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STOPiYVILLE |
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Buddy was a light brown-skin boy from Uptown. He drink all the whiskey he could find, never wore a collar and a tie, had his shirt busted open so all the girls to see that red flannel undershirt, always having a ball-Buddy Bolden was the most powerful trumpet in history. 1 remember we'd be hanging around some corner, wouldn't know that there was going to be a dance out at Lincoln Park. Then we'd hear old Buddy's trumpet coming on and we'd all start. Any time it was a quiet night at Lincoln Park because maybe the affair hadn't been so well publicized, Buddy Bolden would publicize it! He'd turn his big trumpet around toward the city and blow his blues, calling his children home, as he used to say.
The whole town would know Buddy Bolden was at the Park, ten or twelve miles from the center of town. He was the blowingest man ever lived since Gabriel. They claim he went crazy because he really blew his brains out through the trumpet. Anyhow he died in the crazy house.*
The tune eveiybody knew him by was one of the earliest variations from the real barrelhouse blues. Some of the old honkey-tonk people named it after him and sang a little theme to it that went like this . . .
I thought I heard Buddy Bolden say, "Dirty, nasty stinky butt, take it away, Dirty, nasty stinky butt, take it away And let Mister Bolden play . . ." * *
This tune was wrote about 1902, but, later on, was, 1 guess Til have to say it, stolen by some author and published under the title of the St. Louis Tickle. Plenty old musicians, though, know it belonged to Buddy Bolden, the great ragtime trumpet man.
lakers/ But, amongst the Negroes, Buddy Bolden could close a Robichaud dance up by 10:30 at night. Old King Bolden played the music the Negro public liked. He could step out right today, play his own style, and be called 'hot/ Old Buddy ruled in them days just like Louis Armstrong rules today/'
* Another old-time jazzman said of Bolden, "That fellow studied too hard— always trying to think up something to bring out. He could hear you play something and keep it in his head—then go home and think up parts. . . /* from Shining Trumpets.
** Tune 4, Appendix I. |
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