29 Facts About Bunny Berigan

1.

Roland Bernard "Bunny" Berigan was an American jazz trumpeter and bandleader who rose to fame during the swing era.

2.

Bunny Berigan was born in Hilbert, Wisconsin, the son of William Patrick Bunny Berigan and Mary Catherine Schlitzberg, and raised in Fox Lake.

3.

Bunny Berigan's first recorded trumpet solos were with the orchestra, which toured England and a few other European countries in 1930.

4.

Bunny Berigan appeared as featured soloist with bands fronted by Rudy Vallee, Tommy Dorsey, Abe Lyman, Paul Whiteman and Benny Goodman.

5.

Bunny Berigan joined the staff of CBS radio network musicians in early 1931.

6.

Bunny Berigan recorded his first vocal, "At Your Command", with Rich that year.

7.

From late 1932 through early 1934, Bunny Berigan was a member of Paul Whiteman's orchestra, before playing with Abe Lyman's band briefly in 1934.

8.

Bunny Berigan returned to freelancing in the New York recording studios and working on staff at CBS radio in 1934.

9.

Bunny Berigan recorded as a sideman on hundreds of commercial records, most notably with the Dorsey Brothers and on Glenn Miller's earliest recording as a leader in 1935, playing on "Solo Hop".

10.

Bunny Berigan left Goodman to return again to freelancing as a recording and radio musician in Manhattan.

11.

Bunny Berigan spent some time with Tommy Dorsey's orchestra in late 1936 and early 1937, working as a jazz soloist on Dorsey's radio program and on several records.

12.

Bunny Berigan made three attempts to organize a band of his own, his last try meeting success, playing trumpet in nearly every number while directing the band.

13.

Bunny Berigan modeled his trumpet style in part on Louis Armstrong's, and he often acknowledged Armstrong as his idol.

14.

Bunny Berigan led his own band full-time from early 1937 until June 1942, with a six-month hiatus in 1940 as a sideman in Tommy Dorsey's band.

15.

Bunny Berigan began an affair with singer Lee Wiley in 1936, which lasted into 1940.

16.

The stresses of bandleading drove Bunny Berigan to drink even more heavily.

17.

Bunny Berigan was regularly featured on CBS Radio's Saturday Night Swing Club broadcasts from 1936 into 1937.

18.

Bunny Berigan led moderately successful big bands from the fall of 1940 into early 1942, and was on the comeback trail when his health declined alarmingly.

19.

Bunny Berigan's doctors discovered that cirrhosis had severely damaged his liver.

20.

Bunny Berigan was advised to stop drinking and stop playing the trumpet for an undetermined length of time.

21.

Bunny Berigan returned to his band on tour and played for a few weeks before he returned to the Van Cortlandt Hotel, on 49th Street, where he made his home in New York City and suffered a massive hemorrhage on May 31,1942.

22.

Bunny Berigan died two days later in Stuyvesant Polyclinic Hospital, New York, at age 33.

23.

Bunny Berigan was buried in St Mary's Cemetery south of Fox Lake.

24.

Bunny Berigan's 1937 recording of "I Can't Get Started" was used in the film Save the Tiger, the Roman Polanski film Chinatown, and a Martin Scorsese short film, The Big Shave.

25.

Bunny Berigan's name has been used frequently in the comic strip Crankshaft.

26.

In 1975, Bunny Berigan's 1937 recording "I Can't Get Started" on Victor was inducted into the Grammy Hall of Fame.

27.

Bunny Berigan was inducted in the ASCAP Jazz Wall of Fame in 2008.

28.

Bunny Berigan's youngest daughter, Joyce "Jo," was born on April 22,1936, and died on July 4,2011.

29.

Bunny Berigan's older sister, Patricia, was born in New York City on July 23,1932, and died on December 8,1998.