Thank you, Phil, for that quote from the Chicago Tribune! The article was cited by a guest in Joseph Scott's previous thread, but I didn't pay attention to it because the part that was quoted there didn't sound interesting. In fact, you have to read the whole article to understand it, and even then it takes some time because of the writer's jazzed-up writing style. It's a string of quotes the author heard in a night club.

It's also the first known (i.e. first published example that anyone has been able to find recently) use of the word "jazz" to refer to music. So it may not use that word in the same way we do. And it was written at a time when what was called "blues" was a new and very popular instrumental music sounding similar to ragtime but with some variations, including the use of blue notes. Much of it may not qualify as blues by today's definition, but clearly the instrumental pieces that included the word "blues" in the title then were using a very different definition. The word "jazz" at that early stage was also closely associated with the use of blue notes, as the article points out, so the people quoted in the article can be forgiven for confusing the two forms, if indeed they were then two different forms in the same way that they are today.

My favorite part is when the pianist who had been playing what the people in the club called both "blues" and "jazz" said the line that Phil quoted -- that a "blue note" is a sour note, a harmonic discord. And then in the next quoted sentence he went on to use the term "the blues" to mean "the blue notes."

The article is posted as a PDF file at:
http://www.google.com/url?sa=t&rct=j&q=&esrc=s&source=web&cd=1&cad=rja&uact=8&ve
I'm going to try to post the entire two-page text here, which I think is permissible given the 1915 publication date. You really have to read the whole thing to understand it, and it's a document that should be preserved in any way possible.