We’re all wondering what approach the upcoming film Bolden will take toward that foundational jazz figure. Feature films about jazz musicians like Born To Be Blue, Miles Ahead, Bird, and Round Midnight come along every once in a while. Bolden, like these, was made based on an original screenplay, not a novel, so we don’t know what the film’s blueprint is. The only feature film I know of that is based on a novel is Young Man With a Horn. Although the hero of Dorothy Baker ‘s novel is supposedly based on Bix Beiderbecke, Kirk Douglas’s trumpet playing on the soundtrack was dubbed by Harry James in James’ typical bravura Swing style- which tells you a lot about the verisimilitude of the movie.In the 1980s I wrote the music for a theatrical production that was an adaptation of another novel about a jazz musician. That novel, about Buddy Bolden, is Coming Through Slaughter, by Michael Ondaaje. Slaughter is a town in Louisiana you had to pass through to get to the East Louisiana State Hospital, where Bolden was consigned in 1907. While we all wonder what Wynton Marsalis’ music for Bolden will sound like, I’m especially interested in how Bolden’s passage into madness is handled, because “Coming Through Slaughter” tackles this issue head on.Our theatre group, called Theatreworks, was based in Boston and performed in different spaces. We ended up in a somewhat anomalous v
