Origin of "jazz"--Hickman is unreliable

[Gerald Cohen]

    A good discussion is always helpful. Here are replies to several
points in John Baker's latest message (9:22 p.m., 10/15/01):

>         Well, you've seen the source materials, and I haven't.  But consider
>the following:
>
>         1.      In the first instance, a 1919 account seems more likely to
>be reliable than a 1938 account, particularly when the author of the 1938
>article is eager to emphasize his own role in the popularity of a word so
>important that it became the name of an era.  Hickman, in contrast, had no
>obvious motivation to make up an essentially neutral story.  Gleeson's
>account would have made Hickman's point just as effectively.

      Gleeson gave full credit to William Slattery as having provided
him the term "jazz" (in the crap-shooting context). If Gleeson had
obtained the term from a ballplayer, there is no reason to assume
that Gleeson in 1938 would have wanted to avoid giving that player
credit.

      Set aside Gleeson's 1938 article if you will. That still leaves
the 1913 baseball articles in the _S.F. Bulletin_, and there's no
evidence there of a ballplayer having provided the term "jazz" to the
sportswriters. Remember, the sportswriters were eager to find any
interesting information at all on the ballplayers at the start of
spring training. If a player had come up with a new term, that would
certainly have been worthy of comment.

>         2.      If the term's subsequent popularity and association with
>music came from Hickman's orchestra, it seems more likely that they learned
>the term from the Seals than from the Bulletin.  Other things being equal,
>it seems more likely that the Seals would adopt an internally generated term
>than one essentially coined by a sports writer.  Admittedly, the Seals
>probably read the sports pages.

    The Seals not only read the sports pages, but their co-owner (Cal
Ewing) assaulted one of the sports writers (Abe Kemp) for writing a
few critical articles about him. Kemp soon moved to Los Angeles to
take a new job there.

>         3.      If we do accept Hickman's story and discount Gleeson's, that
>does not necessarily mean that "jazz" really was coined on the spot at Boyes
>Springs.  "Jazz" could have been a term already in common use among the
>Seals, and Hickman simply heard it the first time there.  We're sent back to
>jasm/jism, jaser, or the crap-shooting incantation as a source.

    There is not much chance that "jazz" could have been in common use
prior to March 3, 1913 without making its way into the sports pages.
The players were often quoted in the newspaper, and a new word would
certainly have caught the sportswriters' attention.

>         Far from compelling evidence, but enough to make me regard Gleeson's
>story with suspicion.  If Hickman's story is correct, then Gleeson's role is
>far smaller:  Although he was the first to use "jazz" in print (but he
>didn't know that for sure), he didn't coin the word or its baseball meaning
>and he had little to do with its popularization.

      Gleeson's 1938 article seems to be accurate in its main points,
with noticeable inaccuracies only in minor details (1912 instead of
the correct 1913; a week's big play for "jazz" rather than the more
accurate 4-6 weeks). Gleeson was the central figure in the
popularization of "jazz," he had a newsman's training, and was
witness to "his" term gaining worldwide recognition in a music
context; meanwhile his own contribution went ignored.  One must
assume that between 1913 and 1938 he had thought many times about the
events of 1913 and the start of "jazz."

        There seems to be no reason why Gleeson would invent the
story about Slattery.  Why would Gleeson's recollections about Seals
manager Del Howard, musician Art Hickman, and a visit to Jack
London's ranch all jibe with the newspaper accounts of 1913 but be
inaccurate on the key point about how Gleeson learned of "jazz" from
Slattery?  It is more plausible that Gleeson's credibility, once
established for all the other main events he recollects, should also
hold for the one key event that was not reported in 1913.

---Gerald Cohen