Ragged but Right, pt 4 (jam)

[Cohen, Gerald Leonard]

If "jam" in a jazz sense really was used already in 1914, that would be startling.  The date should be double-checked.

Milton "Mezz" Mezzrow (with Bernard Wolfe), _Really the Blues_, 1946, pp. 148-149,. takes credit for plaing a key role in the origin of "jam session" (and "jam" too?) and that was in 1927: "...Down in that basement concert hall someone was always yelling over to me, 'Hey Jelly, what you gonna do'  -- they gave me that nickname or sometimes called me Roll, because I always wanted to play Clarence Williams' classic, Jelly Roll  -- and almost every time I'd cap them with, 'Jelly's gonna jam some now,' just as a play on words.  We always used the word 'session' and I think the expression 'jam' session' grew up out of this playful yelling back and forth.  At least I don't rightly remember ever hearing it before those sessions at the Deuces.'

See also my item "_Jam Session_ -- Coined By Mezz Mezzrow in 1927?", in _Studies in Slang, vol. 3 (edited by Gerald Leonard Cohen), Frankfurt am Main: Peter Lang, 1993, pp. 129-131.
Gerald Cohen
P.S. The play on words Mezzrow refers to was of course sexual.

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Original message from: George Thompson, Thu 2/2/2012 9:34 PM:

     As a rule most side show managers just want noise from a colored band.
The reason for this is because they don't have a large enough band to do
anything but jam.

     "Notes from Wolfscale's Band, with Barnum and Bailey", *Indianapolis
Freeman*, August 8, 1914

Lynn Abbott & Doug Seroff. * Ragged but Right: Black Traveling Shows, "Coon
Songs," and the Dark Pathway to Blues and Jazz*.  University Press of
Mississippi, 2007, p. 168;  & fn 54, p. 400

OED: "Jam", verb, 1st, sense 6.

*intr.* To play in a jam or =91jam session (see jam *n.**1*
3<http://ezproxy.library.nyu.edu:32445/view/Entry/100679#eid40570613>);
to extemporize. Also *trans.*, to improvise (a tune, etc.). *colloq.*(orig.
*U.S.*).

1935    *Stage* Sept. 46/2   *Jam*, to improvise hot music, usually in
groups.

1936    *Delineator* Nov. 11/2   He just comes on in here once in a while
because he likes to jam.


HDAS also has quotations from th 1930s.

GAT

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

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