Who was the young man from Davenport, Iowa, who became the first major white jazz star in the 1920's?

Odonnell

Bix Beiderbecke taught himself to play the cornet when he was in his teens and died in 1931 at the age of 28. During his brief career, says author Fred Turner, he became one of the true sensations of the Jazz Age, unforgettable to anyone who ever heard him. So unforgettable, in fact, that the Bix Beiderbecke Memorial Jazz Festival held each July draws some 15,000 jazz aficionados to Davenport, Iowa, where the jazz legend was born. And the well-known composer Lalo Schifrin recently premiered a symphonic jazz work, 'Rhapsody for Bix,' based on songs written or popularized by the cornetist. Bix was also the inspiration for a popular novel of the late '30s, Young Man With a Horn, and the 1950 movie by the same title starring Kirk Douglas. He has been the subject of a steady stream of critical assessments, a full-scale biography, a 1990 feature film and a 1994 film documentary. Thu May 04 17:23:31 CDT 2000 (Reposted to edit content - McG) May 02 02, 9:25 AM

zbeckabee

On the other, white jazz is often understood as the creation of a rag-tag group of outsiders, misfit individuals forced together by and alienated from an equally unified but incurably unhip meta-culture (Bix Beiderbecke, that "tragic" early cornetist from Davenport, Iowa, appears as the quintessential example here). http://www.humnet.ucla.edu/echo/Volume1-Issue1/ake/ake-article.html Feb 04 08, 8:33 PM