"Buddy" Bolden

"Buddy" Bolden. , Often referred to as "the first man of jazz,” Charles Bolden began his musical career playing in string bands before switching to cornet and forming his own band in 1895. As was his tendency to play hot and loud, Bolden would begin his performances with a blast on the cornet, which he characterized as "calling his children home". By 1905 he was King Bolden to most of his clientele, but the next year he began to drink heavily, missed engagements, and then collapsed in the street while playing a Labor Day parade with a brass band. In 1907 he was incarcerated in the state sanitarium in Jackson, Louisiana, where he remained for the rest of his life. Though lasting barely a decade, Bolden's reign as the first "King of Jazz" had lasting effects. Musicians in New Orleans took note of his popularity and adapted themselves to the changing market that he helped to create, relying more on "ear” training than sight-reading. Whether Bolden's band actually played what would later be called jazz is open to debate. Many older New Orleans musicians claimed that he did, but he left no recordings to prove the point. What he did leave was a legacy of creativity and passion, elements that are fundamental to jazz, and the desire among New Orleans cornetists to see what that horn can do., Bolden's band was composed primarily of "ear" musicians, and its reputation for stealing audiences from the classically-trained John Robichaux Orchestra at places like Lincoln Park in Carrollton was based on the excitement they generated. The appeal to young people was part of the reason Bolden's band became so popular, because the older, polite dance styles of the nineteenth century were giving way to more suggestive and expressive forms at the turn of the century. , Performing for dancers at the Odd Fellows Hall, the band would play quadrilles, schottisches, and waltzes for the older folks, but at midnight the ambience would change and the "night people" would take over, preferring dances such as the slow drag, shag and belly rub. Bolden's innate sex appeal, which had the ladies fighting to carry his horn, was an indication of where American music was heading in the twentieth century., Catering to the public's desire for more exciting and sensual dance music. Bolden placed the blues in the center of his repertoire, which especially pleased the rougher crowds that came to hear him at Kenna's Hall (better known as Funky Butt), but he also took this material to the upper echelons of the black community, as when he performed for the Grand Soiree held by the Knights of Pleasure at Ladies Providence Hall in 1903.