Bix Beiderbecke: Louisiana

After Hurricane Katrina devastated Louisiana in 2005, Americans expressed outrage at their federal government's laggard response, and privately donated billions for emergency relief. All 49 other states individually extended help. If proof were needed that we're united in more than name only, there it was. And yet, jazz has expressed such unity-in-diversity for 100 years. What else can you call a middleclass kid from Iowa fronting an all-white band in one of the loveliest, most glorious celebrations of music from the black South? Bix Beiderbecke plays "Louisiana" as if raised amidst crawfish and cotton, not cornstalks. One nation, under jazz.