Dixie  

From The Art and Popular Culture Encyclopedia

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Dixie is a nickname for the Southern United States.

Dixie as a region

As a definite geographic location within the United States, "Dixie" is usually defined as the 11 Southern states that seceded to form the Confederate States of America. They are (in order of secession): South Carolina, Mississippi, Florida, Alabama, Georgia, Louisiana, Texas, Virginia, Arkansas, North Carolina, and Tennessee. This definition is strongly correlated with history and, in the minds of many Southerners, remains the traditional South.

However, the location and boundaries of Dixie have become, over time, more limited, vernacular and mercurial. Today, it is most often associated with those parts of the Southern United States where traditions and legacies of the Confederate experience and the Antebellum South live most strongly.

Many businesses in the South contain "Dixie" in their name as an identifier, e.g. "Dixie Produce". One of the more famous is supermarket chain Winn-Dixie.

• The Darker Side of Dixie: Southern Music and the Seamier Side of the Rural South (1995) by Cecil Kirk Hutson

Country music also produced its own factual gun tunes. These range from Jimmie Driftwood's 1959 song "Tennessee Stud" to Kenny Roger's 1970s hit "Ruby Don't Take Your Love To Town." In his song Driftwood described factual events in the life of his wife's great grandfather, John Merriman, who settled in Tennessee between 1820 and 1825. In this tune a fight erupts between Merriman and a gambler over Merriman's horse. In the battle that followed Merriman wins the fight by beating the gambler to the draw. In "Ruby, Don't Take Your Love To Town" a woman, who is about to go out searching for other men, is told by her disabled husband that "if I could move, I'd get my gun and put her in the ground." This song is more potent because Mel Till is, who wrote the song, described an actual event that took place in northern Florida during his childhood. Although the song only suggested that Ruby should be murdered, in actuality her husband shot and killed her."

See also

• Black Belt Region
• Bible Belt
• Deep South
• Dixie Chicks
• Dixie Dregs
• Dixie Mafia
• Dixieland Jazz
• Little Dixie (disambiguation)
• Mason-Dixon line
• Utah's Dixie
• Dixie Station
• Hart of Dixie