Willie Geary "Bunk" Johnson: The New Iberia Years

This unusual biography of trumpeter Bunk Johnson brings to life a man, an era, and an area that made significant contributions to the history of American Jazz. Covering Bunk's musical and non-musical years from his birth in 1880 in New Orleans to his death in New Iberia, Louisiana, in 1949, the book provides an intimate look at his life and times - his years of traveling with bands and minstrels, and playing with groups in the small Louisiana towns outside of New Orleans through the twenties, and his rediscovery by jazz historians in the late thirties that led to new prominence and the recordings of the forties which captured his play for posterity. Here are the men and women with whom Buck played, the bands he worked for. The author has recaptured the past and an important part of jazz tradition that is often overlooked. The book is illustrated with rare an unusual photographs, and a complete discography gives detailed information on all of Bunk's recorded work. There are transcriptions of some Bunk Johnson solos, and brief biographies of fellow musicians and listings of personnel in many of the groups he played with.