my 2c about ...

[Jasper Cook <jazcook@...>]

Hello list

As a 15 year old jazz trumpeter on the road with seasoned, grown-up jazz "blowers" in 1959, I remember LMAO at one blower saying about another (sax player) "he sucks", probably because he had a very small sound, or perhaps nothing to "say" through his horn.  I think those musicians probably enjoyed feeling its "sexual breeze", but, if they did, it didn't show on their worldly, but often inscrutable, laugh-lined faces.  It may well have been in use in jazz circles before 1959, but I didn't see it in jazz books from before.  It might have occurred in  "Miles", I can't remember.  Miles Davis played in the 40s thru 90s, but the book itself was published mid 90s, if I remember correctly.

After about when I heard it in 1959, the saying "he sucks" became very common in jazz circles.  By the 70s, it started to emerge more generally, by the 90s, it was about things, too: "that sucks" could just as easily by then have been said about a slow motor cycle.

regards
Jasper Cook