one for the files? -- "jasmine" etymology of "jazz"

[Gerald Cohen]

    I've been trying to prepare a comprehensive treatment of the term
"jazz" (long-term project), with due credit to everyone who has
contributed in any way to the discussion. In this regard, here now is
some detail on the "jasmine perfume" etymology for "jazz." This
etymology is incorrect, and great caution is required before
accepting at face value any etymological observations from jazz
musicians (great musicians, not so great etymologists). And yet
perhaps, once the term "jazz" arose, the presence of "jasmine" in
perfume--assuming it really was used there--might have given a
seemingly plausible explanation for the origin of the term. Folk
etymologically, of course.

      Garvin Bushell's book _Jazz From the Beginning_ (as told to Mark
Tucker), 1998 (first printed ca. 1988) has the "jasmine perfume"
etymology on page 13. Al Klein's Internet "Jazz Tidbits and Other
Things" quotes from the book
(http://users.netstarcomm.net/etjs/jazz_tidbits_and_other_things_by.htm)

     Klein says that Bushell  worked as a young man in circus bands in
Louisiana.
But Bushell was from Springfield, Ohio, and on page 12 there's no
specific listing of Louisiana as being among the places where Bushell
played with the circus:
        'I played with the circus in Florida and part of the South,
also Indiana, Illinois, down into Kentucky, and back up into Ohio.
... [p.13] In Tampa I heard the Pensacola Kid.  ...'

      Bushell continues on page 13:
        'Incidentally, I learned about the origin of the word jazz in
the circus.  It was just becoming popular then [G. Cohen: On p. 11
Bushell identifies his circus days as starting in 1916].  I'm quite
sure it originated in Louisiana.  The perfume industry was very big
in New Orleans in those days, since the French had brought it over
with them.  They used jasmine--oil of jasmine--in all different odors
to pep it up.  It gave more force to the scent.  So they would say,
"let's jass it up a bit," when something was a little dead.  When you
started improvising, then, they said "jazz it up," meaning give your
own concept of the melody, give it more force, or presence.  So if
you improvised on the original melody of the composer, they said you
were jazzing it up.  It caught on in the red light district, when a
woman would approach a man and say, 'Is jazz on your mind tonight
young fellow."'  [Al Klein's Internet quoting of Bushell's book
somehow has an additional sentence.]

     Here now is Al Klein's treatment. He first states as an introduction:
'...most scholars appear to favor an erotic origin for jazz, as
"jazzing' typically meant fornication, although no one has been able
to really prove whether this meaning pre-dated the musical reference
to jazz or vice versa. There is one story that proposes perfume as a
possible source for the word, taken from Garvin Bushell, who as a
young man worked in circus bands in Louisiana around the turn of the
century:'

Klein then quotes from Bushell's book:
     'They said that the French had brought the perfume industry with
them to New Orleans, and the oil of jasmine was a popular ingredient
locally. To add it to a perfume was called "jassing it up." The
strong scent was popular in the red light district, where a working
girl might approach a prospective customer and say, "Is jass on your
mind tonight, young fellow?" The term had become
synonymous with erotic activity, and came to be applied to the music as well."'

     Klein's quote pretty much captures the sense of what Bushell
said, but for whatever reason Klein's quote differs a bit from the
one in Bushell's book.  Maybe the 1988 printing differed from the
1998 copy I have.

Gerald Cohen