Painted Shut Turns 10

Buddy Bolden spent almost half his life looking through sealed windows from inside an insane asylum. Nicknamed “King” in his native New Orleans for his bold, pioneering approach to the cornet, his instrument of choice, Bolden was diagnosed with schizophrenia in 1907 at age 30. He died in the asylum 24 years later and was buried in an unmarked grave so plain the exact location of his body is unknown today. Experts now often attribute Bolden’s sharp health decline to pellagra, a vitamin deficiency that disproportionately befell poor Black communities in the early 20th century. There’s very little known about his life, but his legacy lives on by way of a genre Bolden helped invent which didn’t get a name until after his death: jazz.