Rick Martin loved music and the music loved him. He could pick up a tune
so quickly that it didn't matter to the Cotton Club boss that he was
underage, or to the guys in the band that he was just a white kid. He
started out in the slums of LA with nothing, and he ended up on top of
the game in the speakeasies and nightclubs of New York. But while talent
and drive are all you need to make it in music, they aren't enough to
make it through a life.
Dorothy Baker's Young Man with a Horn is widely regarded as the first
jazz novel, and it pulses with the music that defined an era. Baker took
her inspiration from the artistry--though not the life--of legendary
horn player Bix Beiderbecke, and the novel went on to be adapted into a
successful movie starring Kirk Douglas, Lauren Bacall, and Doris Day.