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Chapter 2, “‘He Blew His Brains Out through the Trumpet’: Buddy Bolden and the Impossible Sound of Madness,” illuminates the lifeworld and afterlifeworld of Charles “Buddy” Bolden. He was a turn-of-the-twentieth-century New Orleanian ragtime musician sometimes credited as “inventor” of jazz music; an alleged madman who spent a quarter century in a Louisiana insane asylum; and a historical enigma whose warrants a mad methodology. The chapter is interested in both Bolden’s historical life (which leaves scant archival trace) and his mythical afterlife (which teems with activity). That mythical afterlife is an assemblage of artistic surrogations, fantasies, and recuperations created by artists like Ferdinand “Jelly Roll” Morton, Ralph Ellison, Nina Simone, August Wilson, Michael Ondaatje, and Natasha Trethewey. The chapter closes by convening Bolden, Sun Ra, and Charles Mingus—all of whom spent time in psychiatric confinement—in a mad trio.

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