Bolden, a feverishly dark and largely imagined film about tragic jazz pioneer Charles “Buddy” Bolden, got its New Orleans premiere Sunday, April 28, at Cinebarre Canal Place 9. Van Morrison and Wynton Marsalis, both of whom performed earlier in the day at the New Orleans Jazz and Heritage Festival, were among the invitation-only attendees.
Marsalis composed, performed and arranged the Bolden soundtrack. One of the film’s executive producers, he participated in a post-screening Q&A with Bolden director and co-writer, Dan Pritzker. The film opens May 3 in New Orleans at The Broad Theater.
New Orleans musicians who recorded the Bolden score with Marsalis also attended Sunday’s screening, including Dr. Michael White and Don Vappie. Bolden’s great-granddaughter, Chicago resident Rita Bell, also attended, as well as cast members Karimah Westbrook, Breon Pugh and Kearia Schroeder; Preservation Hall musician and creative director Ben Jaffe; and Don Marquis, author of In Search of Buddy Bolden: First Man of Jazz. The jazz curator emeritus of the Louisiana State Museum, Marquis credits Bolden with the invention of jazz.
Pritzker first learned of Bolden in 1997, from a friend who was reading Marquis’ book. “I immediately felt like this is American mythology,” the director said before the Canal Place screening. “This is tragic and poetic. It really struck me and I couldn’t believe no one had made a movie about Buddy Bolden.”
Pritzker, a member of the Chicago soul-rock band Sonia Dada, began writing the Bolden script in 1998. He filmed exterior scenes in New Orleans in 2007 and 2014 at locations including cemeteries and Preservation Hall. The production shot interior scenes in Wilmington, North Carolina, and Atlanta. Along the way, British actor Gary Carr (Downton Abbey, Death in Paradise) replaced New Orleans native Anthony Mackie in the role of Bolden.
In the 1890s, Bolden’s cornet performances in local parks and dance halls made him the first jazz star. His powerful playing and innovative style earned him the title “King” Bolden. But Bolden’s career was over by 1907, the year he was committed to the Eastern Louisiana Mental Hospital in Jackson. He remained there until his death in 1931.
The challenges in telling Bolden’s story were formidable. Little is known about his life, few photos of him exist and his only known recording was destroyed. “A lot of it has to be guess work,” Marquis said. “Because Bolden went insane in 1906, when nobody was writing anything about jazz. And by the 1930s, when they were starting to do research, they were asking questions of guys who didn’t really know what had been going on.”
The lack of information about Bolden fueled Pritzker’s desire to do the film, a passion project 20 years in the making. In 2005, the director found validation for his vision for the film during his first meeting with Marsalis. “Wynton turned to me and said, ‘You can do a story about Buddy Bolden and it’s got to be a myth.’ “
Marsalis, Pritzker’s first choice to score the film, recorded music for the Bolden project and Pritzker’s 2010 short film about a young Louis Armstrong, Louis. Marsalis and a seven-piece band modeled after Bolden’s band recorded standards associated with Bolden and Armstrong and original Marsalis compositions. Jazz at Lincoln Center’s Blue Engine Records released the 26-track soundtrack.
Because no Bolden recordings survived, Marsalis based his conception of Bolden’s style on three trumpeters who followed him. “Freddie Keppard, a great Creole player, who played that straight ragtime kind of stuff,” Marsalis said. “Very powerful, and he could make a lot of effects and cries and growls. Bunk Johnson, who had a real smoky tone, and played a Miles Davis type of emotional thing. And there’s the greatest, who claimed Bolden as his influence, Joe ‘King’ Oliver. He played with a tremendous sense of dignity. So, I feel like all three of those people played with some aspect of Buddy Bolden’s personality.”
“Wynton danced a thin line brilliantly,” Pritzker said. “That line between covering the narrative, historically, but tuning it for modern ears, so we hear and feel the excitement.”
Bolden’s place in jazz hierarchy continues to grow, Marquis said. “He’s becoming more and more important every day. You talk about King Oliver and Louis Armstrong, they were great, but Bolden had something to do with the very beginning, that brought all of the rest of it on. And jazz came from all kinds of music. Everybody asks, ‘Where did jazz come from?’ It came from gospel music, brass band, you name it. And the city had something to do with it. New Orleans was open to such a thing. A lot of people claim jazz, that it happened here and there, but there’s no proof to it.”
New Orleans musician PJ Morton will host the Buddy Bolden Block Party this Thursday, May 2. The GRAMMY-winning Morton is taking stewardship of Buddy Bolden’s former home in Central City, which he plans to turn into an educational facility – Ed.
