Bert Kelly's Jaz Band (UNCLASSIFIED)

[Mullins, Bill AMRDEC]

Classification: UNCLASSIFIED
Caveats: NONE

> -
>
> 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
>
>


I don't kid myself that Bert Kelly wore a soul patch and black
turtlenecks and smoked wacky terbackky.  But the idea that any group
would pick up "jazz" as a slang term from a newspaper article seems
unlikely, particularly if there is a potential alternative explanation
(first-hand contact with those west-coast hipsters who were using the
word).
Classification: UNCLASSIFIED
Caveats: NONE

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