Thinking about Bunny Berigan.

Fox Lake, Wisconsin, lies north of Madison and Milwaukee, roughly equidistant between the state's capital and largest city. It's where the swing era trumpeter Bunny Berigan (1908-1942) grew up and is buried. Each May, the town hosts a Bunny Berigan Jazz Jubilee honoring the memory of its most renowned former resident, and although I'd love to make it to the jubilee some day, it's more realistic to imagine visiting during our annual August excursion to Madison for the Great Taste of the Midwest.

I intend to do this, maybe even next year.

As the years pass, the brief period of Berigan's pop music primacy recedes ever further from active memory. Could there be more than a handful of people still living who heard him play in person? And yet, as with all historical occurrences, there remains a stubborn human instinct, at least among some, to keep a living record of what's dead and gone. In the case of Berigan and other musicians of his time, we are fortunate that the record includes recordings like this.