Origin of "jazz"--Hickman is unreliable

[Gerald Cohen]

>At 11:22 AM -0400 10/15/01, Baker, John wrote:
>        It's also striking that one meaning of jaser is babble of a brook.
>Compare the story, from the 11/9/1919 San Francisco Chronicle and referenced
>in the archives:  "Art Hickman, of the St. Francis orchestra, once said that
>the word jazz originated some time ago when the San Francisco Seals were
>training at Boyes Springs. One member of the ball-tossing team commented on
>a stream of water bubbling from the side of a bank, casting upon it the then
>unknown word, "jazz" water."  To what extent has jaser been considered as
>the source for jazz?  Palmerston's use, in this view, might be considered a
>precursor of the modern word.


   The central figure in the 1913 "jazz" story was not Art Hickman but
rather  _S.F. Bulletin_ sportswriter "Scoop" Gleeson.  Gleeson was
the one who shortly before March 3, 1913  learned of "jazz" as a
crap-shooting incantation ("Come on, the old jazz") from William
Slattery, sports editor of the S.F. newspaper, _The Call_. On March
3, 1913 Gleeson used "jazz" in print for the first time, in a
derogatory sense: "...McCarl has been heralded all along the line as
a 'busher' [i.e., a player with no professional experience], but now
it develops that his dope is very much to the 'jazz'." "Jazz" here
means roughly "hot air, baloney," (i.e., having the same reliability
as a crap-shooting incantation to produce results).

     But starting March 6, 1913, Gleeson reversed himself on this
pejorative use of "jazz" and repeatedly used it favorably, to mean
"pep, vim, vigor, fighting spirit."  This use of "jazz" was in effect
a verbal incantation to Lady luck on behalf of the S.F. Seals (Class
AA) baseball team. The team had finished next-to-last in 1912, still
looked weak at the start of spring training in 1913, and Gleeson was
trying to help the team along by talking up its fighting spirit as
its means to start winning.

     I have thus far collected all the "jazz" attestations in the
_S.F. Bulletin_
from Feb. through June 1913, plus Gleeson's 1938 article "I Remember
the Birth of Jazz." (_Call-Bulletin, Sept. 3, 1938, pg. 3, col. 1).
There is no evidence at all here of "jazz" originating from the Boyes
Springs water.

     Art Hickman was a musician who gave dances for the S.F. Seals
ballplayers and attended at least some of their practices and games.
He (or, more generally, his band) was probably the intermediary
between the 1913ff. baseball term "jazz" and the musical term which
hit the big time a few years later. But he himself did not like the
term "jazz" and as a source of the origin of this term he is
unreliable. Gleeson's writings are the place to turn to.

---Gerald Cohen