1929: A Novel of the Jazz Age - Softcover

Turner, Frederick

Softcover

ISBN 10: 1582433097 ISBN 13: 9781582433097

Publisher: Counterpoint, 2004

Synopsis

By 1929, the brief, brilliant career of Bix Beiderbecke--self-taught cornetist, pianist, and composer--had already become legend. From the summer of '26 at Hudson Lake, Indiana, when his genius blazed forth with a strange, doomed incandescence, Bix's career tragically reflected the chaotic impulses of a country suddenly awash in wealth, power, and a profound cynicism. Shy, elusive, inarticulate, Bix was beloved by both the raccoon-coated campus crowd and the men who nightly played alongside him. He is still celebrated in a yearly festival in his hometown of Davenport, Iowa.And that is where the novel begins, Davenport and the Bix Fest. Then it travels back in time to focus on the highlights of a meteoric career: a Capone-controlled nightclub in 1926; the grueling cross-country tours with Paul Whiteman's Symphonic Jazz orchestra; the disastrous Whiteman trip to California to make the first all-color talkie musical; the stock market crash of 1929 that finds Bix in an asylum, victim of the era's signature product, bootleg gin; and finally, Bix's dying efforts to combine his piano compositions into a suite that would be the pinnacle of his life's work and his evocation of his time and place.Colored by some of the age's most popular characters--Maurice Ravel, Bing Crosby, Louis Armstrong, Duke Ellington, and Clara Bow-- 1929 brilliantly illuminates a period in history, personified in the gifted, compelling, and melancholy figure of Bix Beiderbecke.

About this title

About the Author:

Frederick Turner is the author of seven books of nonfiction and extensive literary journalism. The recipient of awards from the National Endowment for the Arts and the Guggenheim Foundation, he lives in Santa Fe, New Mexico.

From Publishers Weekly:

Bix Beiderbecke was one of the great jazz musicians of the 1920s. A brilliant cornet player with an amazing ear, he drank himself to death at the age of 28 with illegal Prohibition liquor. Although Beiderbecke isn't as well known as some of his contemporaries, much has been written about the enigmatic Iowan. Literary journalist Turner offers a fictional take on Beiderbecke's life, giving readers an invigorating picture of what life was like for jazz musicians in the years leading up to the Great Depression. The story is hardly linear; it darts from one scene to the next, beginning with one of Bix's friends leaning on the musician's grave, reminiscing about his old pal, then flashing back to when Bix was alive, tearing through the streets of Chicago with Al Capone's gang. Though there's no plot per se, Turner does present a sequence of events that add up to a portrait of Beiderbecke's life and musical contributions. Despite its brevity, Beiderbecke's career took him across the country, bringing him in touch with such legends as Bing Crosby, Duke Ellington and Maurice Ravel. Turner's style is dense, although his pace varies from balladlike to racing. His descriptions of Beiderbecke's music are evocative (the notes from his cornet fall "like stardust over all of us" and listening to the music feels like "waiting for something terrifically important that is already happening, that will keep on happening, only you couldn't predict or anticipate exactly how it will happen next"). Long-winded and at times frustratingly circuitous, this is nonetheless a rich tribute to a Jazz Age icon.
Copyright 2003 Reed Business Information, Inc.

About this edition

• Publisher: Counterpoint
• Publication date: 2004
• ISBN 10: 1582433097
• ISBN 13: 9781582433097
• Binding: Paperback
• Number of pages: 400