Buddy Bolden

Charles ‘Buddy’ Bolden (September 6, 1877-November 4, 1931) was the first important name is jazz history and was a cornetist and pioneer of the kind of New Orleans rag time music that eventually came to be known as jazz.

Very little is known but much is rumored about the life of Buddy Bolden. What is known is that he was born in New Orleans, Louisiana on September 6, 1877. His band (pictured below) was quite popular from 1900-07 until Bolden suffered an episode of acute alcoholic psychosis in 1907 and was diagnosed as a schizophenic (called Dementia praecox at the time). He then spent the remainder of his life in a mental institution until his death on November 4, 1931 when he was buried in a pauper’s grave at Holt graveyard in New Orleans.

The rumors and legends about ‘King’ Bolden, as he was frequently called, include stories of Buddy holding a day job as a barber or even publishing a scandal-sheet (much like a modern tabloid) called the Cricket and have been perpetuated by time and by works of fiction that include Bolden as a character such as Michael Ondattje’s book Coming Through the Slaughter an interesting work of fiction which features Boldon as a main character.

Bolden’s Band from circa 1905. Bolden is in the back row, second from the left. Click the picture for a larger view.

There are, very unfortunately, no recordings of Buddy Bolden that exist, although it is rumored that he recorded at least one phonograph cylinder (a method of recording used prior to the record disc). What is known about Bolden’s sound is from secondary sources which speak of his powerful, loud, and clear tone on the cornet and that Bolden was ‘one of the finest horn players around.’

His band began playing around 1895 in New Orleans and eventually became one of the most popular groups in the city, being famous for their more bluesy and improvised brand of rag time music. Some of the songs associated with the Bolden band are the traditional songs Careless Love and My Bucket’s Got a Hole In It, as well as the originals Get Out of Here and Go Home and his most famous ‘Funky Butt,’ a song that would inspire the jazz standard ‘Buddy Bolden’s Blues (I thought I heard Buddy Bolden say…)’ and was one of the many songs in Bolden’s repetoire known for their rude and off-color lyrics.

Bolden’s music would be a great influence on some of jazz’s earliest musicians such as Joe ‘King’ Oliver, Freddie Keppard, and Bunk Johnson. The man himself would be honored musically by Sidney Bechet’s Buddy Bolden Stomp and Duke Ellington’s 1957 suite A Drum is a Woman. A monument was erected in Holt cemetary in 1998 in Bolden’s honor although his exact gravesite remains unknown.

For more information about Buddy Bolden:
http://www.redhotjazz.com/buddy.html
http://www.southernmusic.net/buddybolden.htm