Young Man With a Horn Dorothy Baker Butler's holding a book published in England by the Jazz Book Club in l957. It replaces a copy of the same book that was published as a paperback in the early '60s. That is turn is a replacement for a hardcover edition, the first, out in 1950. The book, "Young Man With a Horn," was written by Dorothy Baker. It seems to be the only novel she ever wrote. If so, she stopped when she was ahead --- Butler not only adores this book, he revisits it every few years, just because. If you have seen the movie made from this book, you are already wondering why. Oh, it's....watchable. Just not more than that. The novel, on the other hand, is great.  See if this grabs you: "What I'm going to do now is to write off the story of Rick Martin's life, now that it's over, now that Rick is washed up and gone, as they say, to his rest." That's the first line. It's a story about genius and glory and doom, about a boy who taught himself how to play piano and trumpet and was, at 20, bound for glory, and well before his 30th birthday, was dead. Oh dear. Butler is so under the spell of Dorothy Baker he's starting to write like her. And why not? She can rip off a line about "the gap between a man's musical ability and his ability to fit it to his own life." She can editorialize: "He expected too much from music and he came to it with too much of a need." And she can nail a truth in the fewest possible words: A bandleader is "handsome in a way that doesn't mean anything." The great novel of the 1920s is "The Great Gatsby." The other book to read is this one --- the fictionalized story of Bix Beiderbecke, who rocketed out of Davenport, Iowa with a sound so distinctive his only competition was Louis Armstrong. Bix was as shy as he was talented, damaged in a way that's still not quite clear. But he could play --- God, could he play. It is hard to make great music; it is almost as hard to write about it. Here is  Otis Ferguson on Bix: Briefly, he played a full easy tone, no forcing, faking or mute tricks, no glissando to cover unsure attack or vibrato to fuzz over imprecisions of pitch--it all had to be in the music. And the clear line of that music is something to wonder at. You see, this is the sort of thing that is almost wholly improvised, starting from a simple theme, taking off from that into a different and unpredictable melodic line, spontaneous, personal--almost a new tune by still shadowing the old one, anchored in its chord sequence. Obviously, without lyric invention and a perfect instinct for harmony, this is no go for a minute, let alone chorus after chorus, night after night. And yet here is this fantastic chap, skipping out from behind a bank of saxophones for eight measures in the clear and back again, driving up the tension with a three-note phrase as brash and gleeful as a kid with a prank, riding down the whole length of the chorus like a herd of mustangs--everywhere you find him there is always this miracle of constant on-the-spot invention, never faltering or repeating, every phrase as fresh and glistening as creation itself. Wow. Dorothy Baker, bless her, conjures that in her telling of the life of "Rick Martin." She writes wonderful scenes: the afternoon in a mission that the boy teaches himself Hymn 14, and how he sits outside the Cotton Club night after night, in his early teens, listening to bands and memorizing their songs, and the night he gets to sit in with professionals, and getting hired to play in a band that caters to college kids in the California summer. And then fame. Imagine the white version of Jimi Hendrix --- a good-looking lad in a world dominated by black artists who do it, he feels, just a bit better than he ever will. That's Bix Beiderbecke's relation to Louis Armstrong, and that's Rick Martin's sense of himself in comparison to his black idols. Is it surprising, then, that he never sleeps? That he drinks and drinks and drinks? That his romances are duds? Butler first read this book at 12. Loved it because it did not condescend or sugar-coat. Because it took a reader inside the music --- and made the reader, any reader, want to find an instrument and learn it. Butler went out and got himself a trumpet and tried to be Bix. Never made it. But then, no one ever has. Got a kid who's into music? This is the book. Interested in the Jazz Age? Ditto. Or just looking for a short novel that you can't put down? Oh, yes. One caveat: Copies are hard to get. You may want to look into used books on Amazon.com. Not much more effort. And totally worth it. --- Jesse Kornbluth, for HeadButler.com To buy "Young Man With a Horn" from Amazon.com, click here. To buy " Bix Beiderbecke, Vol. 1: Singin' the Blues" from Amazon.com, click here. Copyright 2005 by Head Butler Inc.