But real he was, and, as George Avakian has observed, it is becoming increasingly apparent that the man has more greatness than anyone has been wont to realize.

He was the first, and perhaps the finest, of jazzmen to use what Andre Hodeir has termed the romantic imagination in jazz, and he was the first to have experimented with classical forms in jazz. If stature is to be judged by the extent of influence (and this is beginning to seem like a spurious criterion), then it should be noted that, though the direct influence of Beiderbecke has all but vanished, there are large areas in jazz that have sprung obliquely from his influence.

He was not essentially an innovator, yet he seems to have anticipated the whole "cool" movement, as well as all the Third Stream experiments.

There are a thousand puckish tales and trivia in print about Beiderbecke but only a few critical studies, and most of the latter are surprisingly shallow.

It seems fairly safe now, however, to say that the most important phase of Beiderbecke's short career began with his job with Frank Trumbauer at the Arcadia ballroom in St. Louis in 1925 and ended when Bix and the Jean Goldkette unit finished a summer stint at the Blue Lantern Inn at Hudson Lake in northern Indiana in 1926.

This period stands as a bridge between the talented, but youthful and immature, cornet performances on the Wolverine, Rhythm Jugglers, and Sioux City Six records of the early '20s and the series with various groups, beginning in 1927, when Beiderbecke's cornet phrases had taken on a better drive and an impelling glow of beauty.

Trumbauer has reported that Beiderbecke was playing very well in St. Louis and that he was doing quite a bit of experimenting on piano. But evidence begins to favor the opinion that it was during the free and easy summer at Hudson Lake that the giant strides were made.

There was almost a complete lack of pressure. Goldkette had two other units in the Midwest and rarely made an appearance at Hudson Lake, and there were no hippies or jazz critics hanging around.

Drummer Dee Orr has said that Beiderbecke was playing his best then, his cornet choruses flowing out in an incandescent blaze of sound. And it was here, in the ambiance of place, friends, and jazz, and in the magical Indiana summer twilight, that the bits and pieces of "Flashes," "Candlelight," and "In The Dark" began to take shape, and nearly all the parts of "In A Mist" were completed.

One day last April, I was returning to Chicago from South Bend, Ind., and decided to make a detour to Hudson Lake to see what remained of the Blue Lantern Inn. I had a dim memory of having read that the building was still standing. The proprietor of the general store in Hudson Lake mused a moment and shook his head. "I was born and raised here," he said, "and I've never heard of a place like that. There's an old dance pavilion on the western side of the lake called the Casino. Victor Smith, the son of the man that built the Casino, is living out near there, and he might be able to tell you something about the Blue Lantern Inn."

Smith and his mother, Mrs. Victor Smith Sr., did know about the inn, and they suggested that I talk also to members of the Prinderville family, all of whom spent the summer of 1926 at their cottage on Hudson Lake. May Prinderville had distinct recollections of that summer. I have mingled the statements of these three persons for the sake of continuity. This is what they remembered of Bix and the summer of 1926:

Buddy Smith: My grandfather built the hotel in 1885, and my father built the Casino across the street next to the lake in 1922. It was always known as the Casino, except for t