Entry · catalog no. 8811
hoochie coochie
/ /ˈhutʃi ˈkutʃi/ /HOO-chee KOO-chee
adj./noun · Chicago / Mississippi Delta · 1950s
✓ Verified
1.
In Delta and Chicago blues, describes a man who is sexually potent and spiritually potent at once, someone with conjure or hoodoo backing his swagger.
“Folks said he was a hoochie coochie man, had every woman on the block and a mojo bag to match.”
2.
A separate, older mainstream sense names a suggestive dance act or the music that goes with it; the blues sense is distinct from it.
“The fairground show billed itself as a hoochie coochie dance.”
Origin & Attribution
The blues meaning is documented in Willie Dixon's "Hoochie Coochie Man," written by a Black Mississippi-born bassist and songwriter and recorded for Chess Records in Chicago by Muddy Waters in 1954, where the title figure is a man backed by hoodoo charms and conjure. The song drew on Black Southern hoodoo and blues tradition carried north in the Great Migration. The dance-act sense of "hoochie coochie" entered American English separately through late-nineteenth-century fairground shows and is not of Black origin; the two should not be conflated. The word was later clipped and reversed into the modern "hoochie," usually aimed at women.
1954
Muddy Waters records Willie Dixon's "Hoochie Coochie Man" for Chess Records in Chicago
Region of origin
West
Midwest
N.East
South
The Midwest
Chicago / Mississippi Delta · 1950s
Spoken by
Black Southern and Chicago blues communities
$HOOCHIThe Record · cultural traction
▲ Historical72 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
1954
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
@chitown
Chicago, IL
@detlex
Detroit, MI
Contribute your pronunciation
Citations & Sources
■
Muddy Waters, "Hoochie Coochie Man" (Chess Records, 1954), written by Willie Dixon
song
■
+ Cite a sourceWikipedia, "Hoochie Coochie Man" (song history and recording details)
web
See also