By David Freeland

BIX'S HUSHED NOTES Recent articles in the Times and Post have noted the impending loss of the Studebaker Building (1902), a dusty 10-story structure at 48th and Broadway. Although its early function as an auto showroom proved short-lived, the building went on to host a number of film companies (including C.B.C., a predecessor of Columbia Pictures) as well as Ripley's Believe It or Not! Odditorium and Howard Clothes. In addition, the roof acted as platform for a number of Times Square's most famous signs, including Maxwell House, Chevrolet and, more recently, Sony.

What the articles haven't mentioned is that the Studebaker (aka 1600 Broadway) was also home to the Cinderella Ballroom, where the legendary cornetist Bix Beiderbecke made his New York debut with the Wolverine Orchestra in 1924.

Beiderbecke ranks as one of the most innovative jazz musicians in history, a poster boy for the brilliant excess of the Roaring Twenties. The product of a well-to-do family in Davenport, IA, Beiderbecke used his weekends at Lake Forest Military Academy to sneak off to nearby Chicago. There, he roamed South Side clubs, soaking up the music of jazz musicians who had recently arrived from New Orleans. By 1923 he was the Wolverines' star performer, famous for an unusual cornet technique that used all three valves (as opposed to the first two main valves) for astonishing purity of tone. High-profile tenures with the Jean Goldkette and Paul Whiteman Orchestras followed, but by the late 20s Beiderbecke's fast life and dependence on Prohibition liquor were catching up with him. Although his death in 1931 at the age of 28 is commonly attributed to pneumonia, a former classmate once told jazz producer and historian George Avakian, "Bix didn't die of a cold. He died of everything."

Public fascination with Beiderbecke, the archetypal "Young Man with a Horn," only increased as the decades passed, and in the mid 1970s a group of fans arranged for a memorial plaque to be installed at 1600 Broadway. Over the years the sign became something fun to show out-of-town visitors, a symbol of New York's uniqueness much like the cigarette ad of a pre-Three's Company Suzanne Somers affixed to a doughnut shop entrance nearby. Then, several years back, the plaque disappeared. Some of the building's decorative features had also been ripped off, a fairly common practice for New York landlords seeking to avoid a potential landmarks designation. It was obvious that the building's demise was near.

Today the site of Beiderbecke's long-ago debut, where he burst onto the New York jazz scene with mythological force, is wrapped in blue demolition scaffolding, effectively hushing any notes that might remain.