In Search of Very Early DownBeats
OK, the Jazz Collector community gets a chance to solve another difficult challenge. I have been contacted by a researcher from the Oxford English Dictionary and he is searching for DownBeats between 1934 and 1936. He has found all DownBeats in some form from 1937 on, but no luck on the earlier ones. “The purpose of all this is that the Oxford English Dictionary likes to record the earliest uses of words and phrases, and DownBeat is full of interesting and new terms for the time,” he writes. He doesn’t need the issues, just access to the content. So here it is, we have a chance to contribute once again to the historical record. If you have any ideas — or if you have any of these issues — please respond to this post. Thanks.