After a recent post that mentioned Monty Sunshine and by implication Ken Colyer, Chris Barber and the Trad Revival Movement of the 40’s and 50’s I’ve been on the look out for books about the New Orleans scene in the early years of the 20th century. I didn’t expect to find much because I almost never buy new books and my regular haunts are charity shops. Anyway I did find this (thank you Barnardos). Coming Through Slaughter takes the sketchiest known ‘facts’ of Buddy Bolden’s life, marinades in alcohol psychosis, and creates a gumbo portrait of a single-minded mad genius. Whether the hard-lipped Buddy Bolden ever knew what he’d got is debatable but he certainly influenced almost all of the next wave of jazz players. He died in an asylum in 1932 after 20 years of apparent madness. Inspiring and richly drawn; a beautiful book.