[quote=WASA;6025193] -The Patriot-       Do you have some proof to back this up?   Backing what up exactly? All that stuff I said about Blues and Jazz? Of course. There have been about 3 threads about music on here that I was involved in where myself and others provided a plethora of proof to back this up. None of these threads have been posted in in quite some time so I'll have to dig those up later, I'm about to get offline and go out at the moment.    Especially the blues thing dating back to England.[/    The use of the phrase the Blues as in I got the Blues? Well, since I'm kinda in a hurry this is just straight from the wikipedia here..:rolleyes: But unlike alot of stuff on the wikipedia, especially when it comes to American music, this is actually some truth.:) Saying I have the Blues and such is White slang, as you can see George Colman used the term in 1798 in England and I'm sure he wasn't the only one around in England who said it, I've heard and read it was rather common slang in everyday life. And the phrase was common throughout the Civil War era in America, there are old letters that Civil War soldiers(from both sides) wrote home talking about how they have the Blues, etc..etc... The Blues are the blue spirits or blue demons/devils of sadness, depression, etc...Negative emotions. So if you're feelng down..sad, etc..you're feeling blue, you have the blues hanging over you, you can't get rid of the blues, etc..etc..we all know what the term means obviously.     The phrase the blues  is a reference to the  the blue devils , meaning down spirits, melancholy, and sadness.  An early reference to the blues can be found in  George Colman's  one act  farce   Blue devils  (1798 ). [2]  Though the use of the phrase in  African American music   may:rolleyes:  be older, it has been attested to since 1912, when  Hart Wand's  Dallas Blues  became the first copyrighted Blues composition . [3] [4]  In lyrics the phrase is often used to describe a  depressed mood . [5]      The musical forms and styles that are now considered the blues as well as modern  country music  arose in the same regions during the nineteenth century in the southern United States. Recorded blues and country can be found from as far back as the 1920s, when the popular record industry developed and created marketing categories called  race music  and  hillbilly music  to sell music by blacks for blacks and by whites for whites, respectively.   At the time, there was no clear musical division between blues and country, except for the ethnicity of the performer, and even that was sometimes documented incorrectly by record companies . [33]      Blue notes are also prevalent in  English folk music [4] .  ( they're even more prevalent in Irish and Scottish Folk music than English but it doesn't mention that here.)    Oh and as for Jazz, the first band to call themselves a Jazz band, to record Jazz music way back in 1917 and popularize it around America and Europe and to create and name the Dixieland style of Jazz(along with Tom Brown too), was the Original Dixieland Jazz Band, originally they spelled it Jass but they changed it because kids would think it was funny to scratch off the J on posters and such so it would say ORIGINAL DIXIELAND ASS BAND:rofl The ODJB looked like this...not very Black are they?;)    http://farm1.static.flickr.com/146/3...7d4a5e.jpg?v=0   http://www.odjb.com/images/ODJB%20Ph...Re-Assunto.jpg    Here's something about the ODJB's leader, Nick LaRocca, once again just briefly from the wikipedia. But this stuff is true and verifiable. It's pretty well known stuff about Nick LaRocca aka Joe Blade.      In the 1950s  he started writing numerous vehement letters to newspapers, radio, and television shows, stating that he was the true and sole inventor of jazz music, and that  those who claimed that the music had Negro origins were part of a  Communist  conspiracy .     Of course, he wasn't the inventor of Jazz, there was Jazz around in New Orleans since the 1890s. But what he and his band did do is founded the Dixieland style and gave it it's name and were the first Jazz band to call themselves a JASS band! and the first to record and therefore popularize the music all over the world. So he didn't really create Jazz, just a new style, Dixieland. But to him Dixieland was Jazz, and the other stuff that was similar that came before in the time before recorded music, was not real Jass at all, and maybe he was right...I mean..he should know..he is the one (presumably) who was the first to call it Jass afterall! So maybe it should be up to him and his band to decide what is and what is not Jass! :D       La Rocca may have inadvertently done much damage to his own reputation,  especially in some of his statements which are unusually racist even when compared to interviews with other white southerners born in the late 19th century , and his dismissal if not outright insults of his fellow white musicians. :rofl