Buddy Bolden (September 6, 1877 - November 4, 1930) was a trumpeter and the first New Orleans jazz musician ever to come to prominence.

He was known as King Bolden (see: Jazz royalty), and his band was a top draw in New Orleans from about 1895 to 1907, when he was incapacitated by mental illness. He never recorded, but he was known for his open tone and loud sound. Joe "King" Oliver and Louis Armstrong were directly inspired by his playing.

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). Bolden 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 also was said to have taken ideas from gospel music heard in Uptown African American Baptist churches.

Some of the songs first associated with his band, such as "Careless Love" and "My Bucket's Got a Hole in It" are still standards. Funk and rap foreshadowing can still be heard coming from one of Bolden's theme songs, known later on as "Buddy Bolden's Blues" (in Bolden's day it was called "Funky Butt"):

Ain't that man got a funny walk,

Doin' the Ping-Pong 'round Southern park.

Black man, white man, take him away,

I thought I heard them say.

I thought I heard Buddy Bolden say,

Funky-butt, funky-butt, take it away.

Bolden suffered a breakdown in 1907 and was diagnosed with dementia praecox. He was admitted to a mental institution where he spent the rest of his life.

Bolden in fiction

Bolden has inspired fictional characters with his name, to varying degrees based on him. Most famously, Canadian author Michael Ondaatje's novel Coming Through Slaughter features a Buddy Bolden character in some ways like the real one and in other ways deliberately contrary to the known facts of Bolden's life.

External link

• Wide-ranging Buddy Bolden pages, includes song list http://www.geocities.com/infrogmation/Bolden.html
• Annotated Bolden song list http://www.geocities.com/BourbonStreet/5135/BoldenTunes.html with comments and audio examples