The origin of the word jazz is one of the most sought-after word origins in modern American English. False assumptions and incorrect information from even the most respected sources have led to widespread confusion as to the word's history. Nevertheless, the word's intrinsic interest — the American Dialect Society named it the Word of the Twentieth Century — has resulted in considerable research, and its history is well-documented. As discussed in more detail below, jazz began as a West Coast slang term around 1912, the meaning of which varied but which did not refer to music or sex. Jazz came to mean jazz music in Chicago around 1915. Jazz was played in New Orleans prior to that time but was not called jazz. English language spread in the United States. ... According to its web site, the American Dialect Society, founded in 1889, is dedicated to the study of the English language in North America, and of other languages, or dialects of other languages, influencing it or influenced by it. ... Slang is the use of highly informal words and expressions that are not considered standard in the speakers dialect or language. ... Jazz is a musical art form that originated in New Orleans at around the start of the 20th century. ...

Beginnings in West Coast slang

Earliest use

The earliest known references to jazz are in the sports pages of various West Coast newspapers covering the Pacific Coast League, a baseball minor league. The earliest example, found by New York University librarian George A. Thompson, Jr., is from the Los Angeles Times on April 2, 1912, referring to Portland Beavers pitcher Ben Henderson: The Pacific Coast League (PCL) is a minor league baseball league operating in the West and Midwest of the United States. ... A view of the playing field at Busch Stadium II St. ... New York University (NYU) is a major research university in New York City. ... The Los Angeles Times (also known as the LA Times) is a daily newspaper published in Los Angeles, California and distributed throughout the Western United States. ... April 2 is the 92nd day of the year (93rd in leap years) in the Gregorian calendar, with 273 days remaining. ... 1912 (MCMXII) was a leap year starting on Monday in the Gregorian calendar (or a leap year starting on Tuesday in the 13-day-slower Julian calendar). ... League Pacific Coast League Division Pacific Conference, Northern Division Year founded 1903 Major League affiliation San Diego Padres Home ballpark PGE Park Previous home ballparks City Portland, Oregon Current uniform colors black, red, gold Previous uniform colors Logo design Script P on cap; winking beaver wearing Portland cap, alternate Division...

BEN'S JAZZ CURVE.

"I got a new curve this year," softly murmured Henderson yesterday, "and I'm goin' to pitch one or two of them tomorrow. I call it the Jazz ball because it wobbles and you simply can't do anything with it."

As prize fighters who invent new punches are always the first to get their's Ben will probably be lucky if some guy don't hit that new Jazzer ball a mile today. It is to be hoped that some unintelligent compositor does not spell that the Jag ball. That's what it must be at that if it wobbles.

Henderson's jazz ball apparently was not a success, as there are no known further references to it except for a brief mention in the Times the following day. While the lack of further attestations shows that Henderson is unlikely to have played a significant role in the popularization of jazz, his early use proves that the word was in existence by 1912.

Jazz reaches a wider audience

A more lasting influence emerged in 1913, in a series of articles by E.T. "Scoop" Gleeson in the San Francisco Bulletin, found by researchers Peter Tamony (who carried out the pioneering research in this area) and Dick Holbrook, that likely were instrumental in bringing jazz to a broader public. These initial articles were written in Boyes Springs, California, where the San Francisco Seals baseball team was in training. In the initial reference, on March 3, 1913, jazz was used in a negative sense, to indicate that disparaging information about ball player George Clifford McCarl had turned out to be inaccurate: "McCarl has been heralded all along the line as a 'busher,' but now it develops that this dope is very much to the 'jazz.'" The San Francisco Call was a newspaper that served San Francisco, California. ... Peter Tamony (October 9, 1902 - July 24, 1985) was an Irish American etymologist. ... The term San Francisco Seals can refer to any of three defunct professional sports teams based in San Francisco, California: The San Francisco Seals, a minor league baseball team which played in baseballs Pacific Coast League from 1903-1957. ... March 3 is the 62nd day of the year in the Gregorian Calendar (63rd in leap years). ... Year 1913 (MCMXIII) was a common year starting on Wednesday (link will display the full calendar). ...

Three days later, on March 6, Gleeson used jazz extensively in a longer article, in which he explained the term's meaning, which had now turned from negative to positive connotations:

Everybody has come back to the old town full of the old "jazz" and they promise to knock the fans off their feet with their playing.

What is the "jazz"? Why, it's a little of that "old life," the "gin-i-ker," the "pep," otherwise known as the enthusiasalum. A grain of "jazz" and you feel like going out and eating your way through Twin Peaks. It's that spirit which makes ordinary ball players step around like Lajoies and Cobbs.

Gleeson used jazz in a number of articles in March and April of 1913, and other journalists began to use the term as well. The Bulletin on April 5, 1913, published an article by Ernest J. Hopkins entitled "In Praise of 'Jazz,' a Futurist Word Which Has Just Joined the Language." The article, which used the spellings jaz and jazz interchangeably, discussed the term at length and included a highly positive definition: April 5 is the 95th day of the year in the Gregorian calendar (96th in leap years). ... Year 1913 (MCMXIII) was a common year starting on Wednesday (link will display the full calendar). ...

"JAZZ" (WE CHANGE the spelling each time so as not to offend either faction) can be defined, but it cannot be synonymized. If there were another word that exactly expressed the meaning of "jaz," "jazz" would never have been born. A new word, like a new muscle, only comes into being when it has long been needed.

This remarkable and satisfactory-sounding word, however, means something like life, vigor, energy, effervescence of spirit, joy, pep, magnetism, verve, virility ebulliency, courage, happiness--oh, what's the use?--JAZZ.

Jazz, in the sense of pep and enthusiasm, continued in use in California for several years before being submerged by the jazz music meaning. Amateur etymologist Barry Popik has located a number of examples from the Berkeley Daily Californian and the Daily Palo Alto, showing that jazz in this sense was collegiate slang at the University of California, Berkeley in the period 1915 to 1917 and at Stanford University in the period 1916 to 1918. President Benjamin Ide Wheeler at Berkeley apparently used jazz with such frequency that many supposed he originated the term, although the Daily Californian stated on February 18, 1916, that he denied this. To meet Wikipedias quality standards, this article or section may require cleanup. ... The Daily Californian (or Daily Cal) is an independent, student-run newspaper that serves the University of California, Berkeley campus and its surrounding community. ... The University of California, Berkeley (also known as UC Berkeley, Berkeley, Cal, and by other names, see below) is the oldest and flagship campus of the ten-campus University of California system. ... The Leland Stanford Junior University, commonly known as Stanford University (or simply Stanford), is a private university located approximately 37 miles (60 kilometers) southeast of San Francisco and approximately 20 miles northwest of San José in an unincorporated part of Santa Clara County. ... Benjamin Ide Wheeler Benjamin Ide Wheeler (1854 – 1927) was a Greek and comparative philology professor at Cornell University as well as President of the University of California from 1899 to 1919. ... February 18 is the 49th day of the year in the Gregorian Calendar. ... Year 1916 (MCMXVI) was a leap year starting on Saturday (link will display the full calendar). ...

Etymology

As with many words that began in slang, there is no reliable etymology for jazz. However, the similarity in meaning of the earliest jazz citations to jasm, a now-obsolete slang term meaning spirit, energy, vigor and dated to 1860 in the Historical Dictionary of American Slang, suggests that jasm should be considered a leading candidate for the source of jazz. A link between the two words is particularly supported by an article in the Daily Californian on February 18, 1916, that used the spelling jaz-m, although the context and other articles in the Daily Californian from this period show that jazz was intended. Jasm is thought to derive from slang jism, meaning spunk or sperm. (A derivation of jasm from enthusiasm has also been suggested.) Jism, or its variant jizz (which, however, is not attested in the Historical Dictionary of American Slang until 1941), has also been suggested as a direct source for jazz. A direct derivation from jism is phonologically unlikely; jasm itself would be, according to this assumption, the intermediary form. Other proposed origins include French jaser, meaning to chatter or chat, and an onomatopoeic origin. All such derivations lack empirical supporting evidence and must be considered speculative. February 18 is the 49th day of the year in the Gregorian Calendar. ... Year 1916 (MCMXVI) was a leap year starting on Saturday (link will display the full calendar). ...

Scoop Gleeson, who first popularized the word, wrote in an article in the Call-Bulletin on September 3, 1938, that he learned the word from sports editor William "Spike" Slattery when the two were at Boyes Springs. Gleeson said that Slattery had picked up the express in a craps game. "Whenever one of the players rolled the dice he would shout 'Come on, the old jazz.'" Assuming the accuracy of this noncontemporaneous recollection, the craps use of jazz appears to be a nonce-use and does not provide much information about the word's origin. September 3 is the 246th day of the year (247th in leap years) in the Gregorian calendar. ... Year 1938 (MCMXXXVIII) was a common year starting on Saturday (link will take you to calendar). ...

Bandleader Art Hickman, who was also at Boyes Springs, said in interviews published in the San Francisco Examiner on October 12, 1919, and in the San Francisco Chronicle on November 9, 1919, that jazz derived from the effervescent springs at Boyes Springs. While an onomatopoeic origin cannot be ruled out absolutely, the discovery in 2003 that jazz was already in use in 1912 makes an onomatopoeic origin in 1913 implausible. Arthur G. Hickman (born June 13, 1886 in Oakland; died 1930) was a drummer, pianist, and band leader whose orchestra is sometimes seen as an ancestor to Big band music. ... The San Francisco Examiner is a daily newspaper in San Francisco, California, where it has been published continuously since the late 19th Century. ... October 12 is the 285th day of the year in the Gregorian calendar (286th in leap years). ... Year 1919 (MCMXIX) was a common year starting on Wednesday (link will display the full calendar). ... The San Francisco Chronicle, the self-described Voice of the West, is Northern Californias largest newspaper. ... November 9 is the 313th day of the year (314th in leap years) in the Gregorian Calendar, with 52 days remaining. ... Year 1919 (MCMXIX) was a common year starting on Wednesday (link will display the full calendar). ...

Application of jazz to music

Jazz began to be applied to music in Chicago, around 1915. The earliest known attestation, found by Yale Book of Quotations editor Fred Shapiro, is from the Chicago Daily Tribune on July 11, 1915: The Chicago Tribune, formerly self-styled as the Worlds Greatest Newspaper, remains the principal daily newspaper of the midwestern United States and one of the ten largest daily newspapers in the nation. ... July 11 is the 192nd day (193rd in leap years) of the year in the Gregorian Calendar, with 173 days remaining. ... 1915 (MCMXV) was a common year starting on Friday (see link for calendar). ...

Blues Is Jazz and Jazz Is Blues . . . The Worm had turned--turned to fox trotting. And the "blues" had done it. The "jazz" had put pep into the legs that had scrambled too long for the 5:15. . . . At the next place a young woman was keeping "Der Wacht Am Rhein" and "Tipperary Mary" apart when the interrogator entered. "What are the blues?" he asked gently. "Jazz!" The young woman's voice rose high to drown the piano. . . . The blues are never written into music, but are interpolated by the piano player or other players. They aren't new. They are just reborn into popularity. They started in the south half a century ago and are the interpolations of darkies originally. The trade name for them is "jazz." . . . Thereupon "Jazz" Marion sat down and showed the bluest streak of blues ever heard beneath the blue. Or, if you like this better: "Blue" Marion sat down and jazzed the jazziest streak of jazz ever. Saxophone players since the advent of the "jazz blues" have taken to wearing "jazz collars," neat decollate things that give the throat and windpipe full play, so that the notes that issue from the tubes may not suffer for want of blues--those wonderful blues.

Examples in Chicago sources continued over the next year, with the term beginning to extend to other cities by the end of 1916. By 1917 the term was in widespread use. It is first known to have reached New Orleans on June 20, 1918, when the New Orleans Times-Picayune wrote: June 20 is the 171st day of the year (172nd in leap years) in the Gregorian Calendar, with 194 days remaining. ... Year 1918 (MCMXVIII) was a common year starting on Tuesday of the Gregorian calendar (see link for calendar) or a common year starting on Wednesday of the Julian calendar. ... The New Orleans Times-Picayune is the major daily newspaper serving New Orleans, Louisiana. ...

Why is the jass music, and therefore the jass band? . . . Indeed, one might . . . say that Jass music is the indecent story syncopated and counterpointed. . . . In the matter of jass, New Orleans is particularly interested, since it has been widely suggested that this . . . musical vice had its birth in . . . our slums.

It is not clear who first applied jazz to music. The leading contender is Bert Kelly, a musician and bandleader who was familiar with the California slang term from being a banjoist with Art Hickman's orchestra. Kelly formed Bert Kelly's Jazz Band and claimed in a letter published in Variety on October 2, 1957, that he had begun using "the Far West slangword 'jazz,' as a name for an original dance band" in 1914. Kelly's claim is considered plausible but lacks contemporary verification, although the Literary Digest wrote on April 26, 1919, that "[t]he phrase 'jazz band' was first used by Bert Kelly in Chicago in the fall of 1915, and was unknown in New Orleans." Kelly's principal rival is the Original Dixieland Jass Band (or, in some accounts, a predecessor band named Stein's Dixie Jass Band), allegedly so named by Chicago cafe manager Harry James. According to a November 1937 article in Song Lyrics, "A dance-crazed couple shouted at the end of a dance, 'Jass it up boy, give us some more jass.' Promoter Harry James immediately grasped this word as the perfect monicker for popularizing the new craze." There is insufficient contemporary evidence to determine definitively the relative merits of these two claims. However, if the chronology given at Original Dixieland Jass Band is correct, it did not receive the jass name until March 3, 1916, which would be too late for it to be the originator. Variety (linguistics) is a concept that includes for instance dialects, standard language and jargon. ... October 2 is the 275th day (276th in leap years) of the year in the Gregorian Calendar, with 90 days remaining. ... Year 1957 (MCMLVII) was a common year starting on Tuesday of the Gregorian calendar. ... The Literary Digest was an influential general-interest magazine in the early 20th century United States. ... April 26 is the 116th day of the year in the Gregorian Calendar (117th in leap years). ... Year 1919 (MCMXIX) was a common year starting on Wednesday (link will display the full calendar). ... Shown are (left to right) Tony Sbarbaro (aka Tony Spargo) on drums; Edwin Daddy Edwards on trombone; D. James Nick LaRocca on cornet; Larry Shields on clarinet, and Henry Ragas on piano. ... March 3 is the 62nd day of the year in the Gregorian Calendar (63rd in leap years). ... Year 1916 (MCMXVI) was a leap year starting on Saturday (link will display the full calendar). ...

Association of jazz with sex

The association of jazz with sex is early and extensive. The Historical Dictionary of American Slang (1997) cites explicit sexual meanings from 1918 and says that this was probably the original sense. However, it now seems difficult to reconcile a prior, widely recognized sexual meaning of jazz with the known word history described above. Professor Gerald Cohen of the University of Missouri - Rolla, who has done a great deal of work on the word's history, in 2001 offered a $100 reward for any provable musical or sexual use of jazz from before 1913, an offer that still stands. The University of Missouri-Rolla (abbreviated UMR) is an institution of higher learning located in Rolla, Missouri and part of the University of Missouri system. ...

False leads

Jazz has been subjected to an unusually large number of instances of misleading and false information, coming in some instances from the most respected sources.

The Oxford English Dictionary provides a 1909 citation for the use of jazz on a gramophone-record of "Uncle Josh in Society." Researcher David Shulman demonstrated in 1989 that this attestation was an error based on a later version of the recording; the 1909 recording does not use the word jazz. The editors of the Oxford English Dictionary have acknowledged that this is an error. The Oxford English Dictionary print set The Oxford English Dictionary (OED) is a dictionary published by the Oxford University Press (OUP), and is generally regarded as the most comprehensive and scholarly dictionary of the English language. ... David Shulman (November 12, 1912–October 30, 2004) was an American lexicographer and cryptographer. ...

The Grand Larousse Dictionnaire de la Langue Française and the earlier Über englisches Sprachgut im Französischen cite a 1908 use of jazband, a jazz orchestra, in the Paris newspaper Le Matin. This is a typographical error for 1918. Le Matin is a daily newspaper published by Edipresse in Lausanne, Switzerland. ...

Press agent Walter Kingsley wrote in an August 5, 1917, article in the New York Sun that jazz is African in origin. Scholars believe that Kingsley invented the etymology outright as a hoax. August 5 is the 217th day of the year in the Gregorian Calendar (218th in leap years), with 148 days remaining. ... Year 1917 (MCMXVII) was a common year starting on Monday of the Gregorian calendar (see link for calendar) or a common year starting on Tuesday of the 13-day slower Julian calendar (see: 1917 Julian calendar). ... The modern New York Sun is a daily newspaper published in New York City. ...

Lord Palmerston wrote in an 1831 letter, in reference to Charles Maurice de Talleyrand-Périgord, of "old Talley jazzing and telling stories to Lieven and Esterhazy and Wessenberg." Scholars believe that Palmerston was not using jazz in any modern sense, but was simply anglicizing French jaser in its standard meaning of chattering or chatting. No prior or subsequent examples of Palmerston's unique loan-word exist, effectively ruling it out as a plausible point of origin for the introduction of a very different jazz many decades later. Henry John Temple, 3rd Viscount Palmerston (October 20, 1784 - October 18, 1865) was a British Prime Minister and Liberal politician. ... Charles Maurice de Talleyrand-Périgord, Prince de Benevente (February 2, 1754 – May 17, 1838) was a French diplomat. ...

Several sources, including Geoffrey C. Ward and Ken Burns in Jazz: A History of America's Music (2000) and Hilton Als in the New York Review of Books on March 27, 2003, suggest that jazz derives from the jasmine perfume that prostitutes wore in the red-light district of New Orleans. This theory derives from the recollections of jazz musician Garvin Bushell (as told to Mark Tucker) in Jazz from the Beginning (1998; originally published ca. 1988). Bushell said that he heard this derivation in the circus, where he began working in 1916. It appears to be a folk etymology unsupported by factual evidence. Kenneth Lauren Burns (born July 29 [1] [2], 1953) is an American documentary filmmaker. ... The New York Review of Books (or NYRB) is a biweekly magazine on literature, culture, and current affairs published in New York which takes as its point of departure that the discussion of important books is itself an indispensable literary activity. ... Garvin Bushell (b. ...

Ward and Burns also suggest that jazz derives from jezebel, which they assert was a common nineteenth-century term for a prostitute. There is no evidence that the name Jezebel, a familiar biblical allusion, was first shortened and then altered in meaning to become a synonym for "spirit or energy." This theory is unsourced and appears to be a folk etymology.

Sources

• Gerald Cohen, "Jazz Revisited: On the Origin of the Term--Draft #3," Comments on Etymology, Vol. 35, Nos. 1 - 2 (Oct. - Nov. 2005).
• J.E. Lighter, ed., Historical Dictionary of American Slang, Vol. 2, H - O (1997), New York: Random House.