Bolden is another of those I'm surprised I hadn't heard of when I read up on how well loved he was. Apparently a New Orleans cornet player, barber, scandal sheet writer, bandleader and all-round busy guy, he's widely regarded to be the father of jazz as we know it and said to be the first bandleader to use improvisation.
Strangely for someone so widely regarded, there are no surviving recordings by the performer and only one surviving composition - Buddy Bolden's Blues (performed here by Hugh Laurie), which has fantastic lyrics like:
I thought I heard Buddy Bolden say,The track also originally had the much better title Funky Butt, seemingly named after one of the dance-halls he played in. It was there that Louis Armstrong first heard him play, who later said that Buddy was a "one man genius ahead of them all".
Stinky butt funky butt, take it away!
In 1907 (pre-dating the rock-n-roll lifestyle by far, the trendsetter!) he collapsed in the middle of a street parade, having a mental breakdown - the more dramatic accounts have him frothing at the mouth - which got him committed to a lunatic asylum for the rest of his life.
More like this: Try Jelly Roll Morton, who besides having a fantastic name was a New Orleans pianist who knew Buddy Bolden.
Bon Bon Buddy
Bon Bon Buddy was a song written by Will Marion Cook and Alex Rogers in 1907 - you can hear it performed by William Brown here. The lyrics are a tale about how the singer's nickname, Bon Bon Buddy the Chocolate Drop came about.
The song is part of the so-called coon songs genre, which is fairly self explanatory. Popular all the way from the 1880s to the 1920s, the songs were meant to be funny caricatures of African-Americans. Unfortunately, funny at the time meant negative and ugly stereotypes including violence, stupidity and a leaning towards earning money in illicit ways. Written and performed by both black and white - although black songwriters often only wrote them as a source of steady income - they're a fascinating but unpleasant view into race relations in the early 1900s.
The score cover for Bon Bon Buddy, The Chocolate Drop
More like this: Try another song of the genre, All Coons Look Alike To Me. Said to be the worst of its type, it was written by black songwriter Ernest Hogan. Or, if you'd like to read more, there's a well written article on the topic and its importance within history here.
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