Who put the "Dixie" in "Dixieland"?
By Jim Ivy
We call it Dixieland Jazz but have you ever wondered how the name "Dixieland" came about? Well, we can thank the Kaintocks for the term. The Kaintocks were the men who crewed the keelboats carryng cargo on the Mississippi river.
The American monetary system was in shambles when the United States purchased Louisiana. To ease the situation, the Citizens Bank of Louisiana started issuing ten-dollar notes. On one side, the notes were printed in English, the other side in French. The word "ten" in French is "DIX", and that is simply what the river men started calling the strange notes. More than one dix were called "dixies". Before long, "Dixie" became a place name - denoting New Orleans at first, and then becoming the name for all of the South.
