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Some say an early reference to New Orleans'
nickname was the Big Easy dance hall, where jazz
legend Buddy Bolden (shown) used to play.
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Hey Blake,
I understand you wrote a column some
years ago explaining the origin of the Big Easy tag. Could you please repeat
some of it? When did it start, did it follow the Big Apple, did it come from
a movie, etc.?
Herman Kohlmeyer
Dear Herman,
You know I'm always happy to write about any of the charming nicknames our great
city has been given, whether it's the Crescent City, the City that Care Forgot,
or the Big Easy.
Betty Guillaud used to be a columnist for
The Times-Picayune and before that she wrote for the old States-Item.
In the early 1970s, in one of her columns, she compared the laid-back style
of the New Orleans to the hurry-up pace of New York, which already had the nickname
the Big Apple. Betty is often given credit for popularizing the phrase "Big
Easy" and making it a household word.
Also, in 1970, James Conaway, a police reporter,
wrote The Big Easy, a crime novel set in New Orleans. A movie of the
same title was released in 1987 starring Denis Quaid.
But if you were around 100 years ago, you
would have heard references to the Big Easy even then. A dance hall called the
Big Easy definitely existed in the early 1900s. Around the turn of the century,
when the great Buddy Bolden was the New Orleans jazz king, he played his cornet
all over town: Rampart and Perdido streets, Uptown, the lakefront and across
the river. Folks claimed he played in a club called Big Easy Hall; some say
it was in Storyville, others Gretna.
Pops Foster, another legendary musician, makes
a reference in his autobiography to a club he calls the Big Easy. But you know
how jazz musicians regularly gave nicknames to people and places, so the Big
Easy could have been a dance hall or a popular dance of the day.
It seems that over the past century, the nickname
has become associated with New Orleans as more and more people used it to refer
to a city with a slow, easy pace and a relaxed attitude about almost everything.
We're just not in a hurry to get anywhere -- even to the Super Bowl.
Hey Blake,
Do you have any information on where the name of Burthe Street came from?
Charles
Dear Charles,
Dominique Francois Burthe was the man for whom this street was named, and he
was a very important man indeed.
First of all, he was a member of the first
board of the New Orleans & Carrollton Railroad Company. It was this company
that began the railroad service from Baronne and Poydras streets to the present
intersection of St. Charles and Carrollton avenues, the same right-of-way followed
by the streetcars today. Beginning in 1835, New Orleans spread Uptown, and plantation
after plantation was soon subdivided into faubourgs and eventually annexed to
become part of the city.
In 1854, Burthe created his own village --
Burtheville -- one of the last of the Uptown faubourgs to be subdivided and
laid out in streets and squares. The area was once a part of the plantation
of sugar king Jean Etienne de Bore. Burthe named his wide central avenue in
honor of Henry Clay. On each side, he honored two other senators -- John C.
Calhoun and Daniel Webster with parallel streets. These three outstanding Americans
-- known as the Great Triumvirate -- had died in 1850 and 1852. In fact, Judge
Burthe and others organized an elaborate honorary funeral to honor these great
men. In December 1852, more than 5,000 people, headed by a grand marshal, proceeded
to Lafayette Square. In the cortege were six horses pulling a funeral car containing
symbolic urns inscribed with the names of each statesman. The urns were deposited
in an enormous imitation-marble cenotaph created just for the occasion. There
were 40,000 to 50,000 folks who watched the parade, which was a mile and a half
long and took almost two hours to pass. Of course, the large gathering was then
expected to listen to lengthy eulogies.
