jazzer, 1896

[George Thompson]

You folks may recall that I posted a few weeks ago a joke from an 1896 Massachusetts newspaper in the form of a dialog between "Goslin" and "Jazzer".  Since then, it has occurred to me that in as much as "Goslin" is an authentic name -- not common, but some may remember "Goose" Goslin, who played baseball from 1921 to 1938 -- then perhaps "Jazzer" is also a name.

Quickly consulting some indexes to the names in the late 19th C/early 20th C U. S. censuses, I find that the name Jazzer or Jasser appeared in Alabama in 1870 and in New York in 1900.  In 1910, in the NYC section of the census, there were 6 Jassers and 1 Jazzer.  The name did not show up in Massachusetts census indexes.  These indexes are to the names of the heads of households listed in the notebooks the census-takers carried about.  Nearly all of the notebooks from the 1890 census were destroyed in a fire very many years ago, and the notebooks from the 1870, 1880, 1900 & 1910 censues for some of the states have not yet been indexed.  It's obviously a very uncommon name, but a few people carried it in this country before 1896.
RLIN shows no book by a Jazzer, but a dozen or so by Jasser, most in German, but it seems also possiible as an Arab name.

So perhaps the contriver of this joke, not wanting to use the usual names for his interlocutors, such as He & She, or Pat & Mike, &c., used a couple of names he had somewhere come upon and remembered as inherently comical.

If so, then it saves us the problem of contriving a history of the word "Jazz" that would account for its giving rise in 1896 in Massachusetts to a nickname apparently meaning "One who jazzes".  Which would be a blessing.

GAT

George A. Thompson
Author of A Documentary History of "The African Theatre", Northwestern Univ. Pr., 1998.