Bert Kelly's Jaz Band (UNCLASSIFIED)

[Jonathan Lighter]

They might have adopted it for being so new and trendy and connected with
excitement. In other words, swell.

JL

On Wed, Sep 15, 2010 at 10:29 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
>
> > -
> >
> > 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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