Ragged but Right, pt 4 (jam)

[George Thompson]

     As a rule most side show managers just want noise from a colored band.
The reason for this is because they don't have a large enough band to do
anything but jam.

     "Notes from Wolfscale's Band, with Barnum and Bailey", *Indianapolis
Freeman*, August 8, 1914


Lynn Abbott & Doug Seroff. * Ragged but Right: Black Traveling Shows, "Coon
Songs," and the Dark Pathway to Blues and Jazz*.  University Press of
Mississippi, 2007, p. 168;  & fn 54, p. 400



OED: "Jam", verb, 1st, sense 6.

*intr.* To play in a ‘jam’ or ‘jam session’ (see jam *n.**1*
3<http://ezproxy.library.nyu.edu:32445/view/Entry/100679#eid40570613>);
to extemporize. Also *trans.*, to improvise (a tune, etc.). *colloq.*(orig.
*U.S.*).

1935    *Stage* Sept. 46/2   *Jam*, to improvise hot music, usually in
groups.

1936    *Delineator* Nov. 11/2   He just comes on in here once in a while
because he likes to jam.


HDAS also has quotations from th 1930s.

GAT


-- 
George A. Thompson
Author of A Documentary History of "The African Theatre", Northwestern
Univ. Pr., 1998, but nothing much since then.

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