Bix Beiderbecke was a child prodigy able to pick out tunes on the piano when he was three years old. When he told his parents they thought it was a joke and sent him to military school. That military school happened to be near Chicago, the center of jazz at the time. Bix was expelled from the academy due to missing class too much when he was 18 and decided to become a musician full time after that. He switched around quite a bit in orchestras. He went from being the star-cornetist on The Wolverines which he dropped out of to join Jean Golskette’s orchestra late 1924. Which he was kicked out of due to his inability to read music in 1925. They missed out because he would go to work hard on being able to read music so he could join Frankie Trumbauer’s
