Dupree Bolton

Dupree Bolton was a jazz trumpeter from Oklahoma City, Oklahoma. He is known primarily for his appearance as a backing musician on two hard bop jazz albums, the first led by Harold Land in 1959, and the second led by Curtis Amy in 1963. Bolton spent most of his adult life incarcerated for non-violent crimes related to his drug addiction, and he was considered a mysterious figure by jazz musicians and writers during his lifetime because of the lack of available information about him. He played with relatively few jazz musicians during his musical prime, mainly in the Los Angeles area and inside U.S. prisons including San Quentin and Soledad. Biographical information on Bolton began to emerge following his death, most notably in the work of jazz historian Ted Gioia, who was able to find and interview Bolton four years before Bolton's death in 1993.