Dorothy Baker
Young Man with a Horn

LA RECENSIONE

The book is just a pretext (since the entry "artist" is missing to be applied as an "object" to review) to write about the infamous Leon Bismark "Bix" Beiderbecke.

His attributed style or genre: Jazz & Dixieland

Leon was truly a child prodigy as he began playing the piano at just three years old.

In school first and later in college, he did not fare very well as a student, so much so that the school authorities invited him to desist and to focus on his passion that led him to spend the evenings in the smoky clubs of Chicago where his idols played, and one can imagine how he was on the school desk the next morning…

And it was by blowing the cornet, after being enchanted by it, that he embarked on his artistic career, thus fueling the legend of the "white trumpet player" despite not being able to read music very well.

The sound of his trumpet was particularly delicate and often characterized by improvisation so much so that "Satchmo" (Louis Daniel Armstrong) said about him: "I've never heard anyone play like him" and I think it was indeed a compliment…

He also appreciated classical music, admiring composers like Claude Debussy and Maurice Ravel.

He died of an alcoholic seizure in his apartment at just twenty-eight years old, although the official causes described on the death certificate are "lobar pneumonia & cerebral edema", but in the community, everyone knew the cause of his self-destruction which led him to suffer from delirium tremens, namely his strong dependency on liquors, despite or perhaps precisely because of the Prohibition which in those years allowed alcohol to flow freely, especially in the nightclubs where he performed…

P.S. From the novel, a namesake film was then made in 1950 "Young Man with a Horn" in Italian "Chimere" with Kirk Douglas, Lauren Bacall, and Doris Day and a biographical film on his figure as a jazz player "Bix" full title "Bix - An Interpretation of a Legendary Figure" from 1991 directed by the great Pupi Avati, based precisely on the life of "Bix the white trumpet player".

P.S.2 It’s thanks to my niece Chiara, a passionate reader with a preference for American literature, that I came to discover BIX, after reading on her blog a mini review of the novel written by Dorothy Baker in 1938 and published in November 2015 by Fazi Editore with the captivating title "The Legend of the White Trumpet Player" (the original in English was that "Young Man with a Horn" with which I opened this) and that I plan to read as soon as possible… and that's it.