Bunny Bergan: Elusive Legend of Jazz

A full-scale biography of this jazz great, drawing on hundreds of interviews with Berigan's family, friends and colleagues to present a comprehensive picture of his fast-paced career and personal life.

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The accomplishments of seminal jazz trumpeter Bernard "Bunny" Berigan have secured his place in the annals of American musical history. In his short lifetime, Berigan performed more than 600 recordings and achieved national as well as international success. He served as a direct link between Louis Armstrong and those who developed form his roots - Roy Eldridge, Dizzy Gillespie, Miles Davis, Clifford Brown, Wynton Marsalis and others. Berigan and his soaring trumpet catapulted the Benny Goodman band, along with the rest of the country, into the Swing Era and assured Goodman's coronation as the "King of Swing". Berigan's uninhibited jazz style inspired and dominated every group with which he played, including the bands of Hal Kemp, Paul Whiteman and Tommy Dorsey. His great technical skills and instant reading ability made him a coveted studio player for such vocalists as Billie Holiday, Bing Crosby, Mildred Bailey, and Lee Wiley. Robert Dupuis' "Bunny Berigan: Elusive Legend of Jazz" is a full-scale biography of this jazz great.
Drawing on hundreds of interviews with Berigan's family, friends and colleagues, Dupuis presents a comprehensive picture of Berigan's fast-paced career and personal life. 12 years of excessive consumption of alcohol, coupled with malnutrition and overwork, ended the life of one of this century's greatest trumpeters. In tracing Berigan's heady rise to the top, Dupuis examines not only his many successes but also the events that caused him to be broken in spirit, physically spent, and in financial debt at the time of his death.