Date:    Sat, 30 May 1998 23:56:18 EDT
<br>From:    "Barry A. Popik" <Bapopik[AT SYMBOL GOES HERE]AOL.COM>
<br>Subject: Radio Jargon; Jazz
<br>
<br>RADIO JARGON
<br>
<br>     This is from SONG HITS, vol. 3, no. 2, July 1939, pg. 25:
<br>
<br>_RADIO'S JARGON_
<br>_DROPS OBSOLETE_
<br>_WORDS FOR NEW_
<br>     The Killie Loo bird has gone the way of the Dodo bird.  Ornithologist
<br>don't know a thing about this one because the Killie Loo was a rara avis to
<br>the radio studios.
<br>     The Killie Loo (circa 1929) was an old NBC tag for a flighty coloratura
<br>soprano who sang in florid style.  Well, the Killie Loo is an extinct species
<br>today.  All of which is a way of leading up to the fact that broadcasting
<br>lingo, like crystal sets and battery sets, can become obsolete in radio's
<br>march through the years.
<br>     Take a term like "Down in the mud."  That used to mean low reproduction
<br>volume.  The up-to-date expression is simply "low level," or "not enough hop."
<br>     "Scratches" once referred to noise caused by faulty equipment.  Today,
<br>"frying" is the more descriptive term.
<br>     "Cross-fire" was the expression for telegraph code interference on the
<br>program lines.  At NBC today, it is simply called "leak."
<br>     "Wooden voice" described a voice lacking expression.  A more modern
<br>expression is "cold as ice" or "sings like a statue."
<br>     Listed below are some of the more recent additions to radio jargon:
<br>     _Woofer_:  A breathy singer.
<br>     _Weaver_:  A restless performer who continually changes his distance from
<br>the microphone.
<br>     _Clinkers or Cinders_:  Noises heard on long distance transmission lines.
<br>     _Drooling_:  Padding a program with talk in order to fill the time
<br>allotted for the broadcast.
<br>     _86_:  No good.
<br>     _Going Up the Golden Stairs_:  Auditioning for a prospective sponsor.
<br>     _Carbon Cats or Snitchers_:  Musicians who purloin musical ideas.
<br>     _Whacky Willies_:  Youngsters who applaud by whistling and stomping.
<br>     _Dead Head_:  An unresponsive studio auditor.
<br>     _Shaking the Script_:  Ridding scripts of grammatical errors.
<br>
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<br>JAZZ
<br>
<br>     This is from SONG LYRICS, vol. 1, no. 1, November 1937, pg. 1:
<br>
<br>_JAZZ_
<br>_1900_
<br>_1916_
<br>_1938_
<br>_19??_
<br>
<br>By DON GLASSMAN
<br>   IT IS a wonder that the rude beginnings of jazz are not better known.
<br>   The historians got busy about fifteen years after jazz was in full swing,
<br>and hence much valuable data about the pioneers in this field have been lost
<br>forever.
<br>   New Orleans, Memphis, and the Mississippi bayous are alleged to have been
<br>the locale where hot rhythm emerged from the mystic darkness.  This area has
<br>recently been combed for every shred of evidence about the early jazz
<br>movement, but much of the investigation came too late.  The evidence is gone.
<br>   Once in a while you encounter a fellow who participated in those epochal
<br>events that took place in the Delta when the historians were too busy to give
<br>this movement toward a new music their time or thought.  And if this fellow
<br>happens to be in a mood of fond recollection, you may be treated to a first-
<br>person story that bears wide repetition.
<br>   Recently, your correspondent met a veteran band leader who had as much to
<br>do with the origins of jazz music as any person you can name.  He is Nick La
<br>Rocca: hale, hearty, and fellow-well-met after almost thirty years of busy
<br>life in music-making.
<br>   I caught him on the fly a few weeks ago, just after he and his Original
<br>Dixieland Jazz Band had made a special guest appearance on a network program
<br>over the National Broadcasting Company.  He unfolded his story with a rush of
<br>memory that made you think that he was reliving his career in song and music.
<br>   "The Dixieland played its first professional job as a jazz band in 1908!"
<br>said Nick.
<br>   (...)
<br>   Back in New Orleans, about the middle of 1914, The Dixieland was playing
<br>ballyhoo music for a prize fight when Harry James, a Chicago cafe manager,
<br>heard and hired them at once for the Boosters Club, located in the Hotel
<br>Morrison.
<br>   From the Boosters Club the band went to the Schiiler Club, a place on
<br>Chicago's South Side.  And it was there that La Rocca and his melomaniacs
<br>became a front-rank sensation.  The police reserves were called out to control
<br>the nightly crowds that came to hear the weird harmonies and cacaphonies that
<br>make jazz out of music.
<br>   "It was at this place," said La Roccas as he observed the magnificence of
<br>his NBC suroundings, "that I heard the word 'jass' (later spelled 'jazz') for
<br>the first time.  It happened this way: A dance-crazed couple shouted at the
<br>end of a dance, 'Jass it up boy, give us some more jass.'  Promoter Harry
<br>James immediately grasped this word as the perfect monicker for popularizing
<br>the new craze."
<br>   If La Rocca's memory is correct, James was the first man to use the word
<br>'jass' in connection with an orchestra.  He called his headliner the "original
<br>Dixieland Jass Band."
<br>   (_Continued on page 27_) (col. 2-ed.)
<br>   "There is no doubt in my mind," said La Rocca, "that the word 'jazz' is
<br>Northern in origin, for I had never heard the word before that specific night
<br>at the Schiller Cafe in Chicago."
<br>
<br>     Nothing new here, but I don't think this article has been cited.  I'll
<br>weigh in on Jazz (and Murphy's Law) with more after the December MLA in San
<br>Francisco.
<br>