The Razzy Dazzy Spasm Band was an early New Orleans band regarded by some as the first jazz band. The band was a group of young street urchins led by Emile "Stalebread Charlie" Lacoume. Other members of the group were Harry Gregson, Emile "Whiskey" Benrod, Willie "Cajun" Bussey, Frank "Monk" Bussey and a boy known only as "Warm Gravy." They also had another member who was known as "Chinee" and a singer known as "Family Haircut." This band performed in the streets of Storyville in the 1890s and early 1900s. According to a 1936 book by the crime writer Herbert Asbury, when another band appropriated their name and musical style for a performance at the Haymarket Dancehall, the original band members pelted the stage with rocks, leading the venue's owner to change the name of the second band on all advertising to the Razzy Dazzy Jazzy Band, which some claim is the first time the word jazz was used in connection with music.
The band is referred to in chapter seventeen of Anne Rice's Novel "The Witching Hour".
References
- Daniel Hardie, "Exploring Early Jazz: The Origins and Evolution of the New Orleans Style", ISBN 978-0-595-21876-9, 2002, which cites a letter by New Orleans resident Harry Huguenot to the New York Dramatic Mirror in 1919
- David Gold (Gold, David L. (2009). Rodríguez González, Félix; Lillo Buades, Antonio (eds.). Studies in Etymology and Etiology: With Emphasis on Germanic, Jewish, Romance and Slavic Languages. Alicante, Spain: Universidad de Alicante. p. 155. ISBN 9788479085179.) cites Herbert Asbury, "The French Quarter", 1936, without approval of his uncited story.
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