Buddy Bolden

Mm.

And obviously he had learned from people before him, King Oliver and like Buddy Bolden, these people who like kind of were in that lineage.

But the way that he like...

What, what he was able to do technique-wise, but also like add this, this joy to the playing.

... you're really mapping it out.

I mean, the recording we, though still, the recording we're waiting to find, the lost cylinder of Buddy Bolden, um, was the original king of jazz.

And supposedly you could hear his solos for miles, he played so loud.

And you, and y- Louis was a kid, Louis Armstrong was a kid when he heard him, and, uh, was heavily influenced by Buddy Bolden and then obviously, uh, King Joe Oliver.

And you go there from Sidney Bechet and you get to Duke, and all that formation s- is in that kind of street jazz from New Orleans.

It wasn't sophisticated yet like Duke Ellington would make it, like, uh, back in the '30s and '40s.

Right.

And, uh, it was Black improvisation, uh, at its finest.

And out of that collision came something incredibly spiritual and deep

Yeah, so before jazz was really ever jazz, before there was a Buddy Bolden or Louis Armstrong, there was this DNA that was very spiritual.

African rhythm, as you say, carrying Christian hope.

Born inside one of the most brutal systems of oppression in human history, really.