Talk:Jazz

Jazz fans

Bugs Bunny favorites are the ...Duke of Ellington, Count of Basie, Earl of Hines, Cab of Calloway and Satchmo of Armstrong.."(Knighty-Nite Bugs) Jack Webb was also a Jazz fan 72.49.143.219 (talk) 13:14, 30 August 2022 (UTC)

Jazz in contemporary literature

Several jazz books have been written by U.S. "jazz author" and blogger Debbie Burke, who took alto saxophone lessons at the New School for Social Research in New York City in the 1980s and went on to play in several community bands in the Northeast. The books include, on the fiction side, GLISSANDO, A Story of Love, Lust and Jazz, which is women's contemporary fiction/midlife journey about finding love in a local jazz ensemble; Icarus Flies Home, a story about intellectual property and who owns a song, which examines a New York City bassist who finds out his ancestor, enslaved at one of the largest plantations in the American South, composed music which appeared to have been appropriated more than a century later and used in a Broadway show; and Death by Saxophone, a murder mystery about a jazz saxophonist and the owner of a very controversial Soviet "bone record" who is found in the Verrazano Narrows, having "fallen" off the bridge in the middle of the night. Burke's nonfiction books include two books of personal interviews with jazz musicians around the world (Tasty Jazz Jams for Our Times volumes 1 and 2) such as Christian McBride, Bobby Sanabria, Jane Ira Bloom, John Yao, Jeff Lorber,Dave Stryker, Harvie S, Ron Carter, and others; a book on Eastern European music of Ashkenazi origins titled Klezmer for the Joyful Soul; and a book examining the rich jazz legacy of the Delaware Water Gap region in Pennsylvania (The Poconos in B Flat) which has personal interviews with Phil Woods, Bob Dorough, and many others. DaisyEllen (talk) 00:42, 26 December 2022 (UTC)

Are you suggesting/proposing something? All of those books appear to be self-published, so we probably can't use them as sources (see WP:RSSELF). And to be considered for inclusion in any Wikipedia article, there'd need to be meaningful coverage of them in reliable sources (see WP:RS). EddieHugh (talk) 16:30, 26 December 2022 (UTC)

Hi, yes, I personally interviewed them and received confirmation to publish them. The book's publisher is Queen Esther Publishing LLC. It is another source of information about these musicians; the interviews are new and unique content. DaisyEllen (talk) 18:00, 26 December 2022 (UTC)

Comment: notice that Queen Esther publishing is the self-publishing company of the author of the books, Debbie Burke. I don't know if you are also Ms. Burke (if so, WP:COI will apply). I have reverted the inclusion of the book to Bob Dorough article due to WP:BLPFR. Cheers. Alexcalamaro (talk) 21:25, 26 December 2022 (UTC)

Thank you. Getting familiar with your rules and guidelines here so please bear with me. I am the author and publisher- I interviewed this person - these musicians - at their homes or on the phone. In Dorough's case, he gave an amazing interview with lots of insights into his life and music and ditto for the musicians listed in the general JAZZ page. Thanks again, Alex. DaisyEllen (talk) 21:31, 26 December 2022 (UTC)

Looking for veteran wiki eyes

Hello all! I am currently in the process of reviving the wiki page for Wally's Cafe, a historical Boston jazz club. I have to admit I'm a wiki-infant, a mere newbie, and I would appreciate a pair of veteran wiki eyes to take a look over my work and offer some constructive criticism. I am struggling most with tone. Thank you,

DovC123 (talk) 13:40, 16 March 2023 (UTC)

The best place to ask about this would be the talk page of WikiProject Jazz rather than the talk page for the Jazz article. This talk page should only be about this specific page Carolina Heart (talk) 22:28, 3 June 2023 (UTC)

Earlier uses of the word "jazz"

I have found earlier uses of the word jazz, although not in newspapers. The reliance on newspaper uses is misguided for several reasons: (1) "jazz," "jass," "jaz" and "jas" had vulgar connotations, and would not make it past an editor on a newspaper of general circulation; (2) it is highly unlikely that California newspapers had Black reporters or editors in the first decade of the twentieth century to inform the white sports reporters what the word "jazz" meant--one of the California articles cited simply throws up its hands and say "'Jazz' stands for whatever you want it to." (June 22, 1913 San Francisco paper); (3) baseball teams also weren't integrated at the time, so unlikely there would have been any Black players around to set their white teammates/coaches straight.

The earlier uses I have found are as follow:

1. Gunther Schuller interview of George Morrison, born in 1891 in Fayette, Missouri. Morrison says he first heard the word "jazz" in 1911--and says he remembers the year clearly because it was also the year of his marriage. This interview appears in Schuller's "Early Jazz: Its Roots and Musical Development," p. 362. Morrison painted the word "Jazz" on the side of the car that he used to drive his band to gigs.

2. Ray Lopez, New Orleans trumpeter, told Samuel Charters he first heard the term in 1912 in New Orleans, "Trumpet Around the Corner: The Story of New Orleans Jazz," p. 117. He says he heard it at a vaudeville rehearsal.

3. Wilbur Sweatman, born in 1882 in Brunswick, Missouri, told Jelly Roll Morton that he invented jazz before Morton, playing in the Ozarks in Missouri, John Szwed, liner notes to Jelly Roll Morton: The Library of Congress Recordings by Alan Lomax, Rounder Records CD 11661-1897-2, citing Roy Carew interview on deposit at the University of Chicago. Sweatman was nearly a decade older than Morton; the most extensive account of his life is "That's Got 'Em: The Life and Music of Wilbur C. Sweatman," Mark Berresford, University Press of Mississippi, 2010.

The Indianapolis Freeman, the Variety Magazine of the Black vaudeville circuit, reported in 1906 that Sweatman was playing jazz as early as 1906: "Little did we think that Mr. Sweatman's original style of playing would be adopted by the great jazz artists of today; but it is and Mr. Sweatman can claim the honor of being the first to establish it."

Sweatman was playing jazz as early as 1902 as a member of P.G. Lowery's Concert Band playing with the Forepaugh and Sells Bros. sideshow. He probably developed the style in the pre-circus parades through the streets of the towns where the circus was performing (known in the trade as a "ballyhoo"). His playing in these parades created a "sensation," according to Tom Fletcher, 100 Years of the Negro in Show Business, New York: Da Capo Press, 1984. Of these improvised variations on standard songs, one author said "it is unlikely that a faithful realization of a standard marching band clarinet part would have caused such a sensation.

W.C. Handy called Sweatman a jazz pioneer, W.C. Handy: Father of the Blues, p. 153 (New York: Collier Books, 1941). Sweatman recorded "Down Home Rag" in December, 1916, several weeks before the February, 1917 session by the Original Dixieland Jass Band that produced what some describe as the first jazz recordings. Sweatman was referring to his brand of music as "jazz" as early as 1912 and possibly 1910 (Berresford, 106-07, and Abbott & Seroff, The Original Blues: The Emergence of the Blues in African-American Vaudeville, 1899-1926, University Press of Mississippi).

My conclusion is that the baseball origin story has things exactly backwards. Jazz or jass was being played in New Orleans in the 19th century, and itinerant musicians who left the city took it with them, where it was heard by musicians elsewhere, particularly up the Mississippi and Missouri rivers to the Kansas City area. It eventually spread to the west coast, where white baseball players and sportswriters, unaware of its local meaning but associating it with uptempo jazz music spread to California by Jelly Roll Morton and others, transferred the term "jazz" stripped of its obscene meanings to baseball, where in a denatured form it meant simply "pep." Similar things have happened with other terms that were originally developed in Black speech: "uptight" was used by Stevie Wonder in a 1965 song to mean "good" (a cleaned-up version of the many "tight like that" blues songs that referred to sexual satisfaction), then came to mean "nervous" or "anxious" when used by white speakers.

I am the author of "Rabbit's Blues: The Life and Music of Johnny Hodges"; "Kansas City Jazz: A Little Evil Will Do You Good" (in which some of the above research appears); and "Don Byas: Sax Expatriate," to be published by University Press of Mississippi in 2024.

Con Chapman 617/909-5286 Conchapman (talk) 15:18, 18 June 2023 (UTC)

@Conchapman: Interesting (and thanks for your work on the Hodges book – it's on my list of things to read). The summary in this article is of the Jazz (word) article, where some of the historical haze you describe is covered, although largely with different examples. The summary is broadly in line with what you assert: it was "related to jasm, a slang term dating back to 1860 meaning 'pep, energy'", then the baseball link refers to the "earliest written record" – "written" being important. Perhaps a fuller summary would add non-written accounts between the jasm and baseball accounts, although I think it would be best as something general such as 'several anecdotal accounts attest to the word "jazz" being used prior to 1912 to refer to a style of music', given that a lot of the musicians of the time had a tendency towards self-aggrandisement, so some of the specific claims might look fanciful. EddieHugh (talk) 18:02, 18 June 2023 (UTC)