TUNBRIDGE WELLS JAZZ CLUB

IMPORTANT! Coronavirus

Sadly, circumstances have now led us to postpone our concerts to later dates as yet undecided. The bands which were to have played for us over the past several months will be re-booked at some point.

THE STRANGE STORY OF BUDDY BOLDEN'S BAND PHOTOGRAPH
For more than a century there has been ongoing speculation and controvacy about this, the only known picture of BOLDEN'S BAND as it was called, taken one would imagine, at an outdoor engagement with a back-drop set up behind a tent of some kind:



It has been reproduced in various books either like this or sometimes reversed neither of which can be right. Here the bass player and the guitarist are both playing in the normal right-handed way, which they did, and Bolden himself is holding his instrument in his left hand as was the convention for band photographs at the time. The other three musicians however are reversed since the tombonist is holding his instrument in his right hand and both clarinetists are holding reversed intruments. Current opinion is that the picture was 'constructed' in the photographer's studio from more than one negative and we think the picture should have been made to look like this:



Sadly the makers of the recent film "BOLDEN", when depicting the taking of the picture, have set the scene in a studio with a flash powder gun in use and posed exactly as in the first of the above pictures- except that the clarinetists holding right handed instruments in a left handed way!
Have look below!

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