Origin of "jazz"--Hickman is unreliable

[Baker, John]

        These are strong arguments, and they may well be correct.  Still, a
few doubts niggle:

        1.      What reason is there to doubt Hickman's word that he first
heard "jazz" used by the ballplayers at Boyes Springs?  This seems to me
strong evidence that he got the word from them, not from Gleeson.  It seems
unlikely that the term could have gone from Gleeson's writings to the
ballplayers to Hickman while they were still at Boyes Springs.  Gleeson
could have passed on "jazz" to the ballplayers orally, before using it in
his writings, but there's no evidence of that, as far as I know.  The term
"jazz" had an even bigger impact on Hickman's career than it did on
Gleeson's, so he had just as much incentive to remember the facts.  And
again, his account was 6 years later, Gleeson's was 25.

        2.      Is there any other evidence of a crap-shooting use of
"jazz"?  (Not in OED; I don't have DARE or RHHDAS, so haven't checked them.)

        3.      If Gleeson gave it as much thought as all that, maybe he
realized what we realized:  If he got the word from the Seals, he had a
secondary role.  If he got it from any other source, he was the great
transmitter of jazz to the nation.

        4.      I don't give much weight to Gleeson's contemporaneous
failure to credit the ballplayers, especially if he didn't know which
particular one to credit.  How often do most people credit word sources?
(The practices of linguists shouldn't be the test here.)

        5.      Is Gleeson's account a little too neat?  It answers every
question except where the crap-shooting use came from (unless you count the
question of why Gleeson suddenly coined a new usage and made it stick).
Hickman's story leaves us almost as ignorant as ever of where the word
actually arose.  (I assume a pre-existing word, not a new coinage at Boyes
Springs.  We all have words in the back of our heads that we don't use every
day, until the occasion arises.)

John Baker