Mississippi Mud Cake/Pie

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   Does anyone have any dirt on mud?
   From John Mariani's ENCYCLOPEDIA OF AMERICAN FOOD & DRINK:

_Mississippi mud pie._  A very dense chocolate pie that takes its name from the thick mud along the banks of the Mississippi River.  According to Nathalie Dupree in _New Southern Cooking_ (1986), the top of what she calls "Mississippi Mud Cake" should also be "cracked and dry-looking like Mississippi mud in the hot, dry summer."  It does, however, seem to be of fairly recent origin; according to Mississippi-born food authority Craig Claiborne, writing in 1987, "I never heard of a Mississippi mud pie or Mississippi mud cake until I moved North."

   It's not mentioned in:

SOUTHERN FOOD: AT HOME, ON THE ROAD, IN HISTORY (1987) by John Egerton
JAMES BEARD'S AMERICAN COOKERY (1972) by James Beard

   An OCLC WorldCat search didn't turn up anything old, except a "Mississippi Mud" song that Bing Crosby crooned.
   Dow Jones has the early 1980s.