Donald's Encyclopedia of Popular Music

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BOLDEN, Buddy

(b Charles Bolden, 6 September 1877, New Orleans LA; d 4 November 1931, Jackson LA) Cornet, bandleader. A legendary figure who influenced many New Orleans musicians, and was probably a link between ragtime and jazz. He led a six- or seven-piece dance band of the sort that was common in New Orleans; it was a 'music' band rather than a 'faker' band, that is, the musicians were all 'musicianers', good readers. The three lead instruments were violin, cornet and clarinet, and being familiar with one another's playing, they were capable of simultaneously playing variations on a tune without getting in one another's way. They could also play a tune 'around the belt', that is, in all the successive keys, returning to the first one. They could play loud, advertising their presence (a contemporary claimed to have heard Bolden playing in a dance hall perhaps a mile away) but they could also play very softly: Bolden would sometimes 'shush' the band so that you could hear the dancers' feet swiping the floor.

Bolden never recorded, and became mentally ill, playing wildly and unable to stop in a dance hall in 1907, and had to be helped off the bandstand. He was committed to a hospital and never played again, but he was immortalized in Jelly Roll Morton's 'I Thought I Heard Buddy Bolden Say'.