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Buddy Bolden Tribute

New Orleans All Stars

Alcide Pavageau, Alphonse Picou, George Guesnon, George Lewis, Louis Nelson, Paul Barbarin , Peter Bocage , Punch Miller , Sweet Emma Barrett

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This clip from Art Ford's Jazz Party, originally broadcast on Christmas eve 1958, features a tribute to famed turn of the century New Orleans Jazz legend Buddy Bolden with a performance opening with "Basin Street Blues" and continuing on with "When The Saints Go Marching In", "Buddy Bolden Blues", "Careless Love", "Bucket's Got A Hole In It", and "High Society".

The band is made up of New Orleans musicians who played in the same era as Bolden, featuring Punch Miller trumpet & vocals, Peter Bocage trumpet, Louis Nelson trombone, George Lewis clarinet, Alphonse Picou clarinet & violin, "Sweet" Emma Barrett piano, George Guesnon banjo & vocals, Alcide Pavageau double bass, and Paul Barbarin drums.

Alphonse Picou plays the violin for much of this appearance and only switches to the clarinet to perform his famous rendering of "High Society".

Born in September 1877 in New Orleans, Charles Joseph "Buddy" Bolden was a cornet player who is credited with the development of a style of ragtime that would come to be known as jazz.

After his seven year reign as the most popular entertainer in the city between 1900 and 1907, Bolden suffered an episode of acute alcoholic psychosis at the age of thirty.

Later diagnosed with schizophrenia he was admitted to the Louisiana State Insane Asylum at Jackson, where he remained for the rest of his life.

Though credited as the man who developed the highly improvisational style of ragtime known as jazz today, Buddy Bolden was never presented the opportunity to be recorded.

For this reason we can only speculate as to how he might have sounded.