The History of Jazz by Ted Gioia Read Free Book Online Page B

initiation into the public music life of the city came not through the brass bands that figured prominently in the local social life, but instead as a member of the string ensembles that entertained at dances and parties. The personnel and instrumentation of Bolden’s band underwent constant shifts, but its general evolution tended to emphasize the wind instruments at the expense of the strings—the only surviving photo of the group reveals an ensemble consisting of cornet, valve trombone, two clarinets, guitar, and bass; drums, although absent in the photograph, also played an important role in the band according to all accounts. The evolution in instrumentation was accompanied by a shift in musical perspectives. By the closing years of the century, Bolden’s band was gaining increasing notoriety for its daring move into the syncopated and blues-inflected sounds that would prefigure jazz.
    Bolden’s single biggest contribution to jazz may have been his focus on the blues. “On those old, slow, lowdown blues, he had a moan in his cornet that went right through you,” trombonist Bill Matthews recalled, “just like you were in church or something.” Trumpeter Peter Bocage concurred: “He played a lot of blues, slow drags, not too many fast numbers. … [B]lues was their standby, slow blues.” 14 It is worth recalling that the blues form was little known at the time. W. C. Handy may be lauded by his admirers as the “Father of the Blues,” but he never encountered this style of music until around 1903, when Bolden was already twenty-five years old. Yet Jelly Roll Morton describes a blues he heard played by New Orleans resident, Mamie Desdoume, at the turn of the century. Bolden was likely incorporating the blues sensibility and structure into his music around this same time.
    Certainly Bolden, even if he did not invent jazz, had mastered the recipe for it, which combined the rhythms of ragtime, the bent notes and chord patterns of the blues, and an instrumentation drawn from New Orleans brass bands and string ensembles. As we have seen, the syncopated rhythms of ragtime spread into the mainstream of American culture before the the blues became well known, and Bolden can hardly take credit for this aspect of African American music, although it certainly served as another key ingredient in his work. Yet his instistence on marrying these syncopations to the blues, in an era when the latter idiom existed only on the fringes of the music world, was a brash move, and no doubt a key reason why he captured the attention of his contemporaries and the later chroniclers of New Orleans jazz.
    Bolden’s ragged and raucous music stood in stark contrast to the more traditional quadrilles, waltzes, and marches of the New Orleans Creoles. Although the Creole players tried initially to dismiss the new style, its vigor appealed to the local black audience, especially to the younger, more independent generation of African Americans born and raised after the Civil War. This was more than a matter of musical techniques. Bolden’s daring lyrics to his signature song, which included biting reference to a local judge and other contemporary figures, can be viewed as symbolic of the more outspoken attitudes of the younger black men of his day. Even so, Bolden pushed the limits as few of his contemporaries dared, no doubt enhancing the allure of his quasi-forbidden music in the process. Referring to the cornetist’s trademark piece, known under varying names—“Funky Butt,” “Buddy Bolden’s Stomp,” “Buddy Bolden’s Blues,” or “I Thought I Heard Buddy Bolden Say”—Sidney Bechet recalls: “The police put you in jail if they heard you singing that song. I was just starting out on clarinet, six or seven years old, Bolden had a tailgate contest with the Imperial Band. Bolden started his theme song, people started singing, policemen began whipping heads.” 15
    Bolden’s career would span only a few years. By 1906, his playing