The Word Jazz

I have always had a fascination with jazz. I've spent over thirty years researching it and an equal amount of time hosting jazz radio shows and writing about it. Jazz music has gone from the streets of New Orleans to everywhere in the world. In the thirties jazz was king, it was the most popular music in America. Jazz has come a long way into the 21st century but what do we really know about the word jazz? Where did it come from? There are many theories and stories, here's what I have found out about the word jazz.

Early jazz men said "to jazz" meant to fornicate, or, as they put it, "jazzing meant effing" (fucking). A "jazzbow" or "jazzbo" was a lover of the ladies. A "jazz baby" was an easy woman. According to some sources, the word Jazz was also underworld jargon found in Chaucer and Shakespeare. Jazz had many names: jabo, jaba, jazpation, jazynco, jazorient, jazanola. Also jazanata, jazarella, jazanjaz, jazology, jazette, jazzola, jazitis and jazioso.

Songwriter and musician Clarence Williams says that he was the first to use the word "jazz" in a song. Williams said, "On both Brown Skin, Who You For? and Mama's Baby Boy, I used the words, jazz song, on the sheet music. I don't exactly remember where the words came from, but I remember I heard a woman say it to me when we were playin' some music. `Oh, jazz me, baby,' she said."

According to Arnold Loyacano, the word jazz had different origins. Loyacano was in Tom Brown's band, which in 1915 was the first white band to ever go to Chicago and play jazz. They were playing in a hotel which previously had a string quartet for entertainment. Brown's band had been used to playing on the back of a wagon, which meant that they had to play loud and were really incapable of playing soft. The crowd's reaction was to hold their ears and yell, "Too loud!" Loyacano says that was when people started calling his music "jazz." The way Northern people figured it out, our music was loud, clangy, boisterous, like you'd say, "Where did you get that jazzy suit?" meaning loud or fancy. Some people called it "jass." Later when the name struck, it was spelled with a "z,"jazz."

The latest research on the word "jazz" points to early use of the term in baseball. According to University of Missouri-Rolla Professor Gerald Cohen' author of a three-volume "Dictionary of 1913 Baseball and Other Lingo," jazz was used in baseball meaning "vim," "vigor" and "fighting spirit" before it acquired its musical meaning. It was introduced by San Francisco Bulletin sports writer 'Scoop' Gleeson as a term to describe players on the San Francisco Seals team.

So whether it is jass, jazz or whatever, we know and love it as great music whether here in New Orleans or around the world.

Early Jazz and Vaudeville

Early Jass and Vaudeville

New Orleans music created quite a stir in Chicago in 1915 and Joe Frisco was very much behind it. Comic Frisco and his dancing partner/girlfriend Loretta McDermott came to New Orleans in 1914 to perform their dancing and comedy act at a Bourbon Street honky-tonk called the Pink Poodle. After the act bombed, they were left in the city with little money. They decided to explore and found a place called The Creole with a big sign outside announcing "The Dixieland Five." They went in and loved the music so much that they stayed and spent most of their remaining money dancing and drinking. As luck would have it, they found a booking at an Algiers club called The Nemo Theatre for the following weekend, but they were continually drawn back to see "The Dixieland Five" and worked up such great new dances to this exciting new music that the band took notice and the leader, trombonist Tom Brown, bought them a drink. The band and Frisco and Loretta became such buddies that on their last night in town, Joe and Loretta took to the dance floor by themselves and got more applause then they ever had before. Joe, the comic with a stutter, held up his hand and said, "D-D-Don't applaud, folks, just throw mm-money" and they picked up more money off the floor than they had made in their weekend gig across the river.

            

When they got back to Chicago they immediately got a gig at Lamb's Cafe and called the New Orleans band to come up to Chicago. It didn't take long before the cafe was packed night after night, which created quite a bit of jealousy among Chicago musicians, who began trying to discredit the New Orleans band by calling their music "jass." At the time, this might have been considered much more of a slur than a compliment, but it didn't stop audience attendance and the cafe finally capitalized on it by putting a sign out in front of the club announcing "Brown's New Orleans Jass Band."

Pictured below is the band as they posed during a vaudeville routine at Lamb's Cafe, Chicago. The band, initially billed as "The Four or Five Rubes of Vaudeville," featured left to right: Unidentified drummer, Tom Brown (trombone), Joe Frisco (dancer), Raymond Lopez (cornet), Larry Shields (clarinet) and Arnold Loyocano (piano). Costumes and vaudeville sketches changed with the 1915 show. In other pictures of the group, they wear long coats and sport beards.



They were so successful that even Chicago mobster Al Capone wanted his picture taken with the band. Below is a picture from that era with Capone holding Tom Brown's trombone case while Frisco dances.



About a year and a half later, in 1917 , the first jazz recording was made by the Original Dixieland Jass Band and jazz would soon be heard around the world. Joe Frisco went to perform at the Ziegfeld Follies and, later, at the epitome of vaudeville stages: The Palace. Below is a piece of sheet music from 1918 called "Frisco's Kitchen Stove Rag," featuring cigar-smoking Frisco billed as the Creator of the Jazz Dance.





Frisco became well known for his jazz dance and had a long career appearing on stages as a comic and dancer across America before eventually moved to Los Angeles where he performed his act in a number of movies. He always loved the horse races where he hung out with Hollywood  friends including Bing Crosby. His wit was so admired and loved that stories of his one liners continued long after his passing. A book was written about Frisco's life in 1999.