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In 2007, I got an email seemingly out of the blue from Swedish jazz historian Lars Westin, inquiring if I was related to the drummer Uffe Baadh.

A correspondence ensued, with Lars researching, finding, and translating from Danish, Swedish, and American music archives a slew of photos, articles, reviews, interviews, and recordings from Uffe’s early days that we, his American family, had never seen or heard about.

Now, on the centennial of Uffe’s birth in Aarhus, Denmark, in 1923, seems a great time to collect these notes and tell his story and even hear his music, for his family and all lovers of music, design, and history of the 20th century.

The story takes place in Copenhagen, Stockholm, New York, Los Angeles, and Palm Springs.

We were sitting beside the swimming pool in Palm Desert on that April day in 2007 after Lars’ email came through: my mom, Shirley, and sister, Lise, and me, musing why this sudden interest a forgotten desert character who’d been dead for over 25 years. We had no idea his life story also tells the tale of jazz in mid-century Scandinavia and its impressions in post-war US music scene.