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

[Jonathan Lighter]

It may well be a coincidence, but there is an "Easy Street" in nearby Hammond, La. I don't know about 1900, but a friend of mine was living on Easy Street (literally if not figuratively - a reversal of the usual semantic situation) till he moved to a bigger house around the corner a few years back.

  JL

Stephen Goranson <goranson at DUKE.EDU> wrote:
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Sender: American Dialect Society
Poster: Stephen Goranson
Subject: Re: "Big Easy"--What did it refer to prior to the 1960's?
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In case it helps, here's another mention of "Big Easy." Queen New
Orleans: City
By the River by Harnett T. Kane (NY, 1949) p. 285, in a section about jazz
cornet player Buddy Bolden:

"As the 1900s approached, New Orleans had dozens of fair-sized Negro dance
places, in and around Perdido, up along South Rampart, and below Canal
as well.
Big Easy, Come Clean, Funky Butt--the list is a long one. It was at Funky Butt
that a small, bulkily built boy listened nightly to the silver magic of
Buddy's
notes. Nobody paid any attention to him then. He was young Louis Armstrong."

Stephen Goranson
http://www.duke.edu/~goranson

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