Like many music fans, even now, Wynton Marsalis did not grow up familiar with the Charles "Buddy" Bolden story. But the dramatic tale of the singing cornetist -- a key figure and to some the inventor of jazz -- eventually became an inspiration that made Marsalis the perfect choice to helm the music for Bolden, the upcoming biopic based on his life.
"I grew up in the '60s and '70s -- the Civil Rights movement, Motown, James Brown, Marvin Gaye," Marsalis, whose rendition of "Funky Butt" you can hear below, tells Billboard. "I was playing in a funk band. I didn't know anything about (Bolden's) story or who he was or what he played. I didn't have proper respect of the music. I didn't respect historical things in general." But Marsalis did learn -- through his father, Ellis Marsalis Jr., and by getting into Louis Armstrong, which led the then-fledgling Marsalis back to Bolden, partially via Donald M. Marquis' famed biography In Search of Buddy Bolden. The latter in particular was primary source material for Bolden director and co-writer Daniel Pritzker, chronicling the musician's life during the early 20th century in his native New Orleans, leapfrogging off ragtime to create his own style of music that influenced dozens of other musicians before Bolden was diagnosed with schizophrenia at the age of 30, living out the final 24 years of his life in the Louisiana State Asylum.