Searching for Dupree Bolton

[Niko]

did i get this right (in the booklet of the uptown cd) that in addition to the oklahoma prison band tracks on the uptown cd there is also this lp "aint got time to lose" by the "oklahoma prison band"?

http://cgi.ebay.com/Aint-Got-Time-to-Loose...%3A1%7C294%3A50

assume bolton is on it - there's a photo of him playing trumpet during that session in the uptown booklet... has anyone heard it? how does it compare to the uptown tracks..?

[Dan Gould]

You can stream the Uptown release here.

[medjuck]

You can stream the Uptown release here.

Is this a legit site? I guess it's advertiser supported. Are there other Uptown releases there?

[Dan Gould]

I would say its legit since I've found in many cases CDs in which some tunes will stream in full, some will stream in 30 second previews only and others are not licensed and have no play capability. If they weren't legitimately licensing from rights holders, they'd probably be offering everything.

More than you need to know here.

The Lucky Thompson Uptown is here.

[BruceH]

here's bolton's feature on laura for instance

Hey buddy, Laura starred Gene Tierney and Dana Andrews...just FYI! (Seriously, though, that clip is amazing, thanks! )

[Niko]

I would say its legit since I've found in many cases CDs in which some tunes will stream in full, some will stream in 30 second previews only and others are not licensed and have no play capability. If they weren't legitimately licensing from rights holders, they'd probably be offering everything.

More than you need to know here.

The Lucky Thompson Uptown is here.

it's legit and they have all uptown cds i believe (as well as dozens of other stuff like all nimbus west and all timeless cds...)

from the what are you listening to right now on spotify etc thread:

Spotlite:

http://www.lastfm.com/label/Spotlite/albums

ESP

http://www.lastfm.com/label/ESP+Disk/albums

Nimbus West:

http://www.lastfm.de/label/Nimbus+West+Records/albums

Arhoolie:

http://www.lastfm.de/label/Arhoolie+Records/albums

Timeless:

http://www.lastfm.com/label/Timeless+Records/albums

vsop

http://www.last.fm/label/Vsop+Records/albums

uptown

http://www.last.fm/label/Uptown+Jazz/albums

Edited June 7, 2009 by Niko

[Niko]

some more Dupree Bolton links, he was apparently with Buddy Johnson again between October 1950 and November 1951, click and click, guess someone must have found this before but i don't remember reading anything about Bolton in the early fifties... (did he record with Buddy Johnson then?),

edit: strangely though the line-up in these reports is a subset of Johnson's 1945 line-up, so either this is a spoof or the band was remarkably stable... (or both)

(Buddy Johnson - Walk 'Em (bj vcl) November 7, 1945 Frank Brown, Dupree Bolton, Johnny Wilson, Willis Nelson (tp) Bernard Archer, Leonard Briggs, Jonas Walker (tb) Joe O'Laughlin, Al Robinson (as) David Van Dyke, Jimmy Stanford (ts) Teddy "Cherokee" Conyers (bar) Buddy Johnson (p,vcl,arr) Jerome Darr (g) Leon Spann (b) Teddy Stewart (d) Ella Johnson, Arthur Prysock (vcl) )

comparing with the line-up of the Classics CD of the musicians mentioned in both articles Arthur Prysock, David van Dyke, Willis Nelson did indeed stay with Johnson so long, Bolton is mentioned in both articles as well, one of them adds Teddy Stewart and Jerome Darr (which seem less likely to have stayed i guess)

and this shows that he did not always go by a false name in the forties... (report about Bolton leaving the Johnson band in 1946)

here is Art Pepper expressing the hope that some day he might play like Bolton if he stays clean (which is quite a compliment i guess)

Edited January 11, 2011 by Niko

[AllenLowe]

Walk 'Em is on one of the later volumes of my blues anthology, if it ever gets issued - when I picked it I had no idea it might be Bolton, but there is, indeed, a trumpet solo on it.

[Lazaro Vega]

Bolton shows up in a Gene Ammons big band under Jerome Richardson, too, on Late Hour Special. He's not soloing (that falls to Clark Terry) but his lead playing is evident.

The mystery of his musicianship, though, especially as regards the trumpet, is solved when he talks about his time in Soledad, which as around 1956 or so?

"The average guy, even a black guy, who went there and was like they wanted him to be, would do maybe 18 months. I had to do 51 months. I made it, but it was a drag being in the joint that long. So I started doing everything I could trying to get loaded, and there was something there damn near all the time to get loaded on. I started hustling inside Soledad.� The saving grace of the period was the penitentiary�s music program. �I got a job that didn�t restrict me and I was able to practice every day. I would play tunes, but my main objective was to get down with the mechanics of the instrument. That meant scales and exercises. I would play them sometimes for 12 to 14 hours a day.�"

And, viola: a bitch. I recall reading Nat Hentoff asking Dizzy where he came up with his technique, to which Dizzy said, "It's all in Arban's." Creativity not so much, but the trumpet makes demands that can only be met with this type of dedication to the technical. Ted should have known, though, that Bolton needed a shedding period before they could record again. It's not like a guitar or piano or something where you can just sit down and get a pretty good sound. From 12 to 14 hours a day to homeless on a borrowed horn, what could you expect?

[bertrand]

I think it's Hobart Dodson on the Ammons session.

Bertrand.

[brownie]

Yes, that's Hobart Dotson who plays on that Gene Ammons session. The same Dotson who appeared on recordings by Sun Ra, Slide Hampton and Charles Mingus among others.

[king ubu]

Yes, that's Hobart Dotson who plays on that Gene Ammons session. The same Dotson who appeared on recordings by Sun Ra, Slide Hampton and Charles Mingus among others.

And in Gerald Wilson's great 40s big band, too!

[Lazaro Vega]

Yes yes, sorry I confused obscure trumpeters.

But, 12 to 15 hours a day on technical exersizes. Shabang!

[Lazaro Vega]

Yesterday I was checking out Fireball and noticed that Paul Brewer is listed as trombonist and co-composer with Bolton on a few of the pieces by the Tulsa prison band. Paul teaches at Aquinas College in Grand Rapids and is the father of jazz bassist Matt Brewer. Here's his response from his Facebook page:

"I remember him well. We composed a song together ("Chano"). He was brilliant, but an incorrigible con. When I taught at the Joseph Harp Correctional Center where Dupree was incarcerated for about a year, he told me that I was the only person he could talk to. His musical gifts were so strong and his knowledge so deep that he kept me engaged for hours on end in conversations about music and other subjects that interested him (the prison officials let me visit him in his cell).

His life was tragic, however. He never overcame the type of madness that kept in prison for so many years of his life. Drugs ruled him and his formidable intelligence was no match for his insatiable cravings for narcotics.

Dupree was an existentialist in the deepest sense of the word and could articulate his philosophical postions in that regard as well as any professor I ever heard. And yet, there were so many times during rehearsals that I saw him smile with delight at something meaningful that I had played on the horn. So, in music at least, Dupree's existentialist leanings disappeared, yielding a deeply felt passion for the sublime in jazz.

I played with him last in 1983 after he had been paroled. We were at jazz club on the black side of Oklahoma City (the east side). He played beautifully. And then I never saw him again.

He died alone in 1993, I think. And no one claimed the body. Sad."

[Niko]

Paul Brewer with Organissimo:

[paul secor]

Thanks for the previous two posts. I had never heard of Paul Brewer or heard his music before this. Enjoyed hearing him.

[king ubu]

Thanks a lot for sharing that, Lazaro! Much appreciated!

(Got to wait till I'm on my own computer to watch the video, alas - but thanks for that, too, niko!)