"Jazz" in the LATimes, 1912 & 1917

[George Thompson]

Barry, our wandering etymologist, has been to Washington to look at the "Jazz Curve" story in a microfilm of the LATimes.  The first paragraph had been sufficiently legible through the database, but my summary of the last paragraph had been a conjectural restoration.  I got it more or less right, though.

>   2 April 1912, LOS ANGELES TIMES, part III, pg. 2, col. 1:
>      _BEN'S JAZZ CURVE._
>   "I got a new curve this year," softly murmured Henderson
> yesterday, "and I'm goin' to pitch one or two of them tomorrow.  I
> call it the Jazz ball because it wobbles and you simply can't do
> anything with it."
>   As prize fighters who invent new punches are always the first
> to get their's Ben will probably be lucky if some guy don't hit
> that new Jazzer ball a mile today.  It is to be hoped that some
> unintelligent compositor does not spell that the Jag ball.  That's
> what it must be at that if it wobbles.
>

There is a long account of the game in the next day's paper, but no reference to Henderson trying a new pitch.  He pitched a complete game, gave up 9 hits, 4 walks and 4 runs, and was the losing pitcher.  (LATimes, April 3, 1912, section III, p. 1, continued onto p. 3)
A column of notes and comments about the game included the paragraph "Of course they will want to know what the first ball pitched by each slabster was.  Well, Leverenz got away with a nice straight strike, and Henderson cut the outside corner with a fast curve also for one strike.  Benny calls this his "jass" ball.  ("Around the Bags,"  Owen R. Bird, April 3, 1912, section III, p. 3, col. 1; reading is probably "jass", not "jazz")

Using the LATimes database, I found very little about Henderson.  He is not in the Baseball Encyclopedia, 8th ed.,, so he never made it to the majors.  We will have to wait for the register of Pacific Coast League players that will soon appear for details on his career.
He appears to have been a drunk, which perhaps explains the sneer regarding the "Jag ball".  One of the few references to show up in the LATimes is the following:
Water Wagon Kid.  Booze Contract for Henderson.  M'Credie to Give Erratic Twirler Chance.  ***  [All this is headline; the text includes:]  Walter M'Credie has decided to give Ben Henderson, his capable but erratic big right-handed pitcher, another chance to be good next season. . . .  ***  Ben will be put on what is known as a "booze contract," which means that he will receive but a nominal sum through the season as long as he behaves himself, and there will be a clause attached promising him a good, substantial bonus if he stays on the water wagon.  [He was playing for the Postland Oregon team (the Beavers); the manager had said he wouldn't re-sign Henderson, but then lost one of his pitchers to Philadelphia of the National League.  The "booze contract" didn't work; Henderson had driven "the water wagon into the ditch" by June 23, 1912 and had been suspended.  Just the same, M'Credie named Henderson to the all-time Beaver team, a few years later.  (January 11, 1914)  This
seems to be the only occurence of "booze contract" in LATimes database.

My notion of checking at least selected matches for the word Jazz into the early 1920s has collapsed with the finding that there are several thousand after 1917.
I have searched and checked references to the phrase "jazz comedy" through 1925 and it seems in fact to be unique to Grace Kingsley as a pejorative term; there are only a few appearances in columns signed by others, always without any obvious negative charge.  The phrase did not turn up at all in the NYTimes database or the Washington Post database, through 1925.
However, looking up "jazzbo" in HDAS, I found the following:
1.  Vaudeville. a. low physical comedy, slapstick, vulgarity.  [with 2 quotations from 1917, the first being: "'Jasbo' is a form of the word common in the varieties, meaning the same as 'hokum,' or low comedy verging on vulgarity."  [a form of what word?]
LATimes database has, from August 17, 1914, section III, p. 2, cols. 4-5:
Mucho Peppo.  BIG LEAGUE NEXT HOWDY.  Road Race Special Promises Plenty Live Stuff.  Phoenix Contest Fans Stand for Most Anything.  Many Sportmen Desire First Reservation on List.  [headline]  The Howdy Special which annually makes the run across the desert to Phoenix at the time of the Phoenix road race, promises to be a record-breaking Jasbo party this year.  ***  [Several paragraphs down]  John Weise is the prima donna traffic agent for the Howdy Special.  He says he is going himself and intends to be accompanied by his gang.  ***  [Several paragraphs further down]  Firestone Smith is a sure contender.  John Weise has a great record for the Jasbo stuff, but A. T. Smith is out to break all records on the trip to Phoenix.  On the motor truck run last week, Smith and his trained monkey named "Jocko" were pests.  They kept the guests at the Glenwood Mission Inn awake after 10 o'clock and Smith personally perpetuated an outrage with a bottle of fire-extinguisher. . . .  [The s
tory is perfectly legible though nearly as incomprehensible as the headline.  Both Jasbos are clear.  The setting is an automobile rally or race.  A car involved is the Howdy Special.  A. T. Smith is not identified.  In the original, every sentence is set as a separate paragraph.]
Apparently the representatives of automobile and tire distributors who participated indulged in uproarious practical jokes, so this connects with "jasbo" as low comedy in vaudeville and the movies, and Grace Kingsley was unique only in shortening the word to "jazz".
The next appearance of "jazzbo" in the  LATimes was in an ad for a combined vaudeville and movie show at the Burbank.  The live show featured "Jazzbo, the Educated Mule"  (LATimes, March 18, 1918, section II, p. 8)

Searching for "jazz" or "jass" in the same context as "ball" or "baseball" seems to show that "jazz" = "spirit", "enthusiasm" in sports reporters' lingo never reached southern California.

HDAS has "jazz" as a style of music from October, 1916.  This isn't an antedating of that sense, but is interesting:
Provocative.  DRUM BANISHED AS TOO LURING.  Only "Jass Band" in Future for Co-eds of Chicago.  Tends to Immorality, Says Miss Talbot, the Dean.  [all headline; submitted as an exclusive dispatch from the LATimes' Chicago Bureau]  The "tum-tidi-tumtum -- ta ra ta ta" of the drum, rhytmic and snappy, was banished today from the dance music at the Ida Noyes Hall, the new girls' clubhouse at the University of Chicago, because of its "provocative lure," the moaning tones of the "jass band" guided the feet of the co-ed dancers.  Because Miss Marion Talbot, dean of the girls, did not approve of the drum, that instrument was barred from the orchestra, and only a piano and the saxophones, the instruments composing what is called the "Jass band" in the "black-and-tan" cafes, were allowed at the "hop" given by the Score Club.  Miss Talbot is quoted as explaining: "It's not in keeping with the spirit of Ida Noyes Hall.  The drum arouses all that is base in young people and tends to prov
oke immorality."  Leading musicians in Chicago indulged in hearty laughter at the statement that in the drum is to be found the siren song of enticement.  LATimes, November 12, 1916, section I, p. 10
To complicate the geography of the word, the next reference to jazz music in LATimes is in a story copied from The Youngstown Telegram:
There seems to be a difference of opinion as to the origin, purpose and destiny of the "jazz" band.  The name, as near as we can figure out, comes from the Bohemian term "Jazbo"  ["Bohemian" presumably = "bohemian", not "Czech"]  ***  Usually, the jazz band is made up of a pianist who can jump up and down while he is playing, a saxophone player who can stand on his ear, a drummer whose right hand never knows what his left hand is doing, and a violinist who can dance the bearcat.  ***  The jazz band players usually lack reserve.  While the music is throbbing and the dancers are swaying, they get into action until the air is full of flying feet, grabbing hands, drummer's gimcracks and delighted exclamations.  The exclamations are usually such as "Attaboy!" "Oh, doctor!" "Swing me dizzy" and "Oh, Babe!"  Before the jazz band is reached on the programme the worst is yet to come.  (LATimes, June 4, 1917, section II, p. 4)  I notice that both this and the Chicago story describe en
sembles in which the front line consists of saxophones, or a saxophone and a violin, and omit the trumpet, clarinet and trombone, the standard instruments in New Orleans jazz.
HDAS does not give "Oh, doctor!" as an expression of approbation, but it was one of Red Barber's distinctive phrases in broadcasting a baseball game, so much so that it is mentioned in the entry on him in the American National Biography.

Meanwhile, it seems that the LATimes itself had yet to use the word "jazz" with reference to music.  The first I find is from June 13, 1917, section II, p. 3, from a long review of a concert:
There was a sparkling novelty by MacDowell, called the "Dance of the Gnomes," which was frolicsome as such a piece might be.  It is up-to-date enough in spots to be a sort of etherealized "Jazz" music, if you can imaging such a thing.
A few weeks later, from LATimes, July 5, 1917, section II, p. 6:
All Join In.  SPECTATORS SING PATRIOTIC AIRS.  Community Numbers Given at Hollenbeck Park.  Jazz Band is an Interesting Feature at Westlake While Wide Range of Ground Sports and Water Contests Enliven Doings at Echo Resort. [headline]  ***  Music by the Jazz Band, both instrumental and vocal, was one of the features at Westlake Park during the afternoon.  McVay and Johnson directed this organization in renditions of southern airs and patriotic music.
This is not because jazz music was unknown in LA.  Jelly Roll Morton went there in 1917 and found black musicians already there who believe -- erroneously, in Jelly's view -- that they were playing jazz.

All statements that a word, name or phrase is not found in the database should be accepted with consideration of the system's very regrettable  ability to find what is not there and to miss what is there.

GAT

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