Charles "Buddy" Bolden

@ Wiki
Charles "Buddy" Bolden (September 6, 1877 – November 4, 1931) was a cornetist and the first New Orleans jazz musician to come to prominence.

Life
He was known as King Bolden (see Jazz royalty) and his band was a top draw in New Orleans from about 1895 until 1907, when he was incapacitated by schizophrenia, which was called dementia praecox at that time. He never recorded, but he was known for his open tone and very loud sound. Joe "King" Oliver and Louis Armstrong were directly inspired by his playing.

While there is substantial first hand oral history about Buddy Bolden, facts about his life continue to be lost amongst colourful myth. Stories about him being a barber by trade or that he published a scandal-sheet called the Cricket have been repeated in print despite being debunked decades earlier.

Bolden suffered an episode of acute alcoholic psychosis in 1907. With the full diagnosis of dementia praecox, he was admitted to a mental institution where he spent the rest of his life.

Bolden was buried in an unmarked grave in Holt Cemetery, a pauper's graveyard in New Orleans. In 1998 a monument to Bolden was erected in Holt Cemetery, but his exact gravesite remains unknown.

Music
Many early jazz musicians credited Bolden and the members of his band with being the originators of what came to be known as "jazz", though the term was not yet in common musical use until during the era of Bolden's prominence. At least one writer has labelled him the father of jazz. He is credited with creating a looser, more improvised version of ragtime and adding blues to it; Bolden's band was said to be the first to have brass instruments play the blues. He was also said to have taken ideas from gospel music heard in uptown African American Baptist churches.

Although Bolden was recalled as having made at least one phonograph cylinder, no known recordings of Bolden have survived.

Some of the songs first associated with his band such as the traditional song Careless Love and My Bucket's Got a Hole in It, are still standards. Bolden often closed his shows with a song called Funky Butt (known later as Buddy Bolden's Blues) which represents one of the earliest references to the concept of "funk" in popular music, now a musical subgenre unto itself. Bolden's Funky Butt was a reference to the olfactory effect of an auditorium packed full of sweaty people "dancing close together and belly rubbing."

I thought I heard Buddy Bolden say,
Funky-butt, funky-butt, take it away.

Bolden in fiction
Bolden has inspired a number of fictional characters with his name. Most famously, Canadian author Michael Ondaatje's novel Coming Through Slaughter features a Buddy Bolden character that in some ways resembles Bolden, but in other ways is deliberately contrary to what is known about him.

Bolden is also referenced in August Wilson's Seven Guitars. With a character (King Hedley) whose father, in the play, deliberately named him after King Buddy Bolden; with King Hedley constantly singing "I thought I heard Buddy Bolden say...;" and with King Hedley believing that Buddy Bolden will come down and bring him money to buy a plantation, Bolden is prominent in Wilson's drama.

Additionally, August Wilson's King Hedley II continues Seven Guitars, thus Bolden continues in the play as well.

Bolden is a prominent character in David Fulmer's murder mystery titled Chasing the Devil's Tail, being not only a bandleader but also a suspect in the murders.

Bolden is the titular character in the film Bolden!, which is currently in production. He is being portrayed by Anthony Mackie. =>>>>>>>>>>>

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The People of Traditional New Orleans Jazz:
Buddy Bolden: Calling His Children Home
1877 - 1931

@ National Park Service
If music is the essence of the New Orleans Jazz National Historical Park, then people are the heart of our story.

Charles “Buddy” Bolden was born to Alice and Westmore Bolden in uptown New Orleans on September 6, 1877. Little did his mother know her son would soon grow up a young man whom everyone called “King”. A sturdy young man who would sport expensive suits and was often escorted by several women who liked to carry his horn. A young man whom, for a period ranging from around 1898 until 1906, reigned as the undisputed King of black New Orleans music.

Buddy Bolden played the cornet (an instrument similar to the trumpet) like no one before him. He stirred his dancers into a frenzy, some simply shouted out, “Aw, play it King Bolden!” Bolden led a band during this time that is generally considered the first group to play what would later be called jazz music. He forged his reputation with the power of his horn, said to be heard miles away, and his proficiency playing the blues. Musicians who were old enough to have heard Bolden perform described his band as playing a whole lot of blues. More polite and polished dance bands like John Robichaux’s orchestra played a smoother style of popular dance music. It wasn’t that King Bolden and his band didn’t perform other numbers, they played waltzes, ragtime, and popular songs of the day, it’s just that nobody laid into the blues so down and dirty like the king. Blues numbers played at medium tempos, some with raunchy lyrics, soon had black patrons of the South Rampart/Perdido Street area (known as “back o’ town”) dancing a new beat. King Bolden took the guttural moan of the blues, mixed it with the spirit of the black Baptist church, and applied a ‘ragged’ rhythmic feel to his songs. The result was an all new sound that was perfect for dancing and quickly caught the attention of young African Americans in New Orleans.

King Bolden’s sound appealed to a new generation some thirty three years removed from the end of the Civil War. His devoted followers loved to dance. Many originated from the underbelly of New Orleans’ Black Storyville neighborhood as hustlers, prostitutes, and pimps who lavished their praises onto the dapper King. Others simply found Bolden’s band irresistible but made their exits earlier in the evening, before the dances started getting too rowdy. Often, members of King Bolden’s flock followed him to Lincoln and Johnson parks to hear his band perform at dances held there. A whole lot of fun in those days could be had in either of these uptown parks. After the baseball games, greased pig chase, and the infamous hot air balloon rides, King Bolden would sound his horn and “call his children home”. He would often blast his signature call from Johnson Park, to let folks know in Lincoln Park that his band was about to play. Some of the patrons dancing to the John Robicheaux orchestra would scurry over to Johnson Park once King Bolden started up.

As with many iconic figures in American history, it is sometimes difficult to differentiate between fact and fiction, especially in the relatively new field of jazz history. One of the popular Buddy Bolden myths was that he worked as a barber in addition to being a musician. He never did work as a barber or own a shop but he did hang out at a friend’s barbershop because it was a meeting place where musicians networked. Just as barbershops in many African American neighborhoods funtion today, the shops in Bolden’s neighborhood served as a social hub of sorts. A place where folks got the latest news in a pre-CNN era. There is no doubt however as to the manner in which King Bolden thrilled his crowds, always entertaining them with his exciting new sound, full of the blues. Sadly, there was never a recording made of the first king of jazz and we will never know exactly how Bolden sounded. We can only imagine what it must have felt like on a hot and sweaty night at places like the Union Sons Hall on Perdido Street. As Bolden would stomp out a song’s tempo, the dancer’s seemed to suddenly come to life. Before long the whole room would be swaying along to Bolden’s hypnotic beat. One of Bolden’s musicians improvised the lyrics “Funky Butt, Funky Butt, take it away, open up the windows and let the bad air out”, apparently referencing the cramp confines in which the sweat and whiskey soaked dancers grooved to. The song which became know as Buddy Bolden’s Blues, served as a kind of theme song for King Bolden. With dances at the Union Sons Hall (informally renamed “Funky Butt Hall”) often lasting until 5 a.m. it is probable that this was the roughest place Bolden played. The same hall also ironically served as a Baptist church on Sunday Mornings. The dichotomy that the Funky Butt Hall and the Baptist church would seemily represent instead coexisted within the same building. Bolden himself may have grappled with the contradictions of his Baptist upbringing and the new life that music led him too. Not unlike the Funky Butt/ Baptist church connection, King Bolden’s music brought a seemingly spiritual fervor to the low-down blues songs the band was fond of performing.

The high flying sporting life that the first king of jazz led did not come without a price however. Bolden, always described as a playboy and a heavy drinker, gradually began to lose his grip on reality and his health began to fail. In 1906, the king of black New Orleans began exhibiting unpredictable behavior, filled with paranoia and headaches. Several incidents occurred in which neither Bolden’s mother or sister felt safe around him and police were called. Eventually King Bolden’s mother signed papers to have him committed to the Louisiana State asylum in Jackson where he would reside until his death in 1931. His mental illness was said to have been triggered by alcohol. Some even claimed Bolden was the recipient of a voodoo curse. His diagnosis never the less remains cloudy as psychiatric care was not what it is today. King Bolden would never be interviewed or recorded while at the asylum where he only occasionally exhibited brief glimpses of his former self. The first definitive figure in America’s most recognizable art form, jazz, would disintegrate in the prime of his popularity and career.

King Bolden’s legend lives on though, through every young musician pressing a trumpet to their lips, attempting to evoke the same feeling Bolden had. Today’s musicians have the first king of jazz to draw upon as inspiration if they shall ever doubt the power of music, all they have to do is picture the king “calling his children home”. Maybe they too will one day be able to recreate the electrifying feeling that Buddy Bolden brought to black New Orleans. =>>>>>>>>>>>

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Imagining Buddy Bolden (1877 - 1931)

Dave Radlauer @ Jazz Rhythm
After presenting Classic Jazz on public radio for 15 years, I at long last decided to tackle the difficult challenge of preparing a radio documentary about Buddy Bolden, the first band-leading “King” of New Orleans trumpeters active about 1900-06. To this day Bolden is an enigma shrouded in legend. I wanted listeners to imagine Bolden’s music through the words of those who had actually heard or known him and to play recordings of the trumpeters most likely representative of his rough, unschooled but inspiring sound.

I was first moved to this task by reading a gripping fictional biography of Bolden, Coming Through Slaughter, 1976 by “The English Patient” author, Michael Ondaatje -- a superb attempt to penetrate the legend, personality, and eventual insanity of jazz music’s most shadowy and possibly most innovative character. Ondaatje has given us a most spirited and inspired tribute to the first, self-invented jazzman. Bolden was the first to play blues for dancing, the first to lead a real jazz band, the first to live a flamboyant larger-than-life existence as “King” of the jazz tribe and “call the children home” with his horn which could be heard for miles around the Crescent City at the beginning of the Jazz Century. However, Ondaatje’s spine-tingling novel is marred by such longstanding fictions about Bolden: that he was a barber by trade or that he published a salacious scandal sheet called The Cricket (of which no copy has ever surfaced).

Ondaatje’s book appeared in 1976 a few years before the definitive, In Search of Buddy Bolden: First Man of Jazz, 1978 by Donald Marquis which is surely the most authoritative work on Bolden, painstakingly researched for over 15 years by means of interviews, articles, books about jazz and New Orleans, and an exhaustive search of documentary records in and around Louisiana. A work carefully reasoned and cautious in its conclusions, In Search of Buddy Bolden guided my attempt to document on radio what can be reliably told of Bolden’s life, sound, musical repertory, and eventual insanity.

Marquis provides indispensable leads to dozens of sources of oral history, autobiographies and monographs: books by Sidney Bechet, bassist Pops Foster, guitarist Danny Barker, Jelly Roll Morton’s recollections (“the most powerful trumpet player in history”) told to Alan Lomax. He also gives us clues to Bolden’s actual sound. Thus, by having the words of eyewitnesses read by actors and radio voices, reliable descriptions of horn players closest in sound to Bolden, and his repertory, I had all the elements for a documentary audio montage.

Bolden’s Music
By all accounts Bolden did play exceptionally loud, he played almost everything in B-flat, and though musically untrained and lacking technique his improvisatory embellishments, especially his expressiveness playing blues, deeply affected all who heard him. According to musicians Kid Ory, Bud Scott and Mutt Carey, Buddy’s fame came in part from his ability to “fake.” Ory said that “if he forgot a passage he would introduce embellishments that his listeners often enjoyed more than the music originally written.” Trombonist Roy Palmer agreed: “Buddy would never bother with written music, he faked all the time.” He in fact may have been able to read music, but not very well and in any case he played from his head. But Bolden’s greatest contribution was that he played blues and stomps for dancing leading an ensemble band that enthused the populace of New Orleans regardless of class, race or position. (Marquis, 1978)

Before Bolden New Orleans music was still ragtime, after him it definitely became jazz. Creole clarinetist George Baquet vividly recalled hearing Bolden’s music the first time and its impact:
“All of a sudden, Buddy stomps, knocks on the floor with his trumpet to give the beat and . . . they played ‘Make Me a Pallet’. Everybody rose and yelled out “Oh, Mr. Bolden, play it for us Buddy, play it!” I’d never heard anything like that before. I’d played “legitimate” stuff. But this, it was something that pulled me in. They got me up on the stand and I played with them. After that I didn’t play legitmate so much.”(Marquis, 1978 p. 99)

And when the occasion called for less stimulating fare his repertory included waltzes, ragtime, slow drag, spirituals and hymns, and the occasional Joplin rag. Still, we can only imagine what Bolden actually sounded like because he never recorded. We can only speculate on how the history of jazz could have differed -- and know that a Bolden recording certainly would have demonstrated an early alternative to Louis Armstrong’s relatively schooled sound and virtuoso soloing. Instead, that contrast remained unnoted until the New Orleans revival of the 1940’s brought forth rougher, more primitive sounds, initially heard by the public from Bunk Johnson.

And while Bunk knew how to sound like King Bolden and even recorded an invaluable medley of Bolden variations he is not where to look for imagining Bolden’s sound. While rich and brilliant, Bunk’s music derived from a proper schooling in ragtime. Furthermore, Bunk has been soundly de-bunked on the general subject of Bolden.

Traces Of Bolden
Freddie Keppard (b. 1890) who followed Bolden as “King” of the horn playing band leaders both in lifestyle and in rough, loud, blues-based improvisational lead horn is probably a closer approximation to Bolden’s general approach, though still a bit more refined than Bolden, according to contemporaneous ear witnesses. Unlike Bolden, Keppard struck out on the road with his Creole Jazz Band visiting the West Coast even before he settled in Chicago in the World War I era. Unlike Bolden, Keppard made records; though legend probably has it right that he had lost most of his power and brilliance when he finally recorded. Keppard’s Chicago recordings of 1926-27 do reveal glimpses of what must have been a very convincing blues-for-dancing power trumpet sharing Bolden’s outlook. (See discography)

Other trumpeters can serve as reliable guides in helping us imagine the Bolden sound. Wooden Joe Nicholas, (b. 1883) who was recorded in the 1940s learned to play cornet by listening to Bolden, his all time favorite, and followed him wherever he played. Wooden Joe’s sound is heard and described in Bill Russell’s American Music Book/CD. He manifests the raw soulfulness reported by those who actually heard Bolden. Nicholas’ recordings of “Tiger Rag” and “Sugar Blues” -- popular New Orleans fare at the turn of the century -- bring us very close to Bolden’s music.

Trumpeter Lee Collins (b. 1901) was called “a boy with beautiful tone; he is between Buddy Bolden and Bunk Johnson . . . ” by no less than John Robichoux, Bolden’s leading band competitor at the time. This according to Collins’ autobiography, Oh Didn’t He Ramble: The Life Story of Lee Collins, 1974.

Even more recent trumpet/cornet players seem to have emulated Bolden’s general approach in their sound: Wingie Manone in the 1930s, P. T. Stanton in the 1950s, and even Clint Baker today, seem to be possessed by the spirit of Bolden’s brash, rough, blues-for-dancing, stomp, and slow drag lead horn that heralded a new music nearly a century ago.

Bolden’s Insanity
Buddy Bolden’s end -- after some 25 years in a Louisiana insane asylum -- was tragic. He was hospitalized after he had band troubles, became erratic, more than usually quarrelsome, and bedridden. An incident in which he struck his mother who was tending his bedside with a water pitcher, according to newspaper reports, began the series of events leading to his lengthy internment in the Jackson Insane Asylum in 1906. During his years at the asylum he was not considered dangerous; he was free to move about and work at the hospital; and he was even known to have played his horn a bit, though never with the occasional bands formed by patients.(Marquis, 1978)

But Buddy’s condition gradually deteriorated. Eventually he became uncommunicative. After twenty years he walked around ritually touching objects and had, according to hospital staff:
“ . . . a string of talk that is incoherent. Hears voices of people that bothered him before he came here . . . does no work, and spends his time waving his hands about in the air and talking with imaginary voices.”(Marquis, 1978, p. 129)

Donald Marquis rules out alcohol, or syphilitic dementia which have been suggested as possible causes of Bolden’s madness. He suggests “doubts and frustrations,” the difficulty of balancing equal weight among his simultaneous roles as idol, husband, father, lover, band leader, teacher and pupil, noting that Bolden’s
“ . . . lack of a complete musical education left him vulnerable. . . . What he wanted he was not capable of fully achieving. Neither was he prepared to cope with the overwhelming fame that came early in his adult life.” (Marquis, 1978, p. 125)

Finally, by returning to Michael Ondaatje’s fictional Buddy Bolden in Coming Through Slaughter where my inspiration for “Imagining Buddy Bolden” started, we may be able to more deeply penetrate the inner conflicts of what Ondaatje depicts as Buddy’s “mad dignity.” He conjectures that Bolden was exhausted by the effort of sustaining the “King” persona he had invented for himself living outside conventional roles and rules that others had to hold themselves together or fall back on. Bolden’s insanity took him away from the grasp of others’ demands to a place with no history and no parading:
“ . . . reputation made the room narrower and narrower, till you were crawling on your own back, full of your own echoes, til you were drinking in you own recycled air.”(Ondaatje, 1976, p. 86)

Air -- and its fleeting alchemical transformation into music by breath -- is Ondaatje’s fitting metaphor for Bolden’s inventiveness, brilliance and madness, as suggested in Jelly Roll Morton’s “IThought I Heard Buddy Bolden Say”:
I thought I heard Buddy Bolden shout
Open up that window and let that bad air out
Open up that window and let that foul air out
I thought I heard Buddy Bolden say

The air of the Twentieth Century has been much enlivened by the breath of inspiration that emanated from turn of the century New Orleans. Those breaths which became magical notes still reverberate today as we try to imagine Buddy Bolden and the origin of our most unique American art form.

Discography And Bibliography
What follows are discographic and bibliographic materials for this article and sources which provided the music and readings for the radio documentary, “Imagining Buddy Bolden,” heard in September 1997 as part of the series Jazz Rhythm produced for KALW-FM, San Francisco, California 1984 - 1997 and now syndicated on public radio and internet. =>>>>>>>>>>>

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