Bert Kelly's I Invented Jazz

[George Thompson]

I will need to look over my notes.  Hickman and his music and what he
may have called it isn't much documented, partly because he played
sweet jazz which is scorned by jazz historians and partly because he
stayed in San Francisco mostly and died fairly young.  There is a
discussion in A New History of Jazz, by Alyn Shipton (2001).  Hickman
was at Boyes Spring in 1913 when the word jazz caught the attention of
a sports writer, and Bert Kelly was one of his sidemen.

Kelly's autobiography may clarify this.

GAT

George A. Thompson
Author of A Documentary History of "The African Theatre", Northwestern
Univ. Pr., 1998, but nothing much lately.

----- Original Message -----
From: "Baker, John" <JMB at STRADLEY.COM>
Date: Thursday, September 1, 2005 3:31 pm
Subject: Re: Bert Kelly's I Invented Jazz

>        But there's no evidence that Art Hickman played anything
> calledjazz music prior to 1919 (or after, as far as I know).  Bert
> Kelly had
> the Bert Kelly Jazz Band, which Kelly claimed predated the Original
> Dixieland Jazz Band.  If Kelly's story is right (and proof is lacking,
> but it's the most plausible single account), then it was he who first
> used "jazz" to mean a kind of music.
>
> John Baker
>
>
> -----Original Message-----
> From: American Dialect Society [mailto:ADS-L at LISTSERV.UGA.EDU] On
> BehalfOf George Thompson
> Sent: Thursday, September 01, 2005 1:08 PM
> To: ADS-L at LISTSERV.UGA.EDU
> Subject: Re: Bert Kelly's I Invented Jazz
>
> Jerry writes
>
> >   Btw, we must be cautious about saying that Hickman was the
> first to
> > apply the word "jazz" to music.  The transfer very possibly occurred
> > in connection with his band, but in an interview (S.F. Examiner,
> Oct.> 12, 1919, p. W16/4) Hickman made clear that he did not like
> the use of
>
> > the word "jazz" in relation to music.
> >
>
> I suspect that this was his attitude in retrospect.  It Hickman
> and his
> band played dance music, along the lines of Paul Whteman, Lawrence
> Welkand Lester Lanin.  It seems that he took up the word Jazz from the
> lively, sparkling water at the mineral spring where the San Francisco
> Seals trained in 1913 -- I forget the name right now -- Hickman was
> entertainment director there that spring.  (This seems to me to
> parallelWelk's "Champagne Music".)  The ODJB's original hit,
> Livery Stable
> Blues, featured imitations of barnyard noises -- neighs, whinneys,
> squawks -- and after jazz became a fad, it looks like vaudeville acts
> that might earlier have called themselves "novelty"
> acts or "nut" acts billed themselves as "jazz" bands, made a show of
> cavorting about the stage and boasted in interviews that they knew
> nothing about music, everybody played whatever they felt like playing,
> and their music was supposed to be discordant.  Some time ago I
> posted a
> very funny diatribe against jazz in vaudeville from a newspaper in the
> heartland somewhere, which said that the jazz band featured a drummer
> whose right hand knew not what his left hand was doing and a saxophone
> player who could dance the Bear Cat, and concluded "Until the jazz
> bandis reached on the vaudeville bill, the worst is yet to come."
>
> I think that by 1919 Hickman was thinking that he had lost control of
> the word jazz and that what dancers and listeners associated with the
> word was not the carefully arranged and well played music he offered.
> His trademark had been compromised.
>
> GAT
>
> George A. Thompson
> Author of A Documentary History of "The African Theatre", Northwestern
> Univ. Pr., 1998, but nothing much lately.
>