Bert Kelly's Jaz Band (UNCLASSIFIED)

[George Thompson]

"        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. "

The idea that "jad band" was cleaning up the naughty word "jazz" is certainly a retrospective explanation.  "Jazz" cannot have been thought of as a naughty word at that time, because it appears in newspapers from widely scattered parts of the country.

It's true that as long as we research "jazz" by searching databases, we won't find newspapers that were ashamed to print the word -- but it will take someone finding a newspaper reference to "the **** band" or "the j--- band" or to "that vulgar music with the vulgar name" to convince me that "jazz" was a word originally associated with sex.  Even newspaper reports that denounce jazz music as immoral and associating it with indecent dancing print the word in full, without blushes.  (It's true that blushes on a newspaper page don't come through well on microfilm.)  There's a story from a New Orleans paper of 1917 or 18 saying that the word and music arose in the brothels of our city, but it prints "jazz", no blushes.

Meanwhile, Lawrence Gushee said that the manuscript of Bert Kelly's autobiography was in the hands of his son.  It had been announced for publication in the late 1940s, from a vanity press, but never appeared, and still has never been published.

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 7:50 pm
Subject: Re: Bert Kelly's Jaz Band (UNCLASSIFIED)
To: ADS-L at LISTSERV.UGA.EDU

>         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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>
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