Cowboy Dennis
Verified Member
There is a thread running on the All-Zaniness site regarding the propriety of referring to Joss cues as Joss East cues. Since you are all about exciting as a brain tumor lately here are a couple of comments from there:
I say that as long as Joss wanted to advertise their cues as Joss East then they are indeed Joss East cues. I know it's not as important as speeding up the game of One-Pocket or anything but it's something different to write about
Cowboy "sold his Joss East in 1995" Dennis
desi2960 said:THERE IS NO JOSS EAST
there is a company on the east coast called JOSS
Pushout said:Before Joss Cues LTD came about Joss was often referred to as Joss East. I've seen banners for Joss East at tournaments many years ago. I don' know that Dan Janes referred to his company as Joss East, to differentiate it from Joss West but a hell of a lot of other people did.
pt109 said:It's Joss and Joss West.
Danny Janes is pretty adamant about that.
I have three Josses....I don't own a Joss West.
Bavafongoul said:Stones.....you show limited knowledge of pool history and so maybe you're unaware that there was never a Joss East Cue Company.
Joss East was a nickname pool players gave to Joss Cues back in the early 70's because Bill Stroud had left Joss Cues where he worked side by side with Dan Janes from '68-'72. Bill & Dan started Joss Cues and picked the named Joss fom an oriental word that translates into "luck'.
Bill left in '72 after Dan bought out his part of Joss Cues. Bill moved to Aspen, Colorado and started making cues under his own name. Dan continued to own & operate Joss Cues. Ann interesting sidebar to that is Tim Scruggs came to work at Joss Cues (actually twice....once for three months and then for a couple of years) after Bill Stroud left and that's where Tim learned to build cues. Tim was a machinist by trade and had been managing a pool hall in the same town. Of course, Tim went on to become a highly heralded, legendary cue-maker as did Bill Stroud and both guys really learned cue-making from Dan Janes.
After leaving Joss, Dan did an incredibly gracious thing. Bill asked Dan if he had any objections to Bill calling his company "Joss West" and Dan told Bill that would be fine. So that's how Joss West came into existence and it just became very popular slang to refer to Joss Cues as "Joss East" to differentiate between the two cue-makers. Bill was in Colorado closer to the west coast and Dan was in Maryland on the east coast. Folks just started called pool cues by either cue-maker either Joss East or Joss West but there was never a Joss East Cue Company. It has always been just Joss Cues. Joss East was just a coined reference that seemed to offset very nicely with Joss West which did exist. After awhile, Bill Stroud changed the name from "Joss West" to one word "Josswest". His early version cues he made had his JW initials....the first one was with a sideways W and then it became JW and then Joss West and then JossWest and then Bill retired.
So when you ask others, who are more knowledgeable than you, to start referring to Joss Cues as Joss East when that company has never existed, it kind of asking where did George Balabushka ever find the time to sign all those cues with his signature. I trust you know those are all just imitation signatures allowed under a agreement with his estate. George didn't sign his cues and only made 1100-1200 cues in his entire lifetime and you won't find any signatures on them unless the cue was made for someone special like Willie Mosconi, or Jackie Gleason and such.
Anyway, I hope you don't view my post as a poke in the eye post....if anything, it's more akin to maybe a little tap in the back of the head like in grammar school as the teacher walks by and says to you "Pay Attention.". Yeah, there's no such thing as Joss East and that term is seldom used by anyone nowadays, except for maybe some old timers.
I say that as long as Joss wanted to advertise their cues as Joss East then they are indeed Joss East cues. I know it's not as important as speeding up the game of One-Pocket or anything but it's something different to write about
Cowboy "sold his Joss East in 1995" Dennis