"Big Easy"--What did it refer to prior to the 1960's?

[Cohen, Gerald Leonard]

     What did "Big Easy" refer to prior to the 1960's? -----

     I've been looking at Barry Popik's material which convincingly argues that "The Big Easy" as New Orleans' sobriquet does not predate the 1960's.
But a 1971 book titled _The Autobiography of Pops Foster: New Orleans Jazz Man_  (by Tom Stoddard and Pops Foster) mentions a Big Easy Hall from about 1908.  Big Easy Hall was in Gretna (now part of New Orleans but evidently a separate town in the early 20th century).

     But what did "Big Easy" mean in those days?  I see there was a Come Clean Hall and a Drag Nasty Hall.  There was also a musician named Drag Nasty.  If we could understand the thinking behind the names  Drag Nasty and Come Clean Hall, maybe we'd also understand what "Big Easy" originally meant.

     Here for easy reference are the relevant excerpts from the Autobiography of Pops Foster:

 p.37: 'Music was a nice sideline to make a little change back in early New Orleans, but I never thought it would be a way to make a living.  I         usually had a regular job longshoring or something.  My job with the Magnolia Band in the District was the first music job that was a full  time job. ...It was rough playing and working a full job too. ...On Sunday night you might have an afternoon job at the lake playing a picnic till six o'clock. Then you'd get on a streetcar and go way over to Gretna to play a night job at the Come Clean Hall.  ...Over in Gretna we used to play the Big Easy Hall and the Drag Nasty Hall. ....' [p.38]: When I joined the  Magnolia Band in early 1908,....'       p.95: 'One night we were playing the Big Easy Hall....'         p. 17 [re: Drag Nasty]: 'The piano players like Drag Nasty, Black Pete, Sore Dick, and Tony Jackson were playing the whorehouses.'

Gerald Cohen

------------------------------------------------------------
The American Dialect Society - http://www.americandialect.org