Books on Buddy Bolden

In Search of Buddy Bolden / Buddy Bolden Blues / Buddy Bolden and the Last Days of Storyville /  Buddy Bolden Says

Let That Bad Air Out  / The Loudest Trumpet  / Buddy Bolden of New Orleans: A Jazz Poem

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Buddy Bolden's New Orleans Music

Or the Barber of Franklin Street

A Biographical Sketch

In New Orleans, after the Civil War, Negroes began more and more to use the usual wind and string instruments of the whites. Such instruments were already widely used by the Creole Negroes, most of whom, though skilled in written music, were not so close to the blues background. (The blues were improvisational in character.)

Soon Negro groups, having learned to play by ear, were engaged to play for dances and, by 1880, were found on some of the packets on the Mississippi River. here they worked as porters, barbers and waiters during the day and entertained the passengers with music at night.

Historians point out that few of these early musicians could read music; that they were "fake" players. this is a highly significant fact when one considers how the music of the jazz band evolved and reached maturity during the last years of the nineteenth century. Although naturally influential by the music of their former masters, the Negroes retained much of the African material in their playing. The leader of the first great orchestra, Buddy Bolden, was already in his teens before the Congo dances were discontinued. 

The Negroes were accustomed to endless repetition of short motifs and were not bothered by the brevity of form in the white man's popular song. Nor did they worry about the trite character  of the melodies, for, being unaccustomed to read music, they quickly altered the tune, anyway.

With the New Orleans Negro, improvisation was an essential part of musical skill, as is the case with every extra-European musician. In all cultures except that of Europe, where for a century improvisation has been a lost art, creative performance is a requisite. Thus where there was no premium on exact repetition and hide-bound imitation, only those with the urge to express themselves and an innate power of invention took up music. When a musician could play only what he started, and mediocre talents soon fell by the wayside. 

It is important to note that the greatest talent went into dance orchestras, the only field open to those with professional musical ambitions. The fact that these men were not primarily note readers also explains, when collective improvisation was attempted, the origin of the characteristic New Orleans polyphony, which in its more complex manifestations became a dissonant counterpoint that antedated Schönberg. The young new Orleans aspirant, having no teacher to show him the supposed limitations of the instrument, went ahead by himself, and frequently hit upon new paths and opened up undreamed-of-possibilities.

In classical music, the wind instruments had always lagged behind in their development. The brasses, especially, were subordinated to the strings. But the freedom of the New Orleans musician from any restraining tradition and supervision enabled him to develop on most of the instruments not only new technical resources but an appropriate and unique jazz style.

So when Buddy Bolden, the barber of Franklin Street, gathered his orchestra together in the back room of his shop to try over a few new tunes for a special dance at Tin Type Hall, it was no ordinary group of musicians. Nor was Buddy an ordinary cornetist. In his day, he was entirely without competition, both in his ability as a musician and his hold upon the public. The power of his sonorous tone has never been equaled. When Buddy Bolden played in the Pecan Grove over in Gretna, he could be heard across the river throughout uptown New Orleans.

Nor was Bolden just a musician. He was an "all-around" man. In addition to running his barber shop, he edited and published The Cricket, a scandal sheet as full of gossip as New Orleans had always been of corruption and vice. Buddy was able to scoop the field with the stories brought in by his friend, a "spider," also employed by the New Orleans police.

Before the Spanish-American War, Bolden had already played himself into the hearts of the uptown Negroes. By the turn of the century, his following was so large that his band could not fill all their engagements. Soon "Kid" Bolden became "King" Bolden.

When he wasn't playing out at picnics during the day, Buddy could probably be found blowing his horn at Miss Cole's lawn Parties. Miss Cole's was an open-air dance pavilion up on Josephine Street. At night, he, might work at any of a dozen places -- at private parties, although his music was too "barrel house" for the most refined tastes. The nature of his music may be inferred from Herbert Asbury's description of these taverns in his book The French Quarter:

From barrel houses and honky-tonks came many of the descriptive words which were applied to the music played in them, such as "gully-low," meaning, as its name implies, low as a ditch or "gully," hence "low-down," and "gut-bucket," referring originally to the bucket which caught drippings, or "gutterings" from the barrels, later to the unrestrained brand of music that was played by small bands in the dives.

More often, Bolden played at one of the dance halls in the Negro district, such as Perseverance Hall, downtown on Villère Street, or Tin Type Hall, uptown on Liberty. George, the janitor of Perseverance, rented the hall on condition that the clubs who used it would hire the Bolden band. Some of the clubs they played for were the Buzzards, mysterious babies, and the Fourth District Carnival Club.

In the daytime, Tin Type Hall was used as a sort of morgue, for here the hustlers and roustabouts were always laid out when they were killed. The hustlers, gamblers and race track followers were often hard-working musicians in their off seasons, or when luck turned and they needed a little ready cash. At night, however, the Tin Tin Type trembled with life and activity, especially when Bolden was "socking it out." The "high class" or "dicty" people didn't go to such low-down affairs as the tin Type dances.

At about twelve o'clock, when the ball was getting right, the more respectable Negroes who did attend went home. Then Bolden played a number called "Don't Go 'Way, Nobody," and the dancing got rough. When the orchestra settled down to the slow blues, the music was mean and dirty, as Tin Type roared full blast.

Bolden's band was of the rough-and-ready school, without the polish of the note readers, such as the veteran Claiborne Williams' band, or the sweetness of Robichaux's orchestra. It was usually a small bunch, of from five to seven men. Buddy used William Warner or Frank Lewis, or sometimes both, on clarinet. Warner had a C clarinet, while Lewis played the usual B flat instrument. Willy Cornish, the only member of the original band living today, played a piston (valve) trombone. 

For a mute, Cornish used an empty bottle. Bolden, who almost always played with an open horn, sometimes used a rubber plunder, water glass, half a coconut shell, derby hat, piece of cloth, or his hand, for muted effects. Bolden, as a rule, played everything in the key B flat. the rhythm section, as usual in early New Orleans, had no piano, and consisted of Mumford, guitar, James Johnson, bass, and drummer Cornelius Tillman, or McMurray, with his old single-head drum and its bright red snares.

Bolden's band played for a while at Nancy Hank's Saloon on Customhouse Street, down in the red-light district. They used to sell fireworks in front, which, one one occasion, set the place on fire. At times, this joint got too rough for even the Buddy Bolden band.

Carnival time always saw New Orleans in its most festive mood. It was also the busiest time for musicians. Everyone was needed in the street parades which celebrated Mardi Gras. There was at least one parade a day for a week before Mardi Gras, and, on the final Tuesday, there were usually five or six. There were six gay weeks of masked balls. During the final week, balconies were decorated and maskers danced in the specially lighted streets. 

The parades, during the final week of pageantry, always started at Calliope Street and St. Charles Avenue, and after going up Canal, Royal and Orleans, ended at the site of the old Congo Square where, in the case of evening parades, the event was climaxed with a masquerade ball. King Bolden got his share of jobs in the carnival balls, as well as the parades.

In later years, there were several changes in King Bolden's band. Around the corner from the Odd fellow's Hall, at Perdido and Rampart, there was a regular "gin barbershop" where musicians were accustomed to hang out while waiting to get calls for jobs. here Bolden picked up Bob Lyons, the bass player, and Frankie Dusen, his trombonist. Others were Sam Dutrey, clarinet; Jimmie Palao, violin; and Henry Baltimore or "Zino," drums. His guitar player was Brock Mumford, around whom Buddy wrote a little song, "The Old Cow Died and Old Brock Cried." On this number the whole band sang the vocal chorus.

Buddy used to hang around a saloon on Gravier and Rampart run by "a guy named Mustache." He called it "my office." But he was never very businnesslike. When it came to paying the men, he always had a check but he never got it cashed. When the men cornered him, he'd tell them to go to his office and stay there until he came.

"If you want anything to drink, tell Mustache I said to give you a good hot Tom and Jerry. I'll be there in about ten minutes." He never got there. . . .

But a dance was never anything around new Orleans without King Bolden. Whenever he opened up the window at the Masonic or Globe Hall and stuck his old cornet out and blew, people came from far and wide to hear him.

Finally the day came when buddy Bolden marched in his lat procession. For years he had been mentally and physically overtaxed. Under the stress of excitement, his mind snapped and he went on a rampage during a Labor Day parade. Down in New Orleans, there are those who say that women killed Buddy Bolden, but wiser heads know it was also overwork, that at last Buddy had played himself out. The king of them all was committed to the East Louisiana State Hospital on June 5, 1907, where he was listed as a barber, his reputation as cornetist promptly forgotten; he was known only as one of several Boldens from New Orleans. He died there in 1931.

Source: "New Orleans Music" (1939) by William Russell and Stephen W. Smith

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update 8 July 2008