Young Man with a Horn and Lake Forest Connection

In swing with our Read to the Rhythm Adult Summer Reading Program beginning today, the library is featuring  jazz-themed books from our collection through August 1st, when the program ends.  You can find some of those book along with bookmarks listing more jazz fiction and non-fiction titles at the center of the library's Too Good to Miss shelves in the rotunda through August 1.

The Chicago Tribune article excerpted here (May 19, 1938) identifies the first novel devoted entirely to jazz - Dorothy Baker's Young Man with a Horn, loosely based on the life of cornetist Leon "Bix" Beiderbecke, who briefly attended Lake Forest Academy.

photo source: riverwalkjazz.stanford.edu (public domain)

Bix was sent from hometown Davenport, Iowa to the academy in 1921 because his parents disapproved of his self-taught jazz cornet and piano-playing and hoped his jazz ways would be reformed through solid education and discipline. From the academy, however, Bix made frequent trips to Chicago to hear and play jazz and was so often truant that he was expelled in May of 1922.  After a short time back home working for his father, Bix set out on a music career, spending time in Chicago, Saint Louis, and New York playing with the Wolverines, the Paul Whiteman Orchestra, the Sioux City Six and the Gene Goldkette Orchestra. He played with saxophonist Frankie Trumbauer (Tram) in many of these bands, and together "Bix and Tram" inspired a younger generation of Chicago jazz musicians such as Eddie Condon (guitar), Bud Freeman (tenor sax), Jimmy McPartland (cornet), and Frank Teschemacher (clarinet).

Fortunately Beiderbecke made many recordings during his tragically brief career. Suffering from alcoholism and poor health most of his adult life, he was only 28 years old when he died of pneumonia in August 1931. [The article above incorrectly gives 1933 as the year of his death.] Bix's cornet playing was known for its bell-like tone, unorthodox fingering, and the rhythmic placement and changing timbre of the notes within a melody.  Bix achieved cult status during the 1920s and "became the first high-profile romantic hero of jazz music."¹  

Young Man with a Horn was made into a movie in 1950 with Kirk Douglas, Lauren Bacall, and Doris Day.  The Bix Beiderbecke Memorial Society formed in Bix's hometown of Davenport, Iowa in 1972 and has held the Bix Beiderbecke Memorial Jazz Festival (Bix Bash) there annually since then. Thousands of fans from across the U.S. and some other countries attend to hear a variety of bands play Bix's music.

Beiderbecke recordings and related titles from our collection are listed below.  Many of these titles were used as sources for this article.

Nonfiction:
Chicago Jazz: A Cultural History, 1904-1930 by William Howland Kenney 781.65 KEN
History of Jazz 2nd ed. by Ted Gioia 781.65 GIO
Legends of Jazz by Bill Milkowski  781.65 MIL
New Grove Dictionary of Jazz, 2nd ed., Vol. 1  Ref 781.65 NEW
(1.) Oxford Companion to Jazz edited by Bill Kirchner.  pp. 122-131  781.65 OXF

Fiction:
1929 by Frederick W. Turner  FICTION TURNER
Young Man with a Horn by Dorothy Baker  FICTION BAKER

Recordings:
Bix & Tram: Bix Beiderbecke • Frankie Trumbauer  CD JAZZ B Disc A, B, C, D
The Complete Wolverines, 1924-1928 CD JAZZ W