Musings About Music

When looking for music and dance origins, I do not look for the first of the music or the dance; I look at the etymology of the word and then start looking from the time of that source to the current time. This is difficult sometimes; however, in most cases it does follow a natural trail.

It goes from word source, generally in a noun form, then to a further application of it being used as a modifier, and then it transmutes back into a noun but this time it is defining the particular music or dance that it was earlier describing. Few original musicians said that they would sit down after lunch and invent a new music form and they would call it such-and-such.  This evolved and as it became more popular, others made their contributions.

Tracking some of these to a conclusion is easy. Some are difficult. And today, unfortunately, some are simply unpopular.  It now seems impolite to expose someone to unpopular information!

When I am dealing with history, I deal (first) with the 'Four W's' -- "who," "what," "when," "where." I don't give a fig about how popular it may or may not be. I can provide the references and folks can debate those and leave me out of it.

However, too many times history is presented as "how" and "why." This generally is not (objective) history but (subjective) historical essay.

Essays by definition have a point to make; generally, one that is contrary to current perception. These are all the "now it can be told" things we are engulfed in. History as history is thought to be too boring. So it is often made "better" than mere history.

A case in point is all this "jazz" business.

Chasse Beaux was the title of a particular sort of French dandy. (A "dandy" is not a "fop" -- independently of what the creators of crossword puzzles think.) The Chasse (short "a") Beaux, by his flare and physical beauty, chased all the other beaux away so he could have his way with their ladies. It is an old term and traveled wherever the French went...and in the era of the empires, they, too, traveled far.

The Chasse Beaux was easily presented in caricature and so doing, he became bigger than life. I know what he looked like.

There is a very short piece of film (maybe 15 to 20 seconds) with several of them doing an old-time Cake Walk. I have it on tape – it is at the dawn of cinematography and naturally silent. It initially was a march to music with chairs involved. There is one less chair than marchers. The musical arrangements are still available.

This walk evolved into more of a strut (around the chairs) to music, and when it became more of a prance, some religions dropped the cake walk as a preferred social parlor game because it looked too much like dancing...which they knew would send a person straight to Hell.

The march was also done in ballrooms and this was popular as far back as the 1820s. (I have a tape of a recent "Grand March.") This music became known as a "Cakewalk" because for a long time a cake was involved, as was walking...then marching...then strutting...then prancing...cakes were forgotten, as were the chairs.

The Chasse Beaux was finally presented in the flesh on stage because the "Cakewalk" was the perfect vehicle to display his now exaggerated charm and strut...a cock of the walk...no pun.

The pronunciation of "Chasse Beaux" had remained intact all this time but the spelling had become "Jassbo" -- and Mr. Jasbo, in the common usage, had arrived in all of his well-earned glory. One in particular, Jasbo Brown, a street performer became very popular.

The "chasse" had another French relative..."jaser" which meant to chatter in conversation with the subject going nowhere in particular...or to converse without structure...speaking in an improvisational manner. (In the southern US it had another term referencing the droppings of excrement from male bovine.)

In 1833, the British Prime Minister, Henry Palmerson, wrote in a letter about a man visiting him and their "jazzing and telling stories."  There are other connections but most of these come much later than 1833 and certainly much later than the use of Chasse Beaux.

How did Chasse Beaux get to the rural US south?

Through a French Creole derivative in Southern Louisiana – New Orleans.

There are the stories of "jasmine perfume" in "Storyville," the New Orleans red-light district (named after a politician named "Story" and existent 1897 through 1917).  And there are stories about "jazz" being slang for copulation -- "jazz it up" is supposedly derived from that expression. However, the use of double entendre will often become popular and then later presented as historical evidence of some situation, but this is blatantly in error.  "We boogied all night" could be an example.  I would not be surprised if some rake in the Vienna of 1800 said the equivalent of, "We waltzed all night!" (wink - wink - nudge - nudge.)  But again, the word "jazz" in several forms and spellings was already in usage; its application to music and the public is what is interesting.

The word, as associated to music, seems to appear in public for the first time in the 1917 New York press. This was to describe the appearance of the Original Dixieland Jazz Band (ODJB) at Reisenweber's in NYC. Reisenweber's was a popular night spot and many of the better bands got started there. No one was surprised that this new (to NYC) sound came from Reisenweber's.

The ODJB were five boys from New Orleans; they had played in Chicago the year before but then they were just the Dixie Land Band. In Chicago, they picked up the word and by the time they got to NYC, they were the Dixieland Jass Band. A little later, as they made Dixieland Jazz more popular in areas where it had not been heard before, other bands started playing it and then the first group added the "Original" to their name.

This was called a "novelty band" because they did not play marches, opera, or dance music...they were not a brass band for late summer afternoons in the village park...they were difficult to classify by the music of the day...hence "novelty." (There were several "novelty" bands then and not all were playing any form of jazz.)

The ODJB was billed as playing "controlled chaos." They were billed as "Untuneful Harmonists Playing Peppery Melodies" and "The Sensational Amusement Novelty of 1917." "The Assassinator of Music" was their particular favorite title.  By 1917 their "Jass" had become "Jazz."

They had a hit with "Livery Stable Blues" and in this song the cornet player made whinnying horse sounds. This doesn't make them a non-serious or novelty any more than a band playing "Tiger Rag" and having the trombone or tuba play the tiger's roar, or a percussionist ringing sleigh bells for a popular Christmas classic. (Ken Burn's "Jazz" documentary was pretty bad from a historical stand point.)

I have heard many songs by the ODJB, and one I have is "Palesteena." It was recorded in 1920 and I am sure it is familiar to all the readers over 60 -- though it sounds more klezmer than Southern. It is the familiar background music to stage magicians and many circuses.

The ODJB was the talk of the beautiful supper club people in NYC and the word "jazz" stayed current in the press -- and because of the ODJB, it became the new, city buzz-word; though it was also spelled "jass."

This was a culture that thrived on off-beat and imaginative uses of words. Slang had become dignified. One can look through the etymology of slang words starting from the end of WWI and it seems to never end. (The Jazz Age ended with the Depression and then began a plethora of hobo, bum, monikers, grub, tucker, etc.)

Tin Pan Alley had been cranking out hits since before 1900 and it was common for these composers and lyricists to adopt whatever style was becoming interesting. The Alleymen had made much of the cakewalks and marches, and then filled the sheet music shelves, concert halls, vaudeville and music hall stages with ragtime, and now, because they were exclusively a commercial song factory, they picked up jazz and the rest is...well...I suppose, history.

(To hear Original Dixieland Jazz Band, "Livery Stable Blues")

(To hear Original Dixieland Jazz Band, "St. Louis Blues")

(To hear Original Dixieland Jazz Band, "Jazz Me Blues")