Published by Da Capo Press
by Ralph Berton, Nat Hentoff (Introduction)

As Nat Hentoff says, "Hearing Bix for the first time was like waking up to the first day of spring." Bix has always inspired such acclaim, for he was an unmatched master of the cornet.

Ralph Berton was privileged enough to have been a fan'and younger brother of Bix's drummer just as Beiderbecke's genius was flowering, before he died in 1931 at age twenty-eight.

Listening from behind the piano, tagging along to honky-tonks and jam sessions, Berton heard some of the most extraordinary music of the century, and he brings Bix and his era alive with a remarkable combination of the excitement of youth and the perspective of the five decades that followed'decades that confirmed Bix's place in the pantheon of jazz.