When writers Bill Russell and Fredric Ramsey tracked Bunk Johnson down in New Iberia, Louisiana in 1938, they found him toothless and out of music. Sidney Bechet and Louis Armstrong had spoken so highly of Johnson to the men that they searched him out for their book Jazzmen, if only to discover how and why he drifted away from New Orleans, and music making. Johnson offered them a drink, had one himself, and proceeded to gallop through the story of jazz as likely no one ever heard b...