"jass" < c. 1900 in today's NYT--(anachronism)

[Cohen, Gerald Leonard]

I second Barry's rejection of this "jass" as an anachronism. There's no evidence--none, zero, zip, nada--of the term "jass" or "jazz" attested for the New Orleans music being played ca. 1900. At that time the music was simply played; the name came over a decade later and is first attested in California baseball, not New Orleans music.

Gerald Cohen

> ----------
> From:         American Dialect Society on behalf of Laurence Horn
> Sent:         Sunday, January 23, 2005 7:24 PM
> To:   ADS-L at LISTSERV.UGA.EDU
> Subject:           "jass" < c. 1900 in today's NYT
>
>  From a polyreview of crime books by Marilyn Stasio in today's NYTBR. Can we assume Fulmer's attribution of "jass" for the musical genre in "turn of the 20th century" New Orleans is an anachronism?  Of course
> we don't know from the review exactly how far (if at all) past the actual turn of the century the story and word are set.
>
> Larry
> ================
> The New York Times
> January 23, 2005 Sunday
>
>   SECTION: Section 7; Column 1; Book Review Desk; CRIME; Pg. 21
>   BYLINE: By Marilyn Stasio
>
>   Music is the pulsating idiom of David Fulmer's hot-blooded JASS (Harcourt, $23), the sequel to ''Chasing the Devil's Tail'' (2001) and another voyeuristic tour of Storyville, New Orleans's red-light district during its heyday at the turn of the 20th century.
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