Buddy Bolden
b. Charles Joseph Bolden, 6 September 1877, New Orleans, Louisiana, USA, d. 4 November 1931. The first great jazz legend, Bolden's reputation depends largely upon the reminiscences of the next generation of cornet and trumpet players of early jazz. They recalled him as being an inspiration, a driving, rhythmic and emotional player, and the ‘first jazz trumpeter’. Research by writer Don Marquis, suggests that Bolden was merely an adequate musician who became immensely popular in turn-of-the-century New Orleans, thanks mainly to his powerful playing of the kind of music the crowds wanted to hear allied to enormous personal magnetism. In the early 1900s Bolden began to drink heavily and by 1906 was showing signs of mental disorder. In 1907 he was incarcerated in the Jackson Mental Institution, where he remained until his death in 1931. Bolden never recorded, although rumours persist that he made some cylinder recordings in the 1890s, but his stylistic influence was ostensibly apparent in the work of many early New Orleans cornetists, including Bunk Johnson. A fictional account of his life was the basis for Michael Ondaatje's brilliantly inventive 1976 novel, COMING THROUGH SLAUGHTER. 
Further reading: In Search of Buddy Bolden, First Man of Jazz, Don Marquis.