Bert Kelly's Jaz Band (UNCLASSIFIED)

[Baker, John]

        Note that the "Jad Band" advertisement may also be significant
because, if it was a bowdlerization, it is by far the earliest
association of "jazz" with sex.  I don't think there are any other
documented links until 1918, which would seem to undercut the suggestion
by many that the word was originally improper.

        Of course, we can't take these lines of argument too far.  The
known facts still overwhelmingly support an innocuous derivation from
the West Coast slang word:

        1912:  Portland Beavers pitcher Ben Henderson uses "jazz" in a
baseball context.  His source is unknown, but newspaper articles from
1916 show that Berkeley President Benjamin Ide Wheeler was a frequent
user of "jazz" or "jaz-m," implying a derivation from "jasm," which
means spirit or vigor.  "Jasm" is apparently a variant of "jism," but
most examples of its use are entirely innocent of any sexual
connotation.

        1913:  "Jazz" is popularized by a series of articles from the
baseball training camp at Boyes Springs, California, where Bert Kelly
was a musician.  Newspaper articles show that the term was seen as new,
and it did not yet have a settled spelling.

        1914:  Bert Kelly moves to Chicago.  In 1914 or 1915 he began a
band, which at some point was called Bert Kelly's Jaz(z) Band.  He
claimed to have originated the application of the term to music, and a
1919 statement in the Literary Digest supports his claim.

        So it remains the case that "jazz" almost certainly came from
the West Coast, probably derived from "jasm," and may well have been
introduced by Bert Kelly.  However, Tom Brown's Band is the earliest
documented example and probably was calling itself a jazz band by 1915,
so Kelly's claim is unproven at best.  After all, Kelly may have been at
Boyes Springs, but there were plenty of people who had been on the West
Coast and read their newspapers.  It is not necessarily significant that
Tom Brown and his band thought that an unfamiliar term had sexual
connotations.


John Baker



-----Original Message-----
From: American Dialect Society [mailto:ADS-L at LISTSERV.UGA.EDU] On Behalf
Of George Thompson
Sent: Tuesday, September 14, 2010 7:11 PM
To: ADS-L at LISTSERV.UGA.EDU
Subject: Re: Bert Kelly's Jaz Band (UNCLASSIFIED)


        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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