Day Late & Dollar Short (1939)

[Bapopik at AOL.COM]

   Google has 13,800 hits and Google Groups has 10,500 hits for "day late and
a dollar short."  It was popularized recently by the Terry McMillan book A
DAY LATE AND A DOLLAR SHORT (2001).  Amazon.com has 54,000 hits!?
   I don't know what Fred Shapiro has.  Many hits are from 1958 on, but it
was at least used in the Depression of the 1930s.  I didn't see it on American
Memory (the WPA interviews from the 1930s are there).  "A day late and a dollar
short" is sometimes said to be a Southern expression, but Augusta Archives
didn't have anything early.
   WorldCat is handy right now for a song title search.


(ANCESTRY.COM/NEWSPAPERARCHIVE.COM)
  3 March 1939, EDWARDSVILLE INTELLIGENCER (Edwardsville, Illinois), pg. 6,
col. 1 (COMICS):
(   OUT OUR WAY by WiLLIAMS.  The comic is signed J. R. WIlliams. From a word
balloon--ed.)
   NO, HE'S IN THE SAME FIX AS TH' REST OF US--IT'S CALLED PROGRESS...I JUST
LEARN ABOUT HALF THE TRAFFIC RULES AN' THEY CHANGE 'EM--YOU CAN'T BEAT
PROGRESS--YOU'LL ALWAYS BE A DAY LATE AN' A DOLLAR SHORT.


(LIBRARY OF CONGRESS)
Type of Material:   Book (Print, Microform, Electronic, etc.)
Brief Description:  Squibb, Gerald A.
A day late and a dollar short.
Boston, Bruce Humphries [1958]
196 p. 22 cm.

Type of Material:   Book (Print, Microform, Electronic, etc.)
Brief Description:  Van Cleve, Spike.
A day late and a dollar short / by Spike Van Cleve ; introduction by A.B.
Guthrie, Jr.
1st ed.
Kansas City, Mo. : Lowell Press, c1982.
xii, 282 p. : ill. ; 24 cm.

Type of Material:   Book (Print, Microform, Electronic, etc.)
Brief Description:  McMillan, Terry.
A day late and a dollar short / Terry McMillan.
New York : Viking, 2001.
431 p. ; 25 cm.