jazz (not music)--1911?

[victor steinbok]

Sigh... Having gone through 700+ hits overall (jazz, jaz, jas, jass), in
various combinations, almost every other GB hit that claims to be 1906-1916
is actually from 1917-1922, with a couple of stragglers climbing up to 1932.
I did not mark down any that were not useful in antedating any of the OED
entries under jazz. In particular, there are a lot of alumni and fraternity
magazines from 1918-1921 that talk about organizing their own "jazz bands"
and, alternatively, from 1916-1919 about having a lot of jazz (1.). There
were also several union magazines with similar comments and three recruiting
magazines (two army, one air force). This was one of the rare ones that
matched 2.a. (or something that wasn't listed--"no sex"?), so it's
disappointing the timeline does not fit--but I expected that.

 1. U.S. slang. Energy, excitement, ‘pep’; restlessness; animation,
> excitability. Now rare. [1912+]

2. a. Unnecessary, misleading, or excessive talk; nonsense, rubbish. [1913+]


As far as I can tell, all the band members in the other hits are white.

Complaints about jazz as a hodge-podge of random sounds, cacophony, go well
into the early 1930s, although they do decline over time. Interestingly, in
all the criticism, I did not find one racial commentary, although I could
have looked more closely (this was not the focus) and the filters I set up
might have pushed a lot of the later stuff out.

But, for dialect stuff--the alumni/frat reports do not appear accidental.
"Jazz" in both sets of meanings--"pep" and new dance music--appears to have
spread through college campuses very rapidly and was associated with that
particular generation (the ones who were "college age" in
1915-1920--coinciding with WWI).

VS-)

On Tue, Sep 6, 2011 at 8:04 AM, Jonathan Lighter <wuxxmupp2000 at gmail.com>wrote:

>
> The reference to "listening to the blah-blah of the radio" places the ad
> text in the 1920s, probably after 1922.
>
> JL
>
> JL
> On Tue, Sep 6, 2011 at 4:54 AM, victor steinbok <aardvark66 at gmail.com
> >wrote:
>
> >
> > I found another volume in the series, this one with copyright date 1912,
> > but
> > published in 1928 (the big hint is the list of books at the end that is
> "to
> > be published January 1929" or later). Still, this says nothing about the
> > date of the other book.
> >
> > VS-)
> >
> > On Tue, Sep 6, 2011 at 4:31 AM, victor steinbok <aardvark66 at gmail.com
> > >wrote:
> >
> > > I am not going to pretend that this is a clear example. The book was
> > indeed
> > > published in 1911, but there is absolutely no way to ascertain when
> this
> > > copy was printed. The citation can be found on the very last printed
> page
> > of
> > > the book, in the self-promotion by the publisher--the kind of
> advertising
> > > sheet that could have been added at any printing. And this one has
> > nothing
> > > to with music either.
> > >
> > > http://goo.gl/cNpef
> > > Dick Merriwell's Commencement. Or, The Last Week at Yale. The Merriwell
> > > Series No. 200. By Burt L. Standish. 1911
> > > [inside back cover--Street & Smith advertising]
> > >
> > >> Read the Street & Smith Novels!
> > >> They are the cheapest and most interesting reading matter published in
> > >> America to-day. No jazz--no sex--just big, clean, interesting books.
> > >>
> > >
> > > So take it as you will. YMMV.
> > >
> > > VS-)
>

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