The first chapter of Martin William's book Jazz Masters of New Orleans is titled "Buddy The King". "Buddy" is the cornetist Charles "Buddy" Bolden.

Here are two quotes that preface that chapter:

He'd [Buddy Bolden] take one note and put to or three to it. He began to teach them-not by the music -just by the head. ... They had lots of band fellows could play like that after Bolden gave ;em the idea.
-Wallace Collins

Bolden cause all that. ... He cause these younger Creoles, men like Betchet and Kepplard, to have a different style from old heads like Tio and Perez.
-Paul Dominguez

p. 1

William's writes that ..."Bolden was "King" to the populace by their own proclamation, and "a man who started it all" in New Orleans jazz to the musicians. So what he did was give the music a dramatic, secular focus, both for his audiences and for its present and future practitioners.

p. 3

As to the music traditions which influenced Buddy Bolden, Williams writes

"Buddy Bolden was seven years old when the dances at [New Orleans'] Congo Square were stopped.We can assume that, like nearly everyone else, he was present at the first outings in the area that was to become Lincoln Park*. Marshall Sterns conjectures that he attended "underground" vodun meetings. We know that he was a Baptist and that Negro Baptist musical culture was well established. He grew up with brass bands and parades all around him. (And it is worth remarking here that "cutting contests" between local "star" cornetists are traditionally a part of American Sunday afternoon band concerts.) Mutt Carey has declared that Bolden took basic musical lessons from the celebrations at "a holy roller church".**...

Bolden's career was short-incredibly short in view of its importance. He was born, in 1868, a child of the Emancipation, and he had become a celebrity at least by 1895. He did not die until 1931, but he was committed to the East Louisiana State Hospital on June 5, 1907, eventually diagnosed as a paranoid, and he stayed there the rest of his life".

pp. 10, 11

* "Lincoln Park was a recreational, and music listening/dancing area that took the place of of Congo Square when the city closed that area.

** "holy roller" is a colloquial term for the evangelical Christian denomination Church of God In Christ (COGIC) that is known, among other things, for its exuberant music.