CMT Blog: Archive

I just finished reading a book about the "First Man of Jazz," New Orleans native, Charles "Buddy" Bolden. How interesting to learn of his intricate improvisations and the power in which "The High Note Man" played the cornet. But what I find most interesting about this leading man of jazz is his likeness to one of country music's pioneers, Hank Williams.

Though Bolden was born nearly half a century before Williams, the two shared uncanny similarities. When he was just six years old, Bolden lost his father to pneumonia and was raised mostly by his mother. Williams too was primarily reared by his mother. Both men were greatly influenced by the music they heard in church as well as the musicians on the street. Bolden often combined Sunday hymns with beats from the street, and was said to have played so loudly you could hear him for miles. Williams, though not as loud vocally, could pierce the soul with his heavy-hearted tunes dripping with sorrow and learned about the blues from a Greenville, Ala., street musician nicknamed Tee Tot.

Unfortunately, Bolden and Williams battled inner demons as well as the bottle and controversy surrounds their unfortunate downfalls. Williams passed away when he was still a young man, only 29 years old. Though Bolden lived into his 50s, his musical career was over by the age of 30 and he spent the rest of his life committed to an insane asylum. Speculation on his cause of "insanity" ranges from voodoo to syphilis to alcohol. Williams' death also involves much supposition, though likely was the result of a deadly concoction of morphine and alcohol.

Although we can still listen to Williams' old recordings and his lonesome sound today, Bolden's known recordings were destroyed by fire. Fortunately, their influences live on today, peppered throughout the sounds of jazz and country music.