Saxema

Performer, Composer: Rudy Wiedoeft
Victor, 1921
MP3 1,474K

Rudy Wiedoeft is one of those figures who was a star in his own day and all but unknown in ours. He was the killer application of saxophonage. (Young Rudy Vallee was a huge fan, and borrowed the "Rudy" part from Wiedoeft).

Born in Detroit in 1893 to a musical family, Rudy started out playing violin in the family band, but injured his bowing arm and switched to the saxophone (a pretty low-profile instrument at the time). In 1918, he began recording for the Edison company. His original composition Saxophobia (yeah, that's some good PR) became the largest selling saxophone solo recording ever.

Wiedoeft wrote much of his own material, distinctive stuff with titles ending with 'a' (Velma, Valse Erica, Gloria), and preferably beginning with 'sax' (Saxarella, Saxaphobia, Saxema, Sax-O-Phun, Sax-O-Trix). Huh.

  He was popular through the twenties. Gigantically popular. Yes, there was a time when the saxophone was cool, and Rudy Wiedoeft made it so. But the crash of 1929 basically put an end to all that (let's face it - what says gettin' above your station like a saxophone solo?). In a few short years, the saxophone went from red-hot musicality to tootling around behind the Little Rascals.

Rudy banged around Europe for a bit, where the urbane, sophisticated continentals still appreciated a fine saxophonist. He returned to the US after a few years and sank the last of his money into a gold mine in Death Valley. No gold ever came out of it, but Wiedoeft kept going back and looking. He excelled at that stage of a mining operation where you dress up like a cowboy.

He and his wife had always had a stormy relationship, mollified (as such things often are) by money and fame. When they ran out, she stabbed him with a butcher knife in 1937. Not only did this not put an end to Rudy Wiedoeft, it didn't even kill off Rudy Wiedoeft's marriage.

That happened three years later, in 1940, when Rudy succumbed to cirrhosis of the liver. The flamboyant lifestyle of the saxaphonist had caught up with him at last.

I'm struck by two things, listening to this record: the guy was really good. And this instrument sounds totally stupid.

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