Bunny Berigan’s Music Still

Inspires Musicians of Today

The Peter Locke Story

By Julie Flemming

The inspiration of Bunny Berigan’s music today on professional musicians became apparent when the New Wolverine Jazz Orchestra of Australia performed for the Madison Jazz Society in Madison, Wisconsin. It was a Sunday afternoon at the Coliseum Bar in Madison when the visiting band, the New Wolverine Jazz Orchestra, asked the audience if anyone knew where Fox Lake, Wisconsin was and if they could answer the question “why the band had made a trip there two years previous when they were in the United States?” For some in the audience the question was simple, the band wanted to visit the hometown of Bunny Berigan. Geoff Power, leader of the band said “yes, we wanted to visit the hometown of Bunny Berigan. Our Piano player, Peter Locke, is a fan of Bunnys and more than that he says that it is because of Bunny Berigan’s music that he is a professional piano player and arranger today.” Geoff went on to say that the band stood on a corner in downtown Fox Lake, Wisconsin, looked around and said “we bet it looks just like it looked when Bunny grew up here”…..and he was right.

Peter later told his story and here it is…. “I was about 10 years old, living in a little country river town in Northern Australia called Macksville. My late father was an old-time dance Alto player and we always had some music being played in the house. He was a huge Bing Crosby fan. I was like any other kid hearing the pop music of the day, as well, and predictably I guess, I was a Beatles fan.

My parents got a Reader’s Digest swing-era box set of records which I started listening to intently. I loved the sweet sounds of the era immediately, and became aware of a lot of the bands and names of the music. I was, of course, still hearing ‘naively” as I describe it, but something got to me with this music.

For some reason I used to try to sing the Trumpet section parts, including just the Trumpet “shots” as they are called. Of course one of the tracks was ‘I Can’t Get Started’! I would keenly wait to hear the big down beat of the band setting up Bunny’s cadenza at the beginning…..then that tone would immediately grab you – spellbinding. There seemed to be a special kind of soul getting through to the listener.

Though most people ‘knock’ his vocal, it does personalize it for the listener and you think, particularly for a young kid, this is the same guy who plays this incredible trumpet.

Bunny Berigan preceded my hearing of Louis Armstrong, whom everyone loves of course, and my peers often tell me of the heavy influence of Louis in Bunny’s playing. Yet, I still hear them as separate souls in their playing. Anyway it was a fork in the road for me and I’ve been a jazz person ever since! I wanted to be Bunny Berigan!

My first played gigs were on trumpet but it didn’t quite work out and I became a jazz pianist, still dabbling on the trumpet. I haven’t all of Bunny’s recordings, but I still treasure a vinyl of ‘A Study in Brown’ I bought as a teenager. On it he did incredible solos on tunes such as Berlin’s ‘Russian Lullaby; Ellington’s ‘Azure’; and others…. all with that soaring, soulful sound. Of course, I also heard his epic solos with Tommy Dorsey’s ‘Song of India’ and ‘Marie’, which as a kid, I used to try and sing. Bunny would bend notes more than most players of the day, in a way that was probably modern for the time.

While in Davenport, Iowa a few years ago, a local drummer named Josh Duffee gave me a box set, memorial album of 78 rpms of Bunny ---- I nearly fell over! I am sure that every jazz person has their own story, so this is mine. To visit Bunny’s graveside in Fox Lake, as you could imagine, was an amazing full circle for me.”

Peter Locke started with the New Wolverine Jazz Orchestra in 2003. He is an in demand player and his piano arrangements can be found in many different settings. There are few musicians today who can move so seamlessly from interpretations of the works of Bix Beiderbecke and Duke Ellington to Be-Bop and beyond. The NWJO has a CD with 17 titles on it, recorded in 2006, with solos of Peter named ‘Scuttlebutt’, ‘Black Beauty’, and ‘Jazz Lips’. The title of the CD is “The New Wolverine Jazz Orchestra ‘From Bix to Duke’”.

One can often find the NWJO live at the Sidney Jazz Club that was founded in 1953. This is the club that keeps alive the flame of Traditional Jazz and will continue while ever “the band plays on.” The NWJO is regarded as one of the world’s leading traditional jazz bands and internationally, one of Australia’s best known jazz bands that have

performed all over Australia, Europe and the USA.