Bert Kelly's I Invented Jazz

Baker, John JMB at STRADLEY.COM
Thu Sep 1 19:31:31 UTC 2005


        But there's no evidence that Art Hickman played anything called
jazz music prior to 1919 (or after, as far as I know).  Bert Kelly had
the Bert Kelly Jazz Band, which Kelly claimed predated the Original
Dixieland Jazz Band.  If Kelly's story is right (and proof is lacking,
but it's the most plausible single account), then it was he who first
used "jazz" to mean a kind of music.

John Baker


-----Original Message-----
From: American Dialect Society [mailto:ADS-L at LISTSERV.UGA.EDU] On Behalf
Of George Thompson
Sent: Thursday, September 01, 2005 1:08 PM
To: ADS-L at LISTSERV.UGA.EDU
Subject: Re: Bert Kelly's I Invented Jazz

Jerry writes

>   Btw, we must be cautious about saying that Hickman was the first to
> apply the word "jazz" to music.  The transfer very possibly occurred
> in connection with his band, but in an interview (S.F. Examiner, Oct.
> 12, 1919, p. W16/4) Hickman made clear that he did not like the use of

> the word "jazz" in relation to music.
>

I suspect that this was his attitude in retrospect.  It Hickman and his
band played dance music, along the lines of Paul Whteman, Lawrence Welk
and Lester Lanin.  It seems that he took up the word Jazz from the
lively, sparkling water at the mineral spring where the San Francisco
Seals trained in 1913 -- I forget the name right now -- Hickman was
entertainment director there that spring.  (This seems to me to parallel
Welk's "Champagne Music".)  The ODJB's original hit, Livery Stable
Blues, featured imitations of barnyard noises -- neighs, whinneys,
squawks -- and after jazz became a fad, it looks like vaudeville acts
that might earlier have called themselves "novelty"
acts or "nut" acts billed themselves as "jazz" bands, made a show of
cavorting about the stage and boasted in interviews that they knew
nothing about music, everybody played whatever they felt like playing,
and their music was supposed to be discordant.  Some time ago I posted a
very funny diatribe against jazz in vaudeville from a newspaper in the
heartland somewhere, which said that the jazz band featured a drummer
whose right hand knew not what his left hand was doing and a saxophone
player who could dance the Bear Cat, and concluded "Until the jazz band
is reached on the vaudeville bill, the worst is yet to come."

I think that by 1919 Hickman was thinking that he had lost control of
the word jazz and that what dancers and listeners associated with the
word was not the carefully arranged and well played music he offered.
His trademark had been compromised.

GAT

George A. Thompson
Author of A Documentary History of "The African Theatre", Northwestern
Univ. Pr., 1998, but nothing much lately.



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