Juke joint
Juke joint (also jukejoint, jook house, jook, or juke) is the
Classic Jooks, found for example at rural crossroads, catered to the rural work force that began to emerge after
Set up on the outskirts of town, often in ramshackle, abandoned buildings or private houses — never in newly-constructed buildings — juke joints offered food, drink, dancing, and gambling for weary workers.[2] Owners made extra money selling groceries or moonshine to patrons, or providing cheap room and board.
Etymology
The term "juke" is believed to come from the Gullah word joog or jug, meaning rowdy or disorderly which itself is derived from the Wolof word dzug meaning to misconduct one's self.[3][4]
History
The origins of juke joints may be the community rooms that were occasionally built on plantations to provide a place for Black people to socialize during slavery. This practice spread to the work camps such as sawmills, turpentine camps and lumber companies in the early twentieth century, which built barrel-houses and chock-houses to be used for drinking and gambling. Although uncommon in populated areas, such places were often seen as necessary to attract workers to sparsely populated areas lacking bars and other social outlets. Also, much like "on-base" officer's clubs, such "company"-owned joints allowed managers to keep an eye on their underlings; it also ensured that the employees' pay was coming back to the company. Constructed simply like a field hand's "shotgun"-style dwelling, these may have been the first juke joints.
During the Prohibition era, it became common to see squalid independent juke joints at highway crossings and railroad stops. These were almost never called "juke joints," but rather were called by names such as "Lone Star" or "Colored Cafe". They were often open only on weekends.[5]
Juke joints may be considered the first "private space" for blacks. became widely available in the 1890s.
Juke joint music began with the blues, then Black folk
Until the advent of the
Musicians during the juke joint era were stylistically quite versatile, with much overlap between genres.[13] Mance Lipscomb, Texas guitarist and singer, described the style of the time: "So far as what was called blues, that didn't come till 'round 1917...What we had in my coming up days was music for dancing, and it was of all different sorts."[13]
Paul Oliver, who tells of a visit to a Jook joint outside of Clarksdale some forty years ago and was the only white man there, describes juke joints of the time as, "unappealing, decrepit, crumbling shacks" that were often so small that only a few couples could Hully Gully. The outside yard was filled with trash. Inside they were "dusty" and "squalid" with the walls "stained to shoulder height".[5]
In 1934, anthropologist Zora Neale Hurston made the first formal attempt to describe the juke joint and its cultural role, writing that "the Negro jooks...are primitive rural counterparts of resort night clubs, where turpentine workers take their evening relaxation deep in the pine forests." Jukes figure prominently in her studies of African American folklore.[14]
Early figures of blues, including
Many of the early and historic juke joints have closed over the past decades for a number of socio-economic reasons.
Juke joints are still a strong part of African American culture in Deep South locations such as the Mississippi Delta where blues is still the mainstay, although it is now more often featured by disc jockeys and on jukeboxes than by live bands.
Urban juke joint
Peter Guralnick describes many Chicago juke joints as corner bars that go by an address and have no name. The musicians and singers perform unannounced and without microphones, ending with little if any applause. Guralnick tells of a visit to a specific juke joint, Florence's, in 1977. In stark contrast to the streets outside, Florence's is dim, and smoke-filled with the music more of an accompaniment to the "various business" being conducted than the focus of the patrons' attention. The "sheer funk of all those closely-packed-together bodies, the shouts and laughter" draws his attention. He describes the security measures and buzzer at the door, there having been a shooting there a few years ago. On this particular day Magic Slim was performing with his band, the Teardrops, on a bandstand barely big enough to hold the band.[19]
Katrina Hazzard-Gordon writes that "[t]he
Legacy
The allure of juke joints has inspired many large-scale commercial establishments, including the
Jukes have been celebrated in photos and film. Marion Post Wolcott's images of the dilapidated buildings and the pulsing life they contained are among the most famous documentary images of the era. A juke joint is featured prominently in the movie The Color Purple.
See also
- Delta Blues
- "Juke Joint Jezebel", a song by KMFDM
- Junior Kimbrough
- List of public house topics
References
- OCLC 19515231.
- ^ Gorman, Juliet. "Cultural Migrancy, Jooks, and Photographs". oberlin.edu. Retrieved 8 June 2008.
- ^ Dalzell, Tom; Victor, Terry (2014). "juke". The New Partridge Dictionary of Slang and Unconventional English. p. 448.
- ^ Will McGuire, “Dzug, Dzog, Dzugu, Jook, Juke”, Time, vol. 35, no. 5 (1940), p. 12
- ^ ISBN 0-306-80321-6.
- ^ Gorman, Juliet. "Backwoods Identities". oberlin.edu. Retrieved 8 June 2008.
- ISBN 9780877226130.
- ^ ISBN 0-06-052423-5.
- ^ Wald 2004, pp. 43–44.
- ^ ISBN 0-19-508235-4.
- ISBN 9780877226130.
- ISBN 9780877226130.
- ^ a b Wald 2004, p. 72.
- ^ Gorman, Juliet. "What is a Jook Joint?". oberlin.edu. Retrieved 8 June 2008.
- ^ doi:10.18737/M71K5M. Retrieved 7 June 2008.
- ^ "Willie Seaberry, Owner of Mississippi's Po' Monkey's Juke Joint, Dies at 75". Afro.com. 17 July 2016. Retrieved 15 November 2016.
- ^ "Blue Front Cafe a sure stop along Mississippi Blues Trail". USA Today. 3 July 2006. Retrieved 27 May 2008.
- ^ "Juke-joints". steberphoto.com. Archived from the original on 19 July 2008. Retrieved 7 June 2008.
- ISBN 0060971746.
- ISBN 9780877226130.
Further reading
- Cobb, Charles E., Jr., "Traveling the Blues Highway", National Geographic Magazine, April 1999, v.195, n.4
- Hamilton, Marybeth: In Search of the Blues.
- ISBN 978-0807833254(with CD and DVD)
- ISBN 978-0-8078-3346-9(Cover :phfoto of James Son Thomas)
- ISBN 978-0306803277
- ISBN 978-0393337501
- Sheldon Harris; Blues Who's Who Da Capo Press 1979
- Robert Nicholson; Mississippi Blues Today ! Da Capo Press (1999) ISBN 978-0-306-80883-8
- ISBN 978-0-14-006223-6
- Frederic Ramsey Jr.; Been Here And Gone - 1st edition (1960) Rutgers University Press - London Cassell (UK) and New Brunswick, NJ
- idem - 2nd printing (1969) Rutgers University Press New Brunswick, NJ
- idem - (2000) University of Georgia Press
- Charles Reagan Wilson - ISBN 978-0-8078-1823-7
- Jacks, Will H.; Upholt, Boyce (2019). Po' Monkey's : portrait of a juke joint. Jackson. OCLC 1100427294.)
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External links
- A collection of Juke Joint Blues musicians and playlists Archived 29 April 2012 at the Wayback Machine
- Random House Word of the Day . Accessed 2006-02-02.
- Junior's Juke Joint. Accessed 2006-02-01.
- Juke Joint Festival. Accessed 2006-02-02.
- "Backroads of American Music". backroadsofamericanmusic.com. Retrieved 8 June 2008.
- Jukin' It Out: Contested Visions of Florida in New Deal Narratives
- Juke Joint video
- Juke Joint at Queens