BEIDERBECKE, Bix

The son of Iowa German immigrants who were amateur musicians, he began to play music as a small child and developed an interest in ragtime and jazz that were beginning to receive national dissemination through records and radio, not to mention traveling musicians. Playing his cornet (a kind of trumpet) in improvising bands composed mostly of white people (the Original Dixieland Jazz Band, The Wolverines), Beiderbecke gravitated to New York where, collaborating with saxophonist Frankie Trumbauer,...