geechee

[Benjamin Zimmer]

On Thu, 6 Jan 2005 14:09:16 -0500, George Thompson
<george.thompson at NYU.EDU> wrote:

>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.

HDAS has a 1905 cite for "geechee" (quoted in _Strange Ways and Sweet
Dreams_ by Donald J. Waters).  I'm not sure if that's taken from this
reference, discussed in a 1906 _Journal of American Folklore_ review:

    Monroe N. Work, "Some Geechee Folklore," _Southern Workman_ 34
    (Nov-Dec 1905): 633-34, 696-97.

Bibliographic information from: Linda O. McMurry, "A Black Intellectual in
the New South: Monroe Nathan Work, 1866-1945," _Phylon_ 41 (4th Qtr.
1980), p. 343.


--Ben Zimmer