Sorry, I meant the Sudhalter book Lost Chords, about white jazz musicians 1915-1945 --- his endnotes to the chapter on Bax are pretty vilifying and the speculation there about someone dead and unable to explain himself -- "A Father's Wrath" when we all know Bismarck loved his son and was proud of him, even when he got into scrapes due to his drinking lifestyle and incapacity for sticking to the rigidity of a formal education.
Second, there was no "Banishment from Davenport." Bix's parents wanted to give him a chance to pull his grades up in a boarding school meant to corrall careless boys who were intelligent but indifferent, and Lake Forest was meant for instilling the spirit for succeeding academically so boys could get into a good college [I have old magazines from the 1920's with advertisements for Lake Forest Academy, listing John Wayne Richards as Headmaster, and the manner of wording is that it was non-military and just about promised turning out students who would be college material) We also infer from the fun that Bix had there, his affectionate letters home, and all the parties, dances, sports and recreation at the school, that it was of course not a harshly disciplinary place for all its supposedly strict regimen -- Bix was not "sent away" there for punitive reasons, the way some erring teenage delinquent in those days was often packed off by the distraught family to boarding schools which were little better than fancy reformatories.
Third, not to get graphic, but "the Bottle Incident" which strongly insinuated Bix was into rough trade and getting beaten up brutally for attempting to pick up guys -- that's out and out slander. No one interviewed about Bix ever came anywhere NEAR to even hinting at him having those proclivities or even preferring guys sexually over girls! Now, how can this speculation of Sudhalter's possibly be defended? How is it fair to Bix, and what kind of a can of worms was ever opened up by Ralph Berton's ridiculous lie about Bix and Gene Berton "so he could sell books and spice things up", which possibly lead to such an assumption by Sudhalter in the first place? Unless there is proof, don't pronounce someone's orientation - especially when they are not alive to speak for themselves.
Sure Lost Chords is a fascinating book -- but as much as we speculate and surmise about Bix's private life --- and it's the MUSIC which matters, we keep telling one another over and over again -- but I say it again: Dick Sudhalter did not do Bix any favors in those chapter endnotes. It states something which was not: that Bix was something for his parents to be ashamed of, who got into unspeakable trouble because of every aspect of his lifestyle from drinking to sex; and he was harshly disaproved of, in perpetual disgrace, and unforgiven. That is what anyone reading those endnotes would infer. That is NOT fair to Bix or his family.