"Please don't shoot the organist; he's doing his best" (1882)

[Sam Clements]

Earlier messages in the ADS archive show that the "1909" recording is in
error.

Sam Clements
----- Original Message -----
From: "Laurence Horn" <laurence.horn at YALE.EDU>
To: <ADS-L at LISTSERV.UGA.EDU>
Sent: Saturday, December 23, 2006 8:47 PM
Subject: Re: "Please don't shoot the organist; he's doing his best" (1882)


> At 5:34 PM -0800 12/23/06, Arnold M. Zwicky wrote:
>>On Dec 23, 2006, at 5:18 PM, Fred Shapiro wrote with cites from the
>>early 1880s.
>>
>>and eventually we get Truffaut's New Wave classic (1960), Tirez sur
>>le pianiste, apparently released in the UK as Shoot the Pianist but
>>in North America as Shoot the Piano Player.
>>
>>arnold, thinking it's time to watch this again
>
> My favorite movie during my twenties, but one I'm wary of re-seeing
> precisely out of fear of a letdown.  Charles Aznavour, the sad-faced
> star, was known before and since making the movie mostly for his
> singing--which brings up a query, given his jazzesque stylings at the
> keyboard in STPP:
>
> What was the verdict on that 1909 first cite in the OED (still up
> there) for "jazz"--
>
> 1909 C. STEWART Uncle Josh in Society (gramophone-record), One lady
> asked me if I danced the jazz.
>
> do I recall that being dismissed here as a typo or misdating?  [Note
> that it doesn't appear in brackets.]  I ask partly because my
> students, answering a question on "jazz" etymythologies on their
> take-home final, have found their way to this entry, which they take
> (not unreasonably) to be the earliest cite for any sense of the word,
> predating those West Coast baseball occurrences for 'vim' and such.
>
> Sorry if the answer is obvious to some of you.
>
> LH
>
> ------------------------------------------------------------
> The American Dialect Society - http://www.americandialect.org
>

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