Few peopLe knew about this exciting new stYLe of music untiL

the release of the first jazz recordings in 1917.The Orig- inal Dixieland Jazz B
and enjoyed a huge hit with its re- cording of Livery Stable Blues, which reported
ly sold a million copiesan extraordinary success when one consid- ers that aVictr
ola cost a months wages at the time,and only a half million of these record playe
rs were purchased that same year.Almost overnight, jazz went from a little-known
regional performance style to a coast-to-coast craze.
Jazz fans are often reluctant to celebrate this milestone event.The ODJB was a w
hite band that built its popu- larity on an idiom created by blacks, and its fam
ous hit record, with its fanciful imitation of animals on the horns, must have s
truck many listeners as a corny novelty rather than the advent of a pathbreaking
art form.Yet the im- pact of this debut jazz recording can hardly be doubted.
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HOW TO LISTEN TO JAZZ
It set up a tumult that quickly reconfigured the shape of American commercial mu
sic, paving the way for a host of other bands to make their own records and buil
d an au- dienceso much so that the next decade is remembered as the Jazz Age.
The term jazz itself still stirs up controversy among musicians. Many embrace it w
ith pride, but others find it demeaning and seek out alternative ways of describ
ing this musical revolution.These debates are complicated by the fact that it is
hard to determine with any precision what the term meant to the people who firs
t applied this label to the music.The word jazz first appeared in print in a 1912
California newspaper, where it referred to a wobbly base- ball pitch that batter
s had trouble hitting. Over the next few years, the term spread into the popular
discourse, and came to attach itself to almost anything new and vibrant in the
culture. A journalist in 1913 tried to define jazz, and I find his litany of rel
ated meanings both maddeningly con- voluted and perfectly suited for describing
the essence of the musical phenomenon it now designated.A new word, like a new mu
scle, only comes into being when it has long been needed, explained Ernest J. Hop
kins in an article en- titled In Praise of Jazz, a Futurist Word Which Has Just Joi
ned the Language. He went on: This remarkable and satisfactory-sounding word, howe
ver, means something like life, vigor, energy, effervescence of spirit, joy, pep
, mag- netism, verve, virility, ebulliency, courage, happinessoh, whats the use?JAZ
Z.1