Does jazz "ax(e)" derive from jazz "chops"?

[Jesse Sheidlower]

On Sun, Oct 06, 2002 at 10:30:20PM -0400, Fred Shapiro wrote:
> On Sun, 6 Oct 2002, Jesse Sheidlower wrote:
>
> > I don't have _Jazz Lexicon_ here, only the later _Jazz Talk,_
> > which lumps these together in an unhelpful way. In the earlier
> > book does he actually claim that the 1947 exemplifies the
> > 'skill' sense? I personally think that the 1947 cite clearly
> > means 'lip strength' and not 'skill', as does the 1958, but
> > the 1962 quote probably does belong to the 'skill' sense (by
> > _Jazz Talk,_ at least, Gold seem to think so too).
>
> My recollection is that _Jazz Talk_ is substantially the same book as
> _Jazz Lexicon_.

It's not. I mean, it is substantially the same book, but the differences
are notable enough that you do need to look at both. I'm sort of
surprised by JG's comment, because I had previously though that the
main differences were the adding of new material in _Jazz Talk,_ but
his post suggests that cites and perhaps discussion that was in the
Lexicon were removed for Talk.

I should probably wait until tomorrow to respond, when I'll actually
have both books together, but I'm quite sure that there's a lot in
Talk that's not in Lexicon.

Jesse Sheidlower
OED