Albert,
Whatever superior attitude you feel that you must take towards Sven (and practically everybody else here) I think you should consider the out of context point in your self-evaluation. To single out formulations from fundamental works by extremely diligent jazz scholars like Gunther Schuller and Richard Sudhalter and then criticize them do not seem very decent to me. Some expressions and some formulations have to be better than others in a book and if you really want to not understand there is often the possibility to interpret them in more than one way. In those examples of lately it did not bear much fruit either. (In Schuller and Sudhalter’s works.) Had there been some factual faults to correct or had some new information come up it would have been another case.
The normal procedure is and the intention of the writer is that you read the whole book, and in the case of “Bix, Man and Legend” since all the essential facts are there it should be clear to any normal reader (and I consider myself as one) that Bix was not passive or lazy. Raising from nowhere to the top of the musical activities in the US at 25 years of age without the aid of parents or relatives takes some activity. I can see that you as well as me are concerned that people should not get the wrong impression of Bix but if someone within the context of the book draws the conclusion from the sentence "Testimony of friends and colleagues agrees that outside the embrace of his music Bix seemed remarkably indifferent, content to let life find him where it might.” that Bix was lazy or passive then there is something wrong with the reader. It takes some maturity to read certain books and to understand a biography about Bix Beiderbecke you should among other things have some knowledge about what it takes to learn to play an instrument and to do it as good as Bix. ( He had in fact two to keep up with!)
Now you may think that this sentence should have been ommitted from the book. I don’t, because I am thankful for everything that is passed on from the interviews of those who knew Bix. It can further help to distinguish him as a person, like his music making does from someone like –let’s say Red Nichols.
-Paul Bocciolone Strandberg