"Jazz" in the LATimes, 1912 & 1917

[George Thompson]

For those who have access to the LATimes in microfilm but not online:
Ben's Jazz Curve was on p. 2 of section III, the bottom of col. 1, April 2, 1912.
The reference to the absence of "old-line cumbersome jazz" in Chaplin's latest short was on p. 6 of section II, col. 6, April 18, 1917.
The passage deploring "the old jazz stuff as regards action and plot" in Fatty Arbuckle's latest was p. 8 of section II, col. 4, April 30, 1917.

I see from the Dict. Americanisms that the knuckleball was known as such in 1910.  Perhaps "Ben's jazz curve" was a form of knuckleball, since the virtue of that pitch is that it moves unpredictably.
It's hard to be sure what synonym should be plugged into the phrase: "high spirits" or "enthusiasm" are out; "lively" is possible; but perhaps "weird", "foolish", "nonsensical" are more likely, connecting it to the expression "all that jazz", meaning "the usual balderdash".

I own a copy of Gerry's earlier (1999/2000?) summary of the evidence for the history of "jazz" but can't put my hands on it.  I see from the archives "The term "jazz" is first attested in the newspaper _San Francisco Bulletin_, March 3, 1913 (in a pejorative sense;"very much to the jazz" =
"nonsense," "hot air") and then, starting on March 6, 1913 almost
always with a favorable meaning "pep, vim, vigor, fighting spirit"
and almost always in baseball articles.".  (Gerry Cohen, message of 29 Mar 2001)

The LATimes database claimed to find 87 occurences of the word "jazz" in columns by Grace Kingsley between April 18, 1917 and December 21, 1923.  The database didn't show her byline after the end of 1923.  Again, I only looked at a few of these citations, since the database is tiresome to read.  (If only it would do to earn its $1000s per year what the free Brooklyn Eagle database does, and that is, pick out and highlight the words searched for.)  Some referred to the new style of music, but others, with reference to movie comedy, carried the sense of "crude buffoonery, slapstick".
For instance:
"'Cactus Nell' is the name of the laugh-getter which kicks you in the ribs at the Woodly this week, and Polly Moran, queen of the jazz comediennes, is the high-power fun maker who keeps things moving at the rate of a million laughs a minute."  April 30, 1917, p. 8 of section II, col. 4.  Ephraim Katz' Film Encyclopedia (1998) begins his brief note on Moran "Raucous, buck-toothed comic star. . . .
"The pieless comedy is with us at last on the screen!  Something besides jazz comedy -- with its eternal races, its repartee administered by a slapstick on the nether portion of the fat comedian, the wit of the biffing bladder, trick photography showing the thin gentleman tripping along in the sky. . . ."  January 27, 1919, p. 6 of section II, col. 3.
It does not seem, however, that this sense was exclusive to Kingsley.  In one of her columns, under the subhead War Hard on Jokes, she has the following:
"The joke business suffers a slump in war time."  [Jokes about the Kaiser are fine, but there can be too many of them.  She interviews Eugene Howard, of the Howard Brothers.]  "'What do we do to make people laugh?  Everything we can think of that seems funny to us, from reciting Oscar Wilde epigrams to turning low-brow jazz somersaults.  That's one thing people will always laugh at -- jazz.'"  February 27, 1918, p. 3 of section II, col. 5.  Anthony Slide, Encyclopedia of Vaudeville (1994) identifies Eugene Howard as the straightman to Willie Howard in a "Jewish" comedy act.

One man's hilarity is another's vulgarity, and a gag that would send Red Skelton into giggles would make Noel Coward purse his lips.  "Raucous" can be positive or negative, depending on who's using it about what.  Could a word meaning "lively" be taken to describe efferevent water by its bottler, "enthusiasm" by ball players, and "low comedy" by vaudevillians?  Could "jazz" in the 1910s have meant "high spirits" to the rowdy men who played baseball and "low crudity" to Ms. Kingsley?
But as a vaudeville term as well as a baseball term, "jazz" seems to have been confined to the West Coast in the 1910s, since plenty of people lately have been reading Variety and The Clipper (both New York based) from those years, and if "jazz" was there someone would surely have noticed.
On the other hand, the Howards were a New York based act, I believe.  Perhaps Eugene was speaking the local patois for Ms. Kingsley's benefit, or perhaps she was translationg what he really said into her own words.

The next step, if Barry hasn't already done this, is to look at all the database matches from before 1912, however little the context may seem to indicate an authentic match.  Then I ought to check all matches from 1912 through 1925, or at least those that seem likely to be true matches, to sort out the ones that refer to music, the ones that refer to baseball, and the ones that refer to low comedy.
I should also throw in the Washington Post and NYTimes, to see whether "jazz" = "low comedy" was used on the East Coast.
This isn't going to get done quickly.  On my good days I have a pretty slender supply of patience with Proquest's inadequacies, and I don't have very many good days.  The results are hard to read and maddeningly inconsistent.  I tried to get a line on Polly Moran's comic style by searching her name in the LATimes, and found 5 matches, not including the reference by Kingsley, although it's perfectly legible.
I notice that the Proquest Washington Post databse has more than 60 matches for jazz from before the end of 1915, but one seems to have mistaken the name James for jazz, and another the word jail -- they are, at least, the only words in two very brief stories beginning with J.

In any event, the sense of "fornication" can't have been the original meaning of "jazz"..  It's true that it didn't take long to develop, the songs of the mid 20s about "jazzin' babies" have more point if that meaning is assumed, but presumably Ms. Kingsley, the sports writers, however rowdy, and their editors would not have put the word into print repeatedly, if that meaning was known.

I don't think I deserve Gerry's reward -- I'd just spend it on drink, probably.  In any event, he did specify "But just to make things interesting, I will write a check of $100 to the first person who can provide me clear evidence that "jazz" (or any variant spelling) was used prior to 1913 in a musical or sexual sense."  (Message of 29 Mar 2001)

GAT

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