The Legend of Buddy Bolden

Surprisingly few Americans have heard of Charles “Buddy’’ Bolden, who was born in New Orleans one hundred and one years ago, made a living for a while as a plasterer and general handyman, played the cornet professionally for six or seven years at the most (c. 1899-1905), was committed to an insane asylum in rural Louisiana before his thirtieth birthday. He never left that asylum in the 24 years of life remaining to him. After his death, in 1931, his body was returned to New Orleans, where he was buried in a grave which to this day remains unmarked.

During his brief cornet-playing period, Bolden established for himself a reputation which was literally fabulous. According to the fables spun around his life, Bolden was the originator of jazz—the leader of the first jazz band. Although he was only a poor black laboring man who lived in a rather lowly district of New Orleans, who made no known recordings, and of whom only one rather blurred photograph has survived (usually printed reversed), Bolden’s life was set down in epic form only eight years after his death in Jazzmen, the pioneer jazz history, published in 1939.

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Tom Bethell

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Surprisingly few Americans have heard of Charles “Buddy’’ Bolden, who was born in New Orleans one hundred and one years ago, made a living for a while as a plasterer and general handyman, played the cornet professionally for six or seven years at the most (c. 1899-1905), was committed to an insane asylum in rural Louisiana before his thirtieth birthday. He never left that asylum in the 24 years of life remaining to him. After his death, in 1931, his body was returned to New Orleans, where he was buried in a grave which to this day remains unmarked.

During his brief cornet-playing period, Bolden established for himself a reputation which was literally fabulous. According to the fables spun around his life, Bolden was the originator of jazz—the leader of the first jazz band. Although he was only a poor black laboring man who lived in a rather lowly district of New Orleans, who made no known recordings, and of whom only one rather blurred photograph has survived (usually printed reversed), Bolden’s life was set down in epic form only eight years after his death in Jazzmen, the pioneer jazz history, published in 1939.