Entry · catalog no. 1051
barrelhouse
/ /ˈbærəlhaʊs/ /BARE-uhl-howss
noun · Southern United States · 1880s
✓ Verified
1.
A cheap, rowdy drinking-and-dancing house — the same kind of place as a juke joint — where liquor was served straight from the barrel; also the hard-driving, up-tempo blues piano style born in those rooms.
“He learned to play in a barrelhouse, banging the keys loud enough to carry over the crowd.”
Origin & Attribution
From the barrels of liquor in the rough bars and levee-camp joints of the Black rural South. The piano style that grew there — blues sped up for dancing — fed directly into boogie-woogie, jump blues, and rock and roll.
1880s
Liquor-barrel juke joints across the Black South
1900s-1920s
Barrelhouse piano style takes shape
1930s+
Feeds boogie-woogie and early rock
Region of origin
West
Midwest
N.East
South
Nationwide
Southern United States · 1880s
Spoken by
Black rural South; levee and lumber camps
$BARRELThe Record · cultural traction
▲ Fading143 yrs
ahead of the mainstream
40/100
peak cultural energy
Introduced to English by the culture — logged here before the mainstream caught on.
Cultural usage — the recordMainstream search interest
First used
1883
in the culture
Cultural energy indexed from documented usage, search interest, and citation frequency. The recorded date is the archive’s permanent point of record.
Hear it spoken
By region — how it actually sounds
@auntiereg
Atlanta, GA
@deltasoul
Memphis, TN
Contribute your pronunciation
Citations & Sources
■
Barrelhouse — Wikipedia
submitted
■
+ Cite a sourceAmerican Blues Scene, "Language of the Blues: Barrelhouse" — article · 2012
submitted
See also