A Folk Hero

This is the title of chapter 13 in Stephen Longstreet’s book “The Real Jazz Old and New,” Louisiana State University Press, 1956. Stephen Longstreet collaborated with Hoagy Carmichael in writing the autobiographical  “Sometimes I Wonder.” The “Folk Hero” is Bix Beiderbecke.

In the introduction to the book, the author writes:

I didn’t write this book. I heard it. Almost all of it was told to me by many jazzmen over a period of years when I was drawing and painting the jazz life in New Orleans and New York and Chicago and Los Angeles.

I don’t know of another book like it -that lets the jazzmen tell their own story in their own words.” “Almost every word in this book came from the memory of old jazzmen.  When I quote them directly I put their words in quotes.

In my opinion, there is a huge flaw in this book: the jazzmen who are quoted are not identified by name! The author thanks a lot of people in the introduction, including “the Jazzmen and women who are not named but who all helped.”

 Although the author claims that “At the end of the book will be found details as to when and how the material for each chapter was collected, and notes that explain certain details,” a close examination of the “Note on Sources” chapter reveals no information about the sources of the material on Bix.

The chapter on Bix consists of 11 pages. All the pages of Bix’s chapter, as well as parts of the introduction, were photographed and are made available here. From the style displayed in the quotes, I speculate that a good fraction of the quotes provided about Bix come from a single individual.

Excerpts From “The Real Jazz Old and New” – by Stephen Longstreet – 1956

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