Bert Kelly's Jaz Band (UNCLASSIFIED)

[Jonathan Lighter]

I don't think of vaudeville jazz musicians of 1915-16 (like the ODJB) as
being especially "cool" or as thinking of themselves in that way.  They were
more like musical comedians.

Bert Kelly's style of "jazz" was evidently more mellow, but it's unclear to
me just how "jazzy" it was.  Remember that some of the N.O. musicians who
played what we now think of as "jazz" seem to have kept calling it "ragtime"
for years.

The matching of the word with musical styles then and later is not very
straightforward.

JL



On Wed, Sep 15, 2010 at 10:11 AM, Mullins, Bill AMRDEC <
Bill.Mullins at us.army.mil> wrote:

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> Sender:       American Dialect Society <ADS-L at LISTSERV.UGA.EDU>
> Poster:       "Mullins, Bill AMRDEC" <Bill.Mullins at US.ARMY.MIL>
> Subject:      Re: Bert Kelly's Jaz Band (UNCLASSIFIED)
>
> -------------------------------------------------------------------------------
>
> Classification: UNCLASSIFIED
> Caveats: NONE
>
> > >
> > >        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.
> >
> > And they didn't even have to be on the West Coast, since they could
> > have read a widely syndicated June 1913 article on "city slang,"
> > explaining that "out in San Francisco the most popular word is 'the
> > old jazz.'" We know that one version was published in the Fort Wayne
> > Sentinel and the Idaho Daily Statesman, and another version in the
> > Duluth News Tribune. No doubt many other papers picked it up.
> >
> > --bgz
>
> While this explanation is certainly possible, it seems unlikely.  I just
> cant picture jazz musicians (who embody the ultimate in what we now call
> "cool") picking up slang from a newspaper article (a vector which would
> be the ultimate in "anti-cool").  Much more plausible that the word was
> picked up in person somehow.
> Classification: UNCLASSIFIED
> Caveats: NONE
>
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