The Man Who invented Jazz / The Ghost In the Horn

[Michael Davitt]

Charles "Buddy" Bolden



This is the only photograph of "King Buddy Bolden"
(September 6, 1877 – November 4, 1931)

Bolden suffered an episode of acute alcoholic psychosis in 1907 at age 30. With the full diagnosis of dementia praecox
(today called schizophrenia), he was admitted to the Louisiana State Insane Asylum at Jackson, a mental institution, where he spent the rest of his life. Recent research has suggested that Bolden may in fact have been suffering from pellagra, a vitamin deficiency common among poor and black groups in the population, and in 1907 sweeping through the South.

There are no recordings of Buddy Bolden in existence.
(September 6, 1877- November 4, 1931)


Having invented jazz, Buddy Bolden
Tried to imagine what else he’d invent

Maybe the light bulb or dry cereal,
A cure for syphilis or dementia

Praecox, something he was familiar
With, but he stuck with jazz, American

And quintessential as coffee with milk
And sugar, shrimp gumbo or chicory,

The scent of magnolia blossoms fallen
To the ground after rain. The smell of earth

After rain, cornet in hand, he climbed up
A funky tree in New Orleans, played us

We-the-people music, then flew away
From that perch, never to be seen again.

~ M.G. Stephens

 

[Petrat]

Buddy Bolden was rightly celebrated by Duke Ellington on his wonderful 1956 LP 'A Drum is a Woman', which tells the story of Madame Zajj, and is pretty much a musical history of jazz up to that point.

 

[Michael Davitt]

Buddy Bolden was rightly celebrated by Duke Ellington on his wonderful 1956 LP 'A Drum is a Woman', which tells the story of Madame Zajj, and is pretty much a musical history of jazz up to that point.

Thank You to Petrat, I'll add Duke Ellington 'A Drum is a Woman'