Bunny Berigan, one of the most original jazz musicians of the 20;s and 30’s, was given a fiddle when he was a kid and later his grandfather gave him a trumpet. He learned to play both and by high school, he was playing fiddle with the school band and trumpet professionally with a jazz orchestra.
Later he hooked up with Benny Goodman. Want to hear some other great Berigan solos? Listen to Goodman’s ‘King Porter Stomp’ and ‘Sometimes I’m Happy,’ both from 1935.
Soon Berigan was on his way, with his own orchestra and a hit number called ‘I Can’t Get Started.’ Recorded in 1937, it was to be his one big shot. By 1940, Berigan’s orchestra was gone, he’d gotten on with Tommy Dorsey’s band (Check out his solo on ‘Marie.’) and then been dropped. Heavy drinking had worked its horrific transformation, turning promise and future into empty and past. In 1942, at the age of 33, cirrhosis of the liver silenced the magic trumpet of Bernard R. Berigan. But, the bits and pieces of solos and songs still thrill, their ups and downs, happiness and melancholy always reminding us of the talent that once was Bunny Berigan.
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