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Author Visits Hometown Of His Subject On a simply spectacular fall day in Mr. Zirpolo
arrived in After the tour, with the hometown of
Bunny firmly in his mind, Mike spent the afternoon looking at the materials in
the Harriet O’Connell Historical Room.
He was delighted when he found pictures he had never seen before and
written materials that were somewhat unique.
Why the excitement? Why the absolute
joy?....because Michael had just finished a book about
Bunny which is soon to be published by Scare Crow Press. Michael Zirpolo
became interested in Bunny Berigan’s music when he
was a small child. His father was a real
record collector and spent many an hour listening to the music of the great
bands and musicians of the Swing Era.
Mike witnessed that his father, normally not an emotional man, was
completely moved by a recording of “I
can’t get started with you” played by Bunny Berigan. (This was the piece that Louis Armstrong was
once asked to play and he said he could not play it because “its Bunny’s song.”) Mike saw that his
father was very moved by the music and wondered why his father had asked the
question into the air “Why did he have to kill himself?” Being a child Michael had asked “How did he
kill himself?” and his father replied “He drank too much.” Seeing his father so moved turned out
to be a very memorable experience for Michael, one that he never forgot. He
personally found, as his father knew, that one cannot listen to Bunny’s music
and be unmoved. As he became older Mike
developed a keen interest in Bunny. He
found that in the 1960s there was no information about Bunny Berigan. He tried for years and years to find information,
finally coming upon a man, Bozy White, who was himself
collecting information about Bunny. Bozy planned to publish a book about Bunny when his life
was cut short and he was murdered.
Friends became the heirs of his research and offered to share it with
Michael. Michael now tells, “I started
out to write a paper on Bunny and when I was done it was 400 pages long. I had actually worked on the idea for 40
years and just felt that I needed to now tell the story of Bunny. I felt that I
had the White materials to draw from, a life long interest in Bunny Berigan, and the assistance of another author, Bob Dupuis,
who had previously written a book about Bunny.
Friends put me in touch with Scare Crow Press, a publishing firm that is
known for Jazz history books and they were interested in my book.” Now the suspense is almost touchable as
the book is about to be published. A
book that will tell a very human story of Bunny Berigan,
a Mid-western person, and how he coped with the music scene in New York City.
Bunny traveled the world, but his heart always remained in |