geechee

[George Thompson]

Two scraps, for whatever they are worth.

A minor jazz musician, a trombonist, of the 1920s, was Julius "Geechee"
Fields, said to have been born in about 1903 and educated in the
Jenkins Orphanage in Charleston.  I see that DARE has a citation for
Geechee from 1923, and probably Geechee Fields first appearance on the
pages of history won't predate that.  His high point came when he made
some records with Jelly Roll Morton, in the late 20s.

I read somewhere in a book of conversations with old jazz musicians
that the speaker recognized in the "Charleston" dance a variation of an
old southern dance that he knew as "geechee dancing".  This might be in
Hear Me Talkin to Ya, but perhaps I saw it elsewhere.

GAT

George A. Thompson
Author of A Documentary History of "The African Theatre", Northwestern
Univ. Pr., 1998, but nothing much lately.