Miss Peaches

For the comic strip, see Miss Peach.

Miss Peaches was the stage name of Elsie Higgs Griner Jr.,[1] (July 15, 1924 – April 7, 2011) a comedian and singer who grew up in Berrien County, Georgia.[2] Although Miss Griner was white, Miss Peaches spoke in a broad African-American dialect. She did not perform in blackface, however.

Her most notable recording was "Callin' Moody Field,"[3] which described the lives of African-American airmen at Moody Air Force Base near Valdosta, Georgia. "Callin' Moody Field" was a regional rhythm and blues hit in 1954 (Groove 0009). In the performance, Miss Peaches is talking to the base telephone operator and trying to reach her boyfriend: "You doesn't know Cathead. Well, honey, just stick yo head out the window and holler for Cathead. He'll come." Miss Griner usually performed with her brother, blues pianist Geunie Griner, who died in 1975.[4]

She and Geunie later turned to political comedy, releasing an LP album of political satire called The Focus on: The South, Where the REaction Is!, on Judges' Chamber records (1966). Also on the Judges' Chamber label,probably 1975, was the Safari Down South lp that showed her riding a llama on the cover.

From 1961 to 1966, she and Geunie published The Nashville Herald, a weekly newspaper in her hometown of Nashville, Georgia.[4] She twice won the Georgia Press Association's premier recognition for her weekly column, The Focus On:.

She was married to USAF Major Hugh D. Alderman, who is now deceased, and, in 1985, she changed her given name to Annabel.

In 1999, Mercer University Press published her first novel, Family Man. She was nominated for the Georgia Author of the Year Award and for the Townsend Prize for Fiction in 2000. Her poems have appeared in a variety of magazines and she garnered first place in the Southeastern Writers Association's poetry competition in 2001. A collection of her poetry was published in 1996 under the title Lost Loves Don't Count.

References

  1. ↑ Bruyninckx, Walter (1988). The Vocalists, 1917-1986. Copy Express. p. 926. OCLC 23825332.
  2. ↑ "Gwinnett's voting setup is the best". The Atlanta Journal and The Atlanta Constitution. December 15, 2000. p. JJ6.
  3. ↑ Lord, Tom (1996). The Jazz Discography, Volume 15. Lord Music Reference. p. M-916. ISBN 978-1-881993-14-8.
  4. ↑ 4.0 4.1 Grimes, Millard B. (1985). The last linotype: the story of Georgia and its newspapers since World War II. Mercer University Press. pp. 502–503. ISBN 978-0-86554-190-0.