Charles Joseph "Buddy" Bolden (September 6, 1877 – November 4, 1931) was an American cornetist who was regarded by contemporaries as a key figure in the development of a New Orleans style of ragtime music, or "jass", which later came to be known as jazz.

[8] Joe "King" Oliver, Freddie Keppard, Bunk Johnson, and other early New Orleans jazz musicians were directly inspired by his playing.

Bolden's "Funky Butt" was, as Danny Barker once put it, a reference to the olfactory effect of an auditorium packed full of sweaty people "dancing close together and belly rubbing.

"[10] Bolden is also credited with the invention of the "Big Four",[11] a key rhythmic innovation on the marching band beat, which gave early jazz more room for individual improvisation.

With the full diagnosis of dementia praecox (today called schizophrenia), he was admitted to the Louisiana State Insane Asylum at Jackson, a mental institution, where he spent the rest of his life.

[8][10] Recent research has suggested that Bolden may in fact have had pellagra, a vitamin deficiency common among poor and black groups in the population, which in 1907 swept through the southern United States.