the last book I ever read (Herbert Asbury's The French Quarter: An Informal History of the New Orleans Underworld, excerpt twelve)

from The French Quarter: An Informal History of the New Orleans Underworld by Herbert Asbury:

A few of the best brothels regularly employed orchestras of from two to four instruments, which played each night in the ballroom from about seven o’clock to closing, which was usually at dawn. The other depended upon the groups of itinerant musicians who frequently appeared in Storyville, playing in the streets and saloons for coins and drinks. One of the most popular of these combinations – though not for dancing – was a company of boys, from twelve to fifteen years old, who called themselves the Spasm Band. They were the real creators of jazz, and the Spasm was the original jazz band. There were seven members besides the manager and principal organizer, Harry Gregson, who was the singer of the outfit – he crooned the popular songs of the day through a piece of gas-pipe, since he couldn’t afford a proper megaphone. The musicians were Emile Lacomb, otherwise Stalebread Charley, who played a fiddle made out of a cigar-box; Willie Bussey, better known as Cajun who performed entrancingly upon the harmonica; Charley Stein, who manipulated an old kettle, a cow-bell, a gourd filled with pebbles, and other traps and in later life became a famous drummer; Chenee, who smote the bull fiddle, at first half a barrel and later a coffin-shaped contraption built by the boys; Warm Gravy; Emile Benrod, called Whisky, and Frank Bussey, known as Monk. The three last-named played whistles and various horns, most of them home-made, and each had at least three instruments, upon which he alternated. Cajun Bussey and Stalebread Charley could play tunes upon the harmonica and the fiddle, and the other contributed whatever sounds chanced to come from their instruments. These they played with the horns in hats, standing upon their heads, and interrupting themselves occasionally with lugubrious howls. In short, they apparently originated practically all of the antics with which the virtuosi of modern jazz provoke the hotcha spirit, and sometimes downright nausea. The Spasm boys even screamed “hi-de-hi” and “ho-de-ho” – and incidentally these expressions, now the exclusive howls of Negro band-leaders, were used in Mississippi River songs at least a hundred years ago.