Entry · catalog no. 1040

gutbucket

/ /ˈɡʌtˌbʌkɪt/ /GUT-buck-it

adjective · south · 1920s

✓ Verified

Raw, low-down, and unpolished — describing blues or jazz played in the earthy barrelhouse manner, or the cheap dive where such music lived.

“The band dropped into a gutbucket blues that shook the whole room.”

Origin & Attribution

New Orleans jazz of the 1920s. Named for the bucket that caught the drippings, or gutterings, from the barrels in barrelhouse saloons where Black musicians played for hand-outs.

1920s

Names the rawest, lowest-down blues and the joints that played it

1930s

Standard term in jazz criticism for gritty, funky playing

Region of origin

West

Midwest

N.East

South

Nationwide / diaspora

south · 1920s

Spoken by

Black America

$GUTBUCThe Record · cultural traction

▲ Dormant

100 yrs

ahead of the mainstream

42/100

peak cultural energy

Introduced to English by the culture — logged here before the mainstream caught on.

Cultural usage — the recordMainstream search interest

First used

1926

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.

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Atlanta, GA

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Memphis, TN

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Citations & Sources

■

Louis Armstrong — "Gut Bucket Blues," recording · 1925

submitted

■

Green's Dictionary of Slang — reference

submitted

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