Bert Kelly's Jaz Band (UNCLASSIFIED)

[George Thompson]

        We know that the term "jaz" was endemic in show business circles around this time -- and for how many years previously?  What was novel was to apply it to music in Chicago.  After all, Brown's Band at the Lamb's Cafe in May had been given the bowdlerized billing of "Jad Band."
Lawrence Gushee, Pioneers of Jazz: The Story of the Creole Band, N. Y., &c: Oxford U. Pr., 2005, p. 138 & p. 332, fn. 12, citing an advertisement in the Chicago Examiner, May 22, 1915, p. 17, col. 5.
Gushee adds: "found by a researcher in 1959 and verified by me some 35 years later.  The ad was tiny and not on the theatrical page.  ***  So far as is known, this is the only ad to use this word."

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: Tuesday, September 14, 2010 6:12 pm
Subject: Re: Bert Kelly's Jaz Band (UNCLASSIFIED)
To: ADS-L at LISTSERV.UGA.EDU

>         That's probably quite relevant.  Wikipedia includes the
> following statement:  "Ray Lopez of Tom Brown's 1915 band recalled he
> and his fellow musicians assumed that the word "jass" or "jazz" was too
> improper to be printed in newspapers so they looked in a dictionary for
> similar words like "jade"; rediscovered newspaper advertisements from
> the era for Brown's "Jad Band" or "Jab Band" are suggestive of
> confirmation of this account."  The sentence has a "citation needed"
> note, so I don't know the source of the claim (while I am the principal
> author of the Wikipedia article on Jazz (word), I did not write this
> particular sentence).
>
>         Can you share the relevant text?  If "jad" really should mean
> "jazz" here, it would be the earliest use of the term to refer to music.
>
>
> John Baker
>
>
>
> -----Original Message-----
> From: American Dialect Society [mailto:ADS-L at LISTSERV.UGA.EDU] On Behalf
> Of Jesse Sheidlower
> Sent: Tuesday, September 14, 2010 11:30 AM
> To: ADS-L at LISTSERV.UGA.EDU
> Subject: Re: Bert Kelly's Jaz Band (UNCLASSIFIED)
>
>
> The OED does have a quotation from May 1915 in the Chicago
> Examiner for _jad orchestra_. It's not clear what this
> represents, but I've seen the page image and there's no
> question of what it is; the context is the same as similar
> advertisements for jazz bands.
>
> Jesse Sheidlower
> OED
>
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