A Sexual Impetus for Jass

Previously I was writing about jass.  The origins of jass are nebulous.  Professor Bill Messenger, the Baltimore-based jazz historian, pianist, and lecturer suggests that jazz is related to "chaise."  Americans know this French word as chase.  (or a long folding chair)  When the United States Navy shuttered Storyville in New Orleans at the onset of World War I, the musicians working there were forced to migrate up the Mississippi River on riverboats.  Some made it to Chicago as did Louis Armstrong.  The ongoing joke among black musicians was they would not to get off the boat in Memphis!  The reason is self-explanatory.  The Mississippi River was important disseminating jazz  north from the port of New Orleans.  Bix Beiderbecke remarked he first heard Louis Armstrong's trumpet wafting in the breeze as his riverboat sailed by.  St. Louis, MO and Kansas City, with their abundant cattle trade, were meccas for jazz, gambling, drinking, and the "Sporting Life."  Cattle and meat workers needed a place of relaxation and entertainment.  The United States government closed Storyville, because it was close to military bases.  It offered an unfavorable temptation to young recruits.  Because they were shipping off to war, the Pentagon didn't look favorably upon venereal disease.  After twenty years of legal prostitution, (1897-1917), Storyville was closed.  After "Satchmo" made it to Chicago and rejoined his old bandleader, Joe King Oliver, it was rumored that a drunk patron of a club stood up in the middle of a heated musical refrain and yelled, "Jass it up!"  The owners of the club seized on the phrase, and put it on the billboard outside.  It wasn't long before someone came by and scratched out the "j" leaving the word ass.  Quickly the "s" was changed to "z" and the word "Jazz" was born.  Because of its origins in the Sporting Life, the word jazz sometimes is equated with the the word jizz. (slang for semen)  Most agree a more appropriate term is preferred, such as African-American Classical Music (in the words of trumpeter Lee Morgan).  The most important question concerning American Jazz is whether it is tethered to these roots.  Is jazz music a metaphor for sexual activity?  Does it use sex as its impetus?  As a studied academic jazz musician and composer, I never felt this connection.  My introduction to recorded jazz was through Miles Davis.  The voice of Miles Davis through his trumpet was far from the intents of Early Jazz.  It could be called melancholic or even "Third Stream."  What Miles Davis was expressing through his horn were his experiences in American life, and unfortunately many of them stemmed from racism.  Often he decried that notion.  His father was an affluent dentist, but Miles' chosen path of jazz was pitted with the familiar ups and downs of any career.  These included heroin addiction, poverty, and oppression.  You can hear these travails in his jazz voice, but they are what make Miles Davis Miles Davis.  He was not Louis Armstrong or Dizzy Gillespie, and he was not keen to "Uncle Tom" for the audience.  He demanded to be appreciated for his own perspective.  Miles also grew and evolved in his career changing with the times.  Again the question arises, "Are the carnal characteristics of Early Jazz necessary for its existence?"  More importantly