The Word "Jazz," 2: Issues Around Dates, Meanings, & More (+Bonus)

(Paying Subscribers, at the bottom you’ll find the first-ever article about the word “jazz,” plus the surrounding articles from that newspaper page of 1913!)

In my first post on the origins of the word “jazz” (see the Index), we traced it from “jasm” in 1860 through “jazzum” to “jazz,” and learned that the meaning was consistent all the way through: liveliness, energy, and so on. The word “jazz” still has this meaning, as in “That’s a jazzy outfit” or “Let’s jazz up this party.” We saw that the word first appeared in print, spelled “jazz,” in California baseball writing on April 2, 1912, when minor league pitcher Ben Henderson was quoted saying that he had developed a “Jazz ball” that was hard to hit.

Please notice that in this very first printed use of the word, the author Wynne spells it “jazz.” And that makes sense, since it comes from “jazzum.” But the very next day, referring again to Henderson’s pitch, another author spelled it “jass”! :

(From “Around the Bags,” by Owen R. Bird, April 3, 1912, L.A. Times.) The “jass” spelling comes from “jassum.” But these are clearly all different spellings for the same word. As I said in Part One, the common belief that it was originally spelled “jass” is false. The word was spelled various ways at first, not always the same way. The authors were simply trying to write down what they heard. With a new word, especially slang, it sometimes takes a while for the spelling to become standardized. Victor Records acknowledged the various spellings in a 1917 ad for its new releases, including the first recording by the Original Dixieland Jass (sic) Band, generally considered the first jazz record. The ad states:

In this kind of research, one also has to know when words that look alike are not relevant. For example, there is a Swiss card game spelled “jass” that has a long history and has no connection with our word. And “jass” was used in comic strips beginning as early as 1905, to approximate the heavy accent of an immigrant saying “yes.”

Interestingly, the OED once listed that “jazz” was documented before 1912, but that was an error that was soon corrected. It stated that the word “jazz” was heard on a recording in 1909, three years before the baseball reference.  But their source had confused two recordings of the same spoken word routine, both performed by Cal Stewart. He made a recording in 1909 called “Uncle Josh in Society.” That one does not use the word “jazz.” He recorded the same story again in 1919 but he added the word “jazz,” because by then everybody was using that word.

So, 1912 it is. Almost a year after the 1912 occurrence, in March 1913, the word “jazz” was used regularly in baseball articles, especially in the San Francisco Bulletin newspaper.  (San Francisco comes up so much in the following story that I will often simply write S.F.) From that point on, the words “jazz” and “jazzum/jassum” are found in many sources, and after just a few years “jazzum/jassum” dies out. Those older words were apparently never very widely used, because as we saw, even towards the end, many authors were calling them “new” and explaining what they meant. And, similarly, it's clear that “jazz” was not yet well-known in 1913, because a San Francisco sports writer, “Scoop” Gleeson, felt that he needed to add this explanation: 

(S.F. Bulletin, March 6, 1913, p. 16) The Twin Peaks are hills in San Francisco. “Gin-i-ker” is clearly some kind of a joke on “gin,” just as “enthusiasalum” is a play on “enthusiasm.” We’ll talk more about Gleeson later, because during the month of March 1913, he used the word “jazz” in print more than anybody else.

Perhaps partly because he was using the word, on April 5, 1913 it was his paper, the Bulletin, that published a long article by Ernest J. Hopkins about the word “jazz,” entitled “In praise of ‘jazz,’ a futurist word which has just joined the language.” (The complete article is below for paying subscribers.) Hopkins, born around 1888, was beginning a lifelong career as a reporter. (By 1950 he was teaching journalism in Arizona.) The article noted in seriousness that “jazz” is spelled various ways, and that it means such things as life, vigor, energy, and effervescence of spirit. However this article—like another one published by a press agent named Walter Kingsley in 1917, which we will look at later—was a bit of a spoof, and included examples of the word that were meant to be comical, but unfortunately were assumed to be true by many readers since. So, please be aware that, contrary to these articles, the word does not appear in any of John Milton's writings—which are, after all, from the late 1600s!— nor in any of the writings of Lafcadio Hearn. Hearn would seem to be a more likely candidate because he did write in the late 1800s about New Orleans and Caribbean culture. But he never used the word “jazz.” (Hopkins said that he did not remember learning the word from Gleeson, but from another colleague at the paper, Walter Harrison. But he could have mis-remembered—this was some fifty years later!—and he did say to “credit Scoop” for its use in baseball writing. In any case, the word was circulating among the writers. See Dick Holbrook, “Our Word Jazz,” Storyville issue 50, December 1973/January 1974.)

But we also find the word “jazz” suggesting different meanings than Hopkins suggests. For example, the first published use of it in 1913 was an article by Gleeson about a new pitcher, George McCarl (S.F. Bulletin, March 3, 1913):

So—let’s see what this means: People were saying that he was a “busher,” as in “from the bush leagues,” meaning from “small-time” teams, suggesting that he came out of nowhere. But it turns out that was “jazz,” as in Not True—at age 24, he already had six years of professional experience. And Fred Shapiro, editor of the New Yale Book of Quotations and the leading contributor to the Oxford English Dictionary, noted another different use, a headline in 1914 (S.F. Chronicle, May 7, p.10) about a pitcher who “almost jazzes” a game. From the context it clearly means that he almost “blew it,” almost lost the game.

So, what’s going on here? Well, just as the original meaning of “jazz”—liveliness, and so on—survives today, so does this other, more negative meaning, as in “Don’t give me that jazz!” This may seem to present a problem for our history of the word, but I don’t find it to be very strange. Many words have more than one meaning, and sometimes the meanings may seem incompatible. Here are two of many examples:“Bolt” means to quickly run away, but it also means to hold two things in place (with a bolt); “Oversight” means watching over something, but it also refers to something that you accidentally did not see. Often, one can find an underlying logical connection between the meanings, but not always. For example, in the case of “jazz,” maybe if one gets Too lively and wild, too “jazzy,” one can become undisciplined and blow a game; and maybe if one gets too imaginative and excited, too full of “jazz,” one can say things that aren’t quite true. But it’s not necessary for us to absolutely solve these multiple meanings right now. More to the point, the word was spreading not only in how much it was used, but in the ways it was used.

But there is another potential problem. Why do we find “jazz” twice in Los Angeles in 1912, and then only in San Francisco (but see below) in 1913? Partly because of this gap in time and place, there has been a suggestion, discussed on the professional American Dialect Society listserve, that the 1912 references may look the same, but are not the same word at all. In order to discuss this, I need to share with you a longer excerpt than what you saw last time, from the first article ever to use “jazz” (Los Angeles Times, April 2,1912):

“I got a new curve this year,” sofetly [sic] 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 (sic) 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.

The sentence about prize fighters is not a problem. The author, R. A. Wynne, is simply saying that a boxer who invents a new punch often is, ironically, the one who has the bad luck to “get theirs,” that is, to get knocked out, and that Ben might be unlucky and find that someone easily hits his ball far and away. And Wynne calls it a “jazzer” ball just to be slangy and funny, playing with the new word.

But, the argument against the significance of the 1912 articles goes as follows: “Why were there no other instances of ‘jazz’ until 1913? Why were the 1913 references in San Francisco? Why doesn’t Gleeson indicate any awareness of the Henderson “jazz ball”? Why does the Hopkins article say that “jazz” has “just joined the language”? And what does “wobbling” have to do with ‘jazz’? Further, Henderson had a known problem of going on drinking ‘jags.’ In sum, this is probably not the word ‘jazz’ at all, but a variation of ‘jags.’ It should not be included in the history of the word ‘jazz.’”

None of these questions presents a problem. Let me explain:

First of all, no reason is needed as to why no other instances have been found between April 1912 and March 1913, and why the word was still perceived as new by Gleeson and Hopkins. There are many gaps in the written record, and they don’t need to be explained. As I like to say, “Silence is not information.” In general, we waste too much time trying to explain silences, of all kinds. And words can take many years to catch on—remember, “jazzum” was presented as a new word in 1860, in 1890, in 1903—and again in 1915!! Henderson and his teammates may have used the word “jazz” now and then during those months, without Gleeson and Hopkins becoming aware of the word.

As for the wobbling, to focus on that is missing the point. Henderson makes it clear that he calls it the “jazz ball” because it’s hard to hit, “You can’t do a thing with it,” as in, “It’s too lively—that is, too full of ‘jazz’—to be hit.” And he says it’s a new kind of curve—that is, a curve ball. To understand this, one must know some baseball history. As it happens, it was precisely in this era, around 1912, that the knuckleball, and, even more significantly for our purposes, the so-called “knuckle-curve” pitch was introduced. It was indeed “a new kind of curve ball,” and it was specifically described as a ball that wobbles or flutters unpredictably, making it hard to hit.

As for the “jags,” on February 10, 1912, just a few months earlier, it was reported (in the S.F. Chronicle) that Henderson had signed a contract promising to “stay on the [water] wagon,” that is, not to get drunk, and at this time he was being successful at that. Furthermore, a close reading of the last sentence indicates that Wynne (he is speaking here, not Henderson) is hoping that people do Not associate the knuckle-curve pitch with being drunk. He writes that he hopes some unintelligent compositor (typesetter) does Not spell it the ‘Jag’ ball, even though it wobbles as though it’s drunk. As written, it’s a little joke about a drunken ball. But if it referred to Henderson, it would be a direct insult, and one in poor taste. It seems completely unlikely that Wynne, the author, would intentionally insult Henderson by associating the ball with his drinking problem. At the same time, it proves that Wynne knew the difference between “jazz” and “jags” and explicitly did not want to see them confused with each other.

But the best proof that Henderson was using our word “jazz” is that, a year later, he was still identified as the creator of the “jazz”—not “jag”—pitch. This was in Los Angeles, so it’s also not true that the word was only being used in S.F. To my knowledge the significance of this news item has not been mentioned in print until now:

(From “Between Innings,” by Matt Gallagher, Los Angeles Evening Express, May 16, 1913, p.19.) Yes, sadly, by May 1913 Henderson had “fallen off the wagon,” been dismissed by the Beavers, and was not doing well for the Toledo team. But, more important for our purposes, he is still being referred to as the person who invented the “jazz” ball. This is the confirmation that we need that the two references in 1912 were indeed to our word “jazz,” and to nothing else. And, let me stress that the three L.A. articles were written by three different sports columnists—it is impossible that they collaborated to come up with a word “jazz/jass” that had no connection with the one we know, especially when the 1913 reference comes in the middle of all the instances that everyone accepts as “jazz.” Besides, by May 1913 the word was being used regularly in baseball writing, so it would have been bizarre to use the same spelling but to intend a different word!

Researcher Barry Popik informed me that it has also been claimed that pitcher “Skeeter” Fanning had a “jazz ball” in 1913. This would further support my case about the phrase “jazz ball” being the same word, “jazz.” However, the references to this are all from many years later, between 1939 and 1946, and all by the same man, veteran sports writer Abe Kemp. It is so very likely that Kemp mis-remembered which pitcher it was, that we can’t take this claim seriously. (I did find Skeeter’s name and the word “jazz” in the same column in 1913, but in two different and unrelated sentences. See Francis Mannix, “Oaks Deserve to Win…,” S.F. Bulletin, May 21, 1913, p.16.)

Now, what about the fact that the three Henderson references are in Los Angeles papers, whereas the others are in the S.F. area? Well, remember, Henderson was a pitcher for the Portland Beavers, a minor league team of Oregon. On April 2, 1912, when the first article was published that quoted him using the word “jazz,” he was in L.A. for a game. But in 1912 and early 1913, one only finds the word three times in L.A., and not at all in Portland. And the Beavers often played against the San Francisco Seals. So Henderson likely picked up the word “jazz” in San Francisco—or, more specifically, at Boyes Hot Springs about 90 minutes north, as we’ll see.

So, to sum up: Our word “jazz” did indeed first appear in print in 1912, thanks to Ben Henderson, but it first became common in 1913, partly thanks to “Scoop” Gleeson.

But we’re not done yet. (Sorry if I’m driving you crazy!) We need to discuss the scene at the Boyes Hot Springs, also where and when the word “jazz” is first found in connection to the music, and about the role of “Scoop” Gleeson, and more.

All the best,
Lewis

P.S. Thank you to my brother Spence Porter for a “layperson’s perspective.” and to Gerald Cohen and Barry Popik.

P.P.S. If you like baseball history, you will enjoy reading the attached article, which details all the problems that pitcher Ben Henderson (1883-1951) created for himself even before 1912. There’s more information about his career here. After 1914 his baseball career was over:

Henderson Career Overview,oregonian9 17 1911

3.12MB ∙ PDF file

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