Roland Bernard ‘Bunny’ Berigan, trumpeter, bandleader and one of the best soloists of the swing era, was born in early November 1908 in the town of Gilbert and grew up in Fox Lake, Wisconsin. He was a typical musical prodigy – from the age of six he played the violin masterfully, at the age of 10, he mastered the trumpet and as a teenager performed in the orchestra of his grandfather, John Schlitzberg. Apparently, it was from his grandfather that Bunny inherited the musical gift that brought him fame.

Bernard Berigan played in the jazz ensemble at the University of Wisconsin and in the evenings in dance bands. In 1928, he came to New York and joined the Hal Kemp Orchestra. It was with Kemp's band, already in 1930, that the musician recorded his first brilliant trumpet solos and went on tour in Europe. Upon his return, Berigan decided to move permanently to the East Coast.

Bunny's arriving to New York City just before the Great Depression began, opened the door to his boisterous success. Around this time he met Donna MacArthur, the young people were married in Syracuse in May 1931. Two daughters, Patricia and Joyce, were born to the marriage. In addition to working in several popular bands, Berigan became one of the most popular trumpet players on CBS radio station.

In 1931, Bunny was a soloist in Tommy Dorsey's big band, played with Paul Whiteman from 1932 to 1933, with Abe Lyman in 1934, and with Benny Goodman from 1935 to 1936. In the spring of 1935, Bunny took part in the legendary Goodman Orchestra tour, which began as an utterly hopeless adventure in the midst of the Great Depression and ended on August 21 with a triumph at the Palomar Dance Hall in Los Angeles – the famous concert that would later be considered the starting point of the Swing Era.

In 1937, Bunny Berigan formed his own band and signed a record contract with ‘Victor’. But, despite the fact that his musicians and he himself worked very hard, Bunny's complete inability to run a business led to the rapid collapse of the ensemble. For a while, the talented musician played and recorded with famous singers - Bing Crosby, with Mildred Bailey and Billie Holiday. With young tenor saxophonist George Auld and Buddy Rich on drums, Berigan had a fairly strong band. However, due to his alcohol dependability and financial setbacks, the musicians began to have problems soon after their strong start. Despite the popularity of the soloists, the orchestra was perceived as a second-rate band, and opportunities for a successful start were lost.

In 1937, Bunny Berigan again became a trumpet soloist in the Tommy Dorsey Orchestra and made one of his most stunning recordings with the orchestra: his solo in ‘Marie’ is considered a masterpiece. The solo sounded so much more powerful than the chorus and the orchestra that it was almost impossible to believe that Bunny was standing nine metres away from the microphone during the recording session. The solos in ‘Marie’ and ‘Song of India’ become so popular that later Tommy Dorsey commissioned them to be arranged for an entire orchestral section. An interesting fact is that ‘Song of India’ was none other than the ‘Song of the Indian Guest’ from the opera “Sadko” by Nikolai Rimsky-Korsakov.

That same year, Bunny tried again to put together his own band – and again faced constant difficulties and big problems, both financial and personal. He recorded his most famous hit - the most popular song ‘I Can't Get Started’. It is known that Louis Armstrong, who had always recognised and appreciated Berigan's talent, refused to make his recording of ‘I Can't Get Started’ at the time, saying it was a ‘Bunny's song’. Subsequently, that record Berigan, made in 1937, would be inducted into the Grammy Hall of Fame in 1975. Bunny Berigan looked like a film star, his solo could cover a three-trumpet section, he was the uncrowned king of the 52^nd Street, home to major jazz clubs in New York, and the only person Bunny couldn't surpass with his talent was himself.

In the early 1940s, trying to pay off his accumulated debts, Bunny worked harder and harder, performed more often and longer – he even sang himself, and with great success, too. However, things got worse and worse as he was fond of a bottle. Bunny couldn't work without drinking and often couldn't perform properly and play his signature solos because he drank too much. He fell so often during performances that he eventually turned it into a kind of comic stunt – part of a concert act: he would fall face down, as if on purpose, with no apparent consequences. The musician's health was rapidly deteriorating, and doctors forbade him to play – a scenario unthinkable for Bunny. He was living by music and his performances, and without them, without the audience, without all this, he simply died. The talented musician continued to play. Overwork, exhaustion, pneumonia and, finally, liver cirrhosis took its toll – Bunny died on July 2, 1942 – at the age of 33.

In the opinion of many, Bunny Berigan was the best white trumpeter of the Swing Era. It was said that he was the only one who could build an amazingly slender melody in any improvisation. That only he could sound so rich and beautiful in the low register – and take impossible, fantastic-sounding high notes. His rendition of many jazz standards such as ‘Honeysuckle Rose’, ‘Sophisticated Swing’, ‘King Porter Stomp’, ‘Sometimes I'm Happy’, ‘Blue Skies’, ‘Prisoners’ Song’ and many others remained unrivalled. It was said that the sound of his trumpet ‘soared’ and made the whole band soar with him. Like his idol Armstrong, Bunny had the magical ability to make any tune uniquely his own one.