As Nat Hentoff says in his foreword: "Hearing Bix for the first time was like waking up to the first day of spring." Bix, the unparalleled master of the cornet, has always inspired such acclaim. Ralph Berton - younger brother of Bix's drummer Vic Berton - was privileged enough to have been a fan just as Beiderbecke's genius was flowering, before his death in 1931 at the age of 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. here he brings Bix and his era alice with a remarkable combination of the excitement of youth and the perspective of the seven decades that followed - decades that have confirmed Bix's place in the pantheon of jazz.

RALPH BERTON (1910-1993) wrote extensively on jazz, serving as an editor at Metronome and Down Beat magazines. He was also a professor of jazz history at Cooper Union, Middlesex County College and Bloomfield College.

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