THE ORIGINS OF THE WORD DIXIELAND - By Steve Teeter.

	Jazz Curator, Louisiana State Museum, (504) 568-6968, New Orleans, LA
	steeter@crt.state.la.us

http://www.crt.state.la.us/crt/museum/lsmnet3.htm

The term "Dixie" comes from New Orleans. From its founding, New Orleans was the major commercial and financial center in the entire region, and many banks issued their own banknotes (legal at that time). These were printed in French, or French and English, and one of the most common denominations was the ten dollar bill. "Ten" in French is "dix", which was printed in large letters on the back. Following the Louisiana Purchase in 1803, as more and more Americans came into the area, these came to be known as "Dixies." Since a banknote is only as good as the bank backing it, and since many of the most reliable banks were in New Orleans, dixies came to be the preferred banknote throughout much of the region, and the region itself became associated with the word, becoming Dixie, the Land of Dixie, or Dixieland. The association became stronger during the Civil War when D.D. Emmett's 1859 song "Dixie Land" was adopted by the Confederate Army as a marching song.

When jazz, or jass, was first starting to make waves in Chicago around 1915, its somewhat exotic regionalism was part of its appeal. Musicians and promoters like Tom Brown, Johnny Stein, and Nick LaRocca used the word to highlight their regional origins. Then in 1917 LaRocca's band, the Original Dixieland 'Jass' Band, made a sensation with their record of "Dixieland Jass Band One-Step / Livery Stable Blues" (Victor 18255) and the word was permanently linked in the public mind with this new and irresistible style of music.