Thanks Bob.

I felt incredibly lucky to get the book on Bix. It cost about ten quid and copies were routinely changing hands for sixty and a hundred quid. when I told the guy who ran the Bix website, that I'd got a copy, he said it was the finest book about a musician he'd ever read.

yet when I read it - it was a strange experience. here was this very troubled young man. His personal life seemed like a catalogue of disaster. Dead after drinking too much at the age of 28.

And yet the reminiscences of his young life were like a Norman Rockwell painting....an idyllic in a knickerbocker trousers by the side of the Mississippi. Even a record of his first kiss...

Finally I came to the conclusion that these people weren't really taking about Bix. they were talking about Iowa before World war One, the society, almost a pastoral scene. That's when I got the idea for the song - what people seemed to yearn for in their childhood memories of the state.

al