Buddy Bolden
Encyclopedia
Charles "Buddy" Bolden was an African American
cornet
ist and is regarded by contemporaries as a key figure in the development of a New Orleans style of rag-time music which later came to be known as jazz
.
), and his band was a top draw in New Orleans (the city of his birth) from about 1900 until 1907, when he was incapacitated by schizophrenia
(then called dementia praecox
). He left no known surviving recordings, but he was known for his very loud sound and constant improvisation.
While there is substantial first hand oral history about Buddy Bolden, facts about his life continue to be lost amongst colorful 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. Reputedly, his father was a teamster.
Bolden suffered an episode of acute alcoholic psychosis
in 1907 at the age of 30. With the full diagnosis of dementia praecox
, he was admitted to the Louisiana State Insane Asylum at Jackson, 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.
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 after the era of Bolden's prominence. At least one writer has labeled 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 he began his career performing in Papa Jack Laine
s band before starting his own, Laine himself is often credited as the "Patriarch of Jazz". Although both regarded as being pivotal in the formation of jazz music.
Instead of imitating other cornetists, Bolden played music he heard "by ear" and adapted it to his horn. In doing so, he created an exciting and novel fusion of rag-time, black sacred music, marching-band music and rural blues. He rearranged the typical New Orleans dance band of the time to better accommodate the blues; string instruments became the rhythm section, and the front-line instruments were clarinets, trombones, and Bolden's cornet. Bolden was known for his powerful, loud, "wide open" playing style.
Joe "King" Oliver, Freddie Keppard
, Bunk Johnson
, and other early New Orleans jazz musicians were directly inspired by his playing.
No known recordings of Bolden have survived. His trombonist Willy Cornish asserted that Bolden's band had made at least one phonograph cylinder
in the late 1890s. Three other old-time New Orleans musicians, George Baquet
, Alphonse Picou
and Bob Lyons also remembered a recording session ("Turkey in the Straw", according to Baquet) in the early 1900s. Researcher Tim Brooks
believes that these cylinders, if they existed, may have been privately recorded for local music dealers and were never distributed in bulk.
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 the original number "Get Out of Here and Go Home", although for more "polite" gigs the last number would be "Home! Sweet Home!
".
One of the most famous Bolden numbers is 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, as Danny Barker
once put it, a reference to the olfactory effect of an auditorium packed full of sweaty people "dancing close together and belly rubbing." Other musicians closer to Bolden's generation explained that the famous tune actually originated as a reference to flatulence
.
The "Funky Butt" song was one of many in the Bolden repertory with rude or off-color lyrics popular in some of the rougher places Bolden played, and Bolden's trombonist Willy Cornish claimed authorship. It became so well known as a rude song that even whistling the melody on a public street was considered offensive. However the strain was incorporated into the early published ragtime number "St. Louis Tickle".
Bolden is also credited with the discovery or invention of the so-called 'Big Four', a key rhythmic innovation on the marching band beat, which gave embryonic jazz much more room for individual improvisation. As Wynton Marsalis explains.
wrote and composed "Buddy Bolden Stomp" in his honor.
Duke Ellington
paid tribute to Bolden in his 1957 suite "A Drum is a Woman". The trumpet part was taken by Clark Terry
.
The Bolden band tune "Funky Butt", better known as "Buddy Bolden's Blues" since it was first recorded under that title by Jelly Roll Morton
, has been covered by hundreds of artists, including Dr. John
in his Goin' Back to New Orleans and Hugh Laurie
in his record "Let Them Talk".
In 2011, Interact Theater in Minneapolis created a new musical theater piece entitled 'Hot Jazz at da Funky Butt' in which Buddy Bolden was the feature character. Music and Lyrics were composed by Aaron Gabriel and featured the New Orleans Band 'Rue Fiya'. The song 'Dat's How Da Music Do Ya' featured the Buddy Bolden Blues.
"Hey, Buddy Bolden" is a song on the album, "Nina Simone Sings Duke Ellington".
s 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 prominent in August Wilson's
Seven Guitars
. Wilson's drama includes a character (King Hedley) whose father, in the play, deliberately named him after King Buddy Bolden. King Hedley constantly sings, "I thought I heard Buddy Bolden say..." and believes that Buddy Bolden will come down and bring him money to buy a plantation.
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. He also appears by reputation or in person in Fulmer's other books.
Bolden is the title character in the film Bolden!, which is currently in production. He is being portrayed by Anthony Mackie
.
Bolden is also a critical character in Louis Maistros' novel The Sound of Building Coffins which contains many scenes depicting Bolden playing his cornet.
Buddy Bolden helps Samuel Clemens solve a murder in "A Connecticut Yankee in Criminal Court," by Peter J. Heck (1996).
African American
African Americans are citizens or residents of the United States who have at least partial ancestry from any of the native populations of Sub-Saharan Africa and are the direct descendants of enslaved Africans within the boundaries of the present United States...
cornet
Cornet
The cornet is a brass instrument very similar to the trumpet, distinguished by its conical bore, compact shape, and mellower tone quality. The most common cornet is a transposing instrument in B. It is not related to the renaissance and early baroque cornett or cornetto.-History:The cornet was...
ist and is regarded by contemporaries as a key figure in the development of a New Orleans style of rag-time music which later came to be known as jazz
Jazz
Jazz is a musical style that originated at the beginning of the 20th century in African American communities in the Southern United States. It was born out of a mix of African and European music traditions. From its early development until the present, jazz has incorporated music from 19th and 20th...
.
Life
He was known as King Bolden (see Jazz royaltyJazz royalty
Jazz royalty is a term that reflects the many great jazz musicians who have been termed as musically gifted, honorific, "aristocratic" or "royal" and had titles added to their names or nicknames due to their strong musical abilities....
), and his band was a top draw in New Orleans (the city of his birth) from about 1900 until 1907, when he was incapacitated by schizophrenia
Schizophrenia
Schizophrenia is a mental disorder characterized by a disintegration of thought processes and of emotional responsiveness. It most commonly manifests itself as auditory hallucinations, paranoid or bizarre delusions, or disorganized speech and thinking, and it is accompanied by significant social...
(then called dementia praecox
Dementia praecox
Dementia praecox refers to a chronic, deteriorating psychotic disorder characterized by rapid cognitive disintegration, usually beginning in the late teens or early adulthood. It is a term first used in 1891 in this Latin form by Arnold Pick , a professor of psychiatry at the German branch of...
). He left no known surviving recordings, but he was known for his very loud sound and constant improvisation.
While there is substantial first hand oral history about Buddy Bolden, facts about his life continue to be lost amongst colorful myth. Stories about him being a barber by trade or that he published a scandal sheet
Scandal Sheet
Scandal Sheet is a black-and-white film noir directed by Phil Karlson. The film is based on the novel The Dark Page by Samuel Fuller, who himself was a newspaper reporter before his career in film...
called The Cricket have been repeated in print despite being debunked decades earlier. Reputedly, his father was a teamster.
Bolden suffered an episode of acute alcoholic psychosis
Psychosis
Psychosis means abnormal condition of the mind, and is a generic psychiatric term for a mental state often described as involving a "loss of contact with reality"...
in 1907 at the age of 30. With the full diagnosis of dementia praecox
Dementia praecox
Dementia praecox refers to a chronic, deteriorating psychotic disorder characterized by rapid cognitive disintegration, usually beginning in the late teens or early adulthood. It is a term first used in 1891 in this Latin form by Arnold Pick , a professor of psychiatry at the German branch of...
, he was admitted to the Louisiana State Insane Asylum at Jackson, a mental institution, where he spent the rest of his life.
Bolden was buried in an unmarked grave
Unmarked grave
The phrase unmarked grave has metaphorical meaning in the context of cultures that mark burial sites.As a figure of speech, a common meaning of the term "unmarked grave" is consignment to oblivion, i.e., an ignominious end. A grave monument is a sign of respect and fondness, erected with the...
in Holt Cemetery, a pauper's graveyard
Graveyard
A graveyard is any place set aside for long-term burial of the dead, with or without monuments such as headstones...
in New Orleans. In 1998 a monument
Monument
A monument is a type of structure either explicitly created to commemorate a person or important event or which has become important to a social group as a part of their remembrance of historic times or cultural heritage, or simply as an example of historic architecture...
to Bolden was erected in Holt Cemetery, but his exact gravesite remains unknown.
Music
Ragtime
Ragtime is an original musical genre which enjoyed its peak popularity between 1897 and 1918. Its main characteristic trait is its syncopated, or "ragged," rhythm. It began as dance music in the red-light districts of American cities such as St. Louis and New Orleans years before being published...
and adding blues
Blues
Blues is the name given to both a musical form and a music genre that originated in African-American communities of primarily the "Deep South" of the United States at the end of the 19th century from spirituals, work songs, field hollers, shouts and chants, and rhymed simple narrative ballads...
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
Gospel music
Gospel music is music that is written to express either personal, spiritual or a communal belief regarding Christian life, as well as to give a Christian alternative to mainstream secular music....
heard in uptown African American
African American
African Americans are citizens or residents of the United States who have at least partial ancestry from any of the native populations of Sub-Saharan Africa and are the direct descendants of enslaved Africans within the boundaries of the present United States...
Baptist
Baptist
Baptists comprise a group of Christian denominations and churches that subscribe to a doctrine that baptism should be performed only for professing believers , and that it must be done by immersion...
churches. Although he began his career performing in Papa Jack Laine
Papa Jack Laine
George Vital "Papa Jack" Laine was a pioneering band leader in New Orleans in the years from the Spanish-American War to World War I....
s band before starting his own, Laine himself is often credited as the "Patriarch of Jazz". Although both regarded as being pivotal in the formation of jazz music.
Instead of imitating other cornetists, Bolden played music he heard "by ear" and adapted it to his horn. In doing so, he created an exciting and novel fusion of rag-time, black sacred music, marching-band music and rural blues. He rearranged the typical New Orleans dance band of the time to better accommodate the blues; string instruments became the rhythm section, and the front-line instruments were clarinets, trombones, and Bolden's cornet. Bolden was known for his powerful, loud, "wide open" playing style.
Joe "King" Oliver, Freddie Keppard
Freddie Keppard
Freddie Keppard was an early jazz cornetist.Keppard was born in the Creole of Color community of downtown New Orleans, Louisiana. His older brother Louis Keppard was also a professional musician. Freddie played violin, mandolin, and accordion before switching to cornet...
, Bunk Johnson
Bunk Johnson
Willie Gary "Bunk" Johnson was a prominent early New Orleans jazz trumpet player in the early years of the 20th century who enjoyed a revived career in the 1940s....
, and other early New Orleans jazz musicians were directly inspired by his playing.
No known recordings of Bolden have survived. His trombonist Willy Cornish asserted that Bolden's band had made at least one phonograph cylinder
Phonograph cylinder
Phonograph cylinders were the earliest commercial medium for recording and reproducing sound. Commonly known simply as "records" in their era of greatest popularity , these cylinder shaped objects had an audio recording engraved on the outside surface which could be reproduced when the cylinder was...
in the late 1890s. Three other old-time New Orleans musicians, George Baquet
George Baquet
George Baquet was an American jazz clarinetist, known for his contributions to early jazz in New Orleans.His father, Theogene Baquet, was also a clarinetist, as were his brothers, Achille and Harold...
, Alphonse Picou
Alphonse Picou
Alphonse Floristan Picou was an important very early jazz clarinetist who also wrote and arranged music....
and Bob Lyons also remembered a recording session ("Turkey in the Straw", according to Baquet) in the early 1900s. Researcher Tim Brooks
Tim Brooks (television historian)
Tim Brooks is an American television and radio historian, author and retired television executive. He is credited with having helped launch the Sci Fi Channel in 1992 as well as other USA Network projects and channels....
believes that these cylinders, if they existed, may have been privately recorded for local music dealers and were never distributed in bulk.
Some of the songs first associated with his band such as the traditional song "Careless Love
Careless Love
"Careless Love" is a traditional song of obscure origins.Blues versions are popular; the lyrics change from version to version, but usually speak of the heartbreak brought on by "careless love." Frequently, the narrator threatens to kill his or her wayward lover.The song's melody also is used in...
" and "My Bucket's Got a Hole in It", are still standards. Bolden often closed his shows with the original number "Get Out of Here and Go Home", although for more "polite" gigs the last number would be "Home! Sweet Home!
Home! Sweet Home!
"Home! Sweet Home!" is a song that has remained well-known for over 150 years. Adapted from American actor and dramatist John Howard Payne's 1823 opera Clari, Maid of Milan, the song's melody was composed by Englishman Sir Henry Bishop with lyrics by Payne...
".
One of the most famous Bolden numbers is a song called "Funky Butt" (known later as "Buddy Bolden's Blues") which represents one of the earliest references to the concept of "funk
Funk
Funk is a music genre that originated in the mid-late 1960s when African American musicians blended soul music, jazz and R&B into a rhythmic, danceable new form of music. Funk de-emphasizes melody and harmony and brings a strong rhythmic groove of electric bass and drums to the foreground...
" in popular music, now a musical subgenre unto itself. Bolden's "Funky Butt" was, as Danny Barker
Danny Barker
Danny Barker , born Daniel Moses Barker, was a jazz banjoist, singer, guitarist, songwriter, ukelele player and author from New Orleans, founder of the locally famous Fairview Baptist Church Marching Band...
once put it, a reference to the olfactory effect of an auditorium packed full of sweaty people "dancing close together and belly rubbing." Other musicians closer to Bolden's generation explained that the famous tune actually originated as a reference to flatulence
Flatulence
Flatulence is the expulsion through the rectum of a mixture of gases that are byproducts of the digestion process of mammals and other animals. The medical term for the mixture of gases is flatus, informally known as a fart, or simply gas...
.
I thought I heard Buddy Bolden say,
Funky-butt, funky-butt, take it away.
The "Funky Butt" song was one of many in the Bolden repertory with rude or off-color lyrics popular in some of the rougher places Bolden played, and Bolden's trombonist Willy Cornish claimed authorship. It became so well known as a rude song that even whistling the melody on a public street was considered offensive. However the strain was incorporated into the early published ragtime number "St. Louis Tickle".
Bolden is also credited with the discovery or invention of the so-called 'Big Four', a key rhythmic innovation on the marching band beat, which gave embryonic jazz much more room for individual improvisation. As Wynton Marsalis explains.
Tributes to Bolden
Sidney BechetSidney Bechet
Sidney Bechet was an American jazz saxophonist, clarinetist, and composer.He was one of the first important soloists in jazz , and was perhaps the first notable jazz saxophonist...
wrote and composed "Buddy Bolden Stomp" in his honor.
Duke Ellington
Duke Ellington
Edward Kennedy "Duke" Ellington was an American composer, pianist, and big band leader. Ellington wrote over 1,000 compositions...
paid tribute to Bolden in his 1957 suite "A Drum is a Woman". The trumpet part was taken by Clark Terry
Clark Terry
Clark Terry is an American swing and bop trumpeter, a pioneer of the fluegelhorn in jazz, educator, NEA Jazz Masters inductee, and recipient of the 2010 Grammy Lifetime Achievement Award...
.
The Bolden band tune "Funky Butt", better known as "Buddy Bolden's Blues" since it was first recorded under that title by Jelly Roll Morton
Jelly Roll Morton
Ferdinand Joseph LaMothe , known professionally as Jelly Roll Morton, was an American ragtime and early jazz pianist, bandleader and composer....
, has been covered by hundreds of artists, including Dr. John
Dr. John
Malcolm John "Mac" Rebennack, Jr. , better known by the stage name Dr. John , is an American singer-songwriter, pianist and guitarist, whose music combines blues, pop, jazz as well as Zydeco, boogie woogie and rock and roll.Active as a session musician since the late 1950s, he came to wider...
in his Goin' Back to New Orleans and Hugh Laurie
Hugh Laurie
James Hugh Calum Laurie, OBE , better known as Hugh Laurie , is an English actor, voice artist, comedian, writer, musician, recording artist, and director...
in his record "Let Them Talk".
In 2011, Interact Theater in Minneapolis created a new musical theater piece entitled 'Hot Jazz at da Funky Butt' in which Buddy Bolden was the feature character. Music and Lyrics were composed by Aaron Gabriel and featured the New Orleans Band 'Rue Fiya'. The song 'Dat's How Da Music Do Ya' featured the Buddy Bolden Blues.
"Hey, Buddy Bolden" is a song on the album, "Nina Simone Sings Duke Ellington".
Bolden in fiction
Bolden has inspired a number of fictional characterFictional character
A character is the representation of a person in a narrative work of art . Derived from the ancient Greek word kharaktêr , the earliest use in English, in this sense, dates from the Restoration, although it became widely used after its appearance in Tom Jones in 1749. From this, the sense of...
s with his name. Most famously, Canadian author Michael Ondaatje
Michael Ondaatje
Philip Michael Ondaatje , OC, is a Sri Lankan-born Canadian novelist and poet of Burgher origin. He is perhaps best known for his Booker Prize-winning novel, The English Patient, which was adapted into an Academy-Award-winning film.-Life and work:...
's novel Coming Through Slaughter
Coming Through Slaughter
Coming Through Slaughter is a novel by Michael Ondaatje, published by House of Anansi in 1976. It was the winner of the 1976 Books in Canada First Novel Award....
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 prominent in August Wilson's
August Wilson
August Wilson was an American playwright whose work included a series of ten plays, The Pittsburgh Cycle, for which he received two Pulitzer Prizes for Drama...
Seven Guitars
Seven Guitars
Seven Guitars is a 1995 play by American playwright, August Wilson. It focuses on seven African American characters in the year 1948. The play begins and ends after the funeral of one of the main characters, showing events leading to the funeral in flashbacks...
. Wilson's drama includes a character (King Hedley) whose father, in the play, deliberately named him after King Buddy Bolden. King Hedley constantly sings, "I thought I heard Buddy Bolden say..." and believes that Buddy Bolden will come down and bring him money to buy a plantation.
Additionally, August Wilson's King Hedley II
King Hedley II
King Hedley II is a play by American playwright August Wilson, the ninth in his ten-part series, The Pittsburgh Cycle. This is the ninth of the plays in Wilson's ten-play cycle, each from a different era...
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. He also appears by reputation or in person in Fulmer's other books.
Bolden is the title character in the film Bolden!, which is currently in production. He is being portrayed by Anthony Mackie
Anthony Mackie
Anthony Mackie is an American actor. He has been featured in feature films, television series and Broadway and Off-Broadway plays, including Ma Rainey's Black Bottom, Drowning Crow, McReele, A Soldier's Play, and Talk, by Carl Hancock Rux, for which he won an Obie Award in 2002.In 2002 he featured...
.
Bolden is also a critical character in Louis Maistros' novel The Sound of Building Coffins which contains many scenes depicting Bolden playing his cornet.
Buddy Bolden helps Samuel Clemens solve a murder in "A Connecticut Yankee in Criminal Court," by Peter J. Heck (1996).
External links
- Buddy Bolden at Findagrave
- Photograph http://louisdl.louislibraries.org/cgi-bin/viewer.exe?CISOROOT=/JAZ&CISOPTR=1838&CISOMODE=grid
- Photograph http://www.answers.com/topic/buddy-bolden
- Buddy Bolden's New Orleans Music
- "Charles "Buddy" Bolden, from RedHotJazz.com] Biography with suggested reading
- Buddy Bolden Biography from PBS, "Jazz, A Film By Ken Burns