Brigitte Berman's film biography of jazz cornetist Bix Beiderbecke has been universally hailed by critics and won awards at numerous international film festivals in 1981 and 1982. Albert Johnson, writing for the San Francisco International Film Festival in 1981, calls the film “a loving, informative and thoroughly entertaining documentary on the legendary jazz musician...who died in 1931 at the age of 28. Every jazz fan has heard of Beiderbecke, but strangely enough, until this film, no one had bothered to gather all of the information about him into cohesive, visual form. It is all here, plus rare interviews with those who knew and worked with him. These insights into the life of this Midwestern youth who became obsessed with the jazz of the 1920s are pure Americana, and from the reactions of Bix's family (cold disdain), one can correlate the horror of middle-class parents, decades later, toward the primitive sounds of early ‘rock'. When one listens to the music of the twenties, the carefree joyousness of the rhythm, mingling banjos with trumpets and cornets, the excitement is still alive, and coupled with the stills of Bix with his orchestra, it is easy to sense the creativity it inspired in him. It is not difficult to hear Beiderbecke's enthusiasm in his playing and his improvisational genius. The voice of Louis Armstrong is heard in the film, saying, ‘Ain't none of them play like him yet,' and apparently it is true. Bix Beiderbecke and the Wolverines were the rage of the Roaring Twenties.... By the time Beiderbecke worked with Paul Whiteman's orchestra, he was world famous, and dedicated to the tenets of flaming youth. As the veteran jazz pianist Willie ‘The Lion' Smith told it, ‘That Bix was a real nice boy and a wonderful trumpet player, until the wild life hurried him away.'”