jasbo band (1914)

[George Thompson]

This is very interesting.

Did you also search for "Johnny Rooker"?  A description of his act would be nice to see.  Perhaps there would be something in Variety, around this time, but i wouldn't set anyone to trying to skim Variety -- 70 or so pages of very small type in each issue.  Although I've done it. . . .

It seems most unlikely that Rooker's group played anything like jazz, in the Art Hickman sense, or in the Creole Band sense.  I'd certainly expect it to have been a "novelty" act, of some sort, with clowning and making odd sounds on their instruments.

The Creole Band was a group of black musicians from New Orleans (but who first met in Los Angeles) who had a quite successful career in vaudeville in the mid 1910s.  Jazz hounds will know the name of Freddie Keppard, none of the others.  There was a book about them a few years ago.  They did not describe their music as "jazz", but that's what they played, in an act that required them to wear overalls and straw hats and to carry jugs of corn likker.

GAT

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

----- Original Message -----
From: Benjamin Zimmer <bgzimmer at BABEL.LING.UPENN.EDU>
Date: Wednesday, November 7, 2007 3:28 pm
Subject: jasbo band (1914)
To: ADS-L at LISTSERV.UGA.EDU


> Various 1914 cites for "jasbo" have been posted here in the past, but
> I
> believe these are the earliest found thus far in a musical sense:
>
> -----
> Fort Wayne Daily News, Sep. 2, 1914, p. 5, col. 1
> The Temple bill for the last half of the week will be headed by B.A. Rolf's
> "Ten Dark Knights," a great review of southern singing and dancing. Johnny
> Rooker and his "Jasbo" band are on the bill, as is the Great Lester, the
> ventriloquist whose "Gee Whiz" has been a by-word here for two years.
> -----
> Fort Wayne Journal-Gazette, Sep. 2, 1914, p. 9, col. 3
> In this act are Johnny Rooker and his "jasbo" band, one of the funniest
> creations of the vaudeville world.
> -----
> Fort Wayne Daily News, Sep. 3, 1914, p. 4, col. 2
> Their [sc. Ten Dark Knights] southern songs and dances are riots, and
> when
> Johnny Rooker brings on his "jasbo" band the house doubles up and begs
> for a
> minute in which to get its breath.
> -----
> Fort Wayne Journal-Gazette, Sep. 3, 1914, p. 9, col. 2
> The act was at the Temple once before, but this season Mr. Rolfe has
> put it
> out with a raft of new songs and new funny business, including the "jasbo"
> band led by Johnny Rooker, who as band master would make the gyrations
> of
> the average leader look like a snail with bunions climbing the Alps.
> -----
>
> The Fort Wayne cites are well before the July 11, 1915 Chicago Tribune
> article "Blues Is Jazz and Jazz Is Blues" and the various 1916 cites for
> "jaz(z)/jass band". It's hard to know if "jasbo" here referred to a
> style of
> music or had more to do with vaudeville humor, along the lines of HDAS
> sense
> 1 of "jazzbo" ("low physical comedy; slapstick; vulgarity"). Most
> likely the
> music and the slapstick went hand in hand.
>
> In any case, "jasbo/jaz(z)bo band" would later be used in more explicitly
> jazz-related contexts, as in the songs "Ephraham's Jasbo Band" (James
> Brockman, recorded by Arthur Collins in October 1917) and "That Alabama
> Jazbo Band" (W. Benton Overstreet, sheet music published in 1918).
>
>
> --Ben Zimmer
>
> ------------------------------------------------------------
> The American Dialect Society - http://www.americandialect.org

------------------------------------------------------------
The American Dialect Society - http://www.americandialect.org