers by lifting the front cover and stuff paper in there to soften the tones. This would keep the noise down, since it was late, and Bix would improvise for them. I'm telling you I used to be bleary-eyed and it was all I could do to attend my classes at Columbia. I really couldn't live that kind of life although there was sort of a camaraderie about it. Occasionally I'd go down to Plunkett's; the one after that was Charlie's on 6th Avenue and about 55th St."

Pat secured a job in a summer resort for three months, beginning in June 1930 and allowed Bix to use the piano for that period. [2] Pat returned to Manhattan in the Fall of 1930, in time for his classes in Columbia University, and the piano went back to room 606, but Bix would drop in Pat's room to use the piano during September of 1930 and again beginning in February 1931, when he retuned from Davenport. According to Pat Ciricillo, Bix composed Flashes and In the Dark on the Wurlitzer piano. In Pat's words, "Parts of his piano compositions were worked out on this piano. Then he'd go to Bill Challis to have him help out  with putting the notes down on paper." Pat was going to spend part of the summer of 1931 in Italy and rented his piano to Bix. However, it does not appear that Bix used Pat's piano during July. Bix had moved to Queens late in June and spent a few days with Rex Gavitte (Smith Ballew's bassist) and his wife before taking up residence in a new apartment at 43-30 46th Street, Sunnyside, Queens, NY. Bix wrote to Esten Spurrier, his childhood Davenport friend, saying that he had bought a piano for his new residence. When Pat Ciricillo returned from Italy on August 3, 1931, having sailed from Naples on July 25, 1931 on the S.S. "Conte Grande," he found his piano in storage in the basement of the 44th Street Hotel.

Early in the 1970's Pat Ciricillo offered to sell his piano to record collector and Bixophile Joe Giordano for $50. Joe was interested, but had no room for the piano in his apartment in New York City. In 1978 Pat and his wife decided to move to Florida. They sold their house in Scarsdale; the closing on the house and Pat's funeral took place on the same day, May 13, 1978, Pat having died at that time from a massive heart attack.  Frank and Connie Smith purchased the house and several items, including the piano. They paid $40 for the piano and $75 for a lawn mower! In the 1980's, Frank and Connie Smith offered to donate the piano to the Smithsonian, but the authorities in charge refused to accept the gift. In 1987, they donated the piano to the Louisiana State Museum where it is on display presently.

In the Dark and Flashes, Winter and Spring 1931.

Pat Ciricillo reported that Bix was composing "In the Dark" in the winter of 1931,  using Pat Ciricillo's piano. Jack Teagarden, who had joined Red Nichols at the Hotel New Yorker on February 8, 1931, roomed with Bix during the February 14-15, 1931 weekend. Teagarden confirmed Pat Ciricillo’s account. In a telephone interview with Philip Evans [1] on February 18, 1960, Teagarden reported "I spent the weekend with Bix in his apartment. He was working on In the Dark and had only a beginning and an ending, being unable to connect the two. I whistled a bridge that I felt would fit. Bix was delighted and kept it in the composition that Challis scored."

Bill Challis, arranger with the Jean Goldkette and Paul Whiteman orchestras, transcribed all four if Bix 's piano compositions, In A Mist, Candlelight, Flashes and In the Dark, as well as Bix's sole orchestral composition, Davenport Blues.  In a June 6, 1979 letter to Norman Gentieu, Challis commented on Flashes and In the Dark as follows. [1]

"In the Dark had the same formula, main part rhythmic with a melodic middle.
Flashes, Bix did in a hurry. he wasn't working and he did the composition because he needed the money. Jack Robbins was willing to accept almost anything. Bix would say, "I have another one." It was the only income he had going.
Flashes was done in the same format as the others, but required too much musical knowledge, too much musicianship to understand it.
If Bix had lived, he would have changed the formula. He'd have given it more thought and come up with something different."

Pat Ciricillo About Bix.

As Bix's next door neighbor  for over a year, and being a musician (trumpet player), Pat Ciricillo got to know Bix reasonably well, and had several comments to make about Bix in letters to Phil Evans and in his interview with Joe Giordano.

In response to Phil Evans letter of February 11, 1973, (Courtesy of Robert Ciricillo)

Pat Ciricillo responded on February 21, 1973, (Courtesy of Robert Ciricillo)

Interview by Joe Giordano, 1970s. [3]

"Now let me see what I can recall about Bix, my old neighbor. The thing that I got about him is that he was a very sensitive person inside. People don't realize that he was a poetry reader; his favorites were Byron, Keats, and Shelley, since he kept their books on his desk. And the composer that influenced him the most in his piano compositions was Eastwood Lane; he always talked about him. Records he liked to listen to were Stravinsky's Firebird and Petrouchka, and Ravel's Daphnis and Chloe because of the exciting harmonic progressions. Those were the things that influenced him the most when I knew him."

"The first notes I played in New York were as a "sub" for Red Nichols in 1929. He was, what you would call, a contrived jazz player. Bix was natural, although he figured out stuff too. But I remember when he used to come to my room to play duets with me, he couldn't read very well. We'd start to play together and one of his problems was with dotted quarter and eigth notes. I've had the same trouble with some of my students. I do believe that parts of his piano compositions were worked out on this piano. Then Challis would help him out with putting the notes down on paper."

"The first time I met Bix was in 1930, although I had seen him on stage in Cleveland with Whiteman in 1927." [The Paul Whiteman orchestra played at the Allen Theatre in Cleveland, OH, from Dec 4, 1927 to December 10, 1927.]

"One of the things I remember is that when he was on the wagon, he would be in a sort of stupor. If you ever look at any of his pictures, he had a stare about him with the eyes that was penetrating. Then his friends would come around and bother him and he'd go back drinking. Gin mostly, or straight alcohol with a few drops of lemon juice."

In response to the question if he subbed for Bix in the Camel Pleasure Hour, Pat responded, "He used to send me in occasionally when he wasn't up to it and, hell, I didn't mind; never even took his pay. Charlie Previn was the director and I believe it was in the Fall of 1930." [Bix played in the Camel Pleasure Hour from June 4, 1930 to October 8, 1930.]

"Red and Bix were not really the same kind of players. Red was a very clever cornet player and he used a lot of Bix's ideas. He came from Culver Military Academy and was a very good musician, but he wasn't in the same league as Bix. Bix wasn't a good cornet player, by the book that is, because it was just a medium to get out what was in him." When asked if Bix wasn't a polished cornet player, Pat Ciricillo responded, "Yes, but unlike Red, he was a poet; always had something interesting to say on the horn or on the piano. All talent and no technique, except his own. He used all kinds of odd fingering, mainly resulting from being self-taught."

When asked what was his biggest impression about Bix, Pat Ciricillo responded, "Mainly that he was born too soon, and that he was frustrated. What he wanted most was for people to listen to those nice notes that he used to put in; there was a certin subtlety to his style. But the people wouldn't listen! They just wanted to dance to the music. Later on, however, they became more aware in the listening department. Actually, Bix was an odd figure in this country's musical history. He was probably the first white to be appreciated by black musicians. Let me show you something as an example. Mozart, in his Don Giovanni opera buffa, gives us a foresight into the 12-tone scale of Arnold Schonberg. Bach, Haydn, Beethoven, etc. occasionally gave us an inkling of what was to come years later.

So does Bix! In the bridge of the Whiteman recording of Sweet Sue, Bix gives us a hint of Dizzy Gillespie's style of a quarter century later.”

A Brief Biographical Sketch of Pasquale "Pat" Ciricillo.

Pasquale "Pat" Ciricillo, born Aug 27, 2009 in Cleveland, OH, died May 1978 in Scarsdale, NY, was a musician and teacher with a long and varied career. At age 15, Pat toured with his father's concert band as the "boy mellophone wonder." Pat's musical education took him first to Western Reserve University where he obtained an AB degree, and then to Columbia University where he received an AM degree. He also received a music degree from the University of Florence, where he studied with the composer Luigi dalla Piccola.

<>As a professional musician he played with the bands of Vincent Lopez, Rudy Vallee, Fred Waring, the Dorsey Bothers and Percy Faith. He recorded with Tony Bennett and Harry Belafonte. Pat Ciricillo played trumpet with the NBC Symphony Orchestra under the direction of Arturo Toscanini, with the Voice of Firestone, as well as for many radio and television shows. He also played with the Radio City Music Hall Orchestra. Pat's career as a teacher included instructing in the Horace Mann School in New York City, the Rockland County public schools, and Hoff-Barthelson Music School.

Acknowledgements. I am grateful to Joe Giordano and Robiert Ciricillo for helpful discussions and their generous gifts of documents used in this article.


[1] Philip R. and Linda K. Evans, "Bix, The Leon Bix Beiderbecke Story," Prelike Press, Bakersfield, CA, 1998.
[2] It is possible that Bix refined his composition Candeligths (copyrighted on Aug 29, 1930)  in May- Aug 1930 using Pat Ciricillo's piano. However, most of the work on this composition was done in Davenport in the first few months of 1930. According to a Sep 24, 1973 letter from Bill Challis to Phil Evans, "When Bix returned to New York (end of April 1930) from his home in Davenport and declared himself ready with another composition, he had already titled it Candlelights. I had much less difficulty with the notation since it was practically set in his mind and thus it was just a matter of getting together and getting the work done."
[3] Joe Giordanos' original notes of the interview were kindly provided by Robert Ciricillo, Pat's son.