General info

New Orleans cornetist Buddy Bolden played loud, fat and brassy. Or so they say, since no one alive ever heard him play. Others claim he was a madman, whose out-of-control addictions to alcohol and prostitution accelerated his descent into mental illness. And then there are those who say he invented jazz.

Not one scrap of evidence exists to confirm the truth of any of these claims. But enough facts have emerged through newspaper accounts and painstaking research done by archivist Donald M. Marquis to give us a pretty clear picture. Buddy Bolden may not have single-handedly invented jazz, but he was its first rock star.