Green’s Dictionary of Slang

1. (orig. US black) used to describe a style of jazz that is very basic, raw and unsophisticated; thus ext. to rock music.

1929		in Charters & Kunstadt Jazz (1962) 191: Using a mute [he] eschews the tin pail, hat, plunger, and other devices of the ‘gut bucket’ player.
1938		G. Kersh Night and the City 67: Raw rhythms of red-hot gut-bucket jazz seem to shake the blood out of women.
1946		Mezzrow & Wolfe Really the Blues 62: We sopped up a lot of learning at Capone’s University of the Gutbucket Arts.
1953		Frazier ‘No Business Like the Band Business’ in Brookhouser These Were Our Years (1959) 477: A group of gutbucket performers.
1958		C. Lee diary 7 June in Eight Bells & Top Masts (2001) 122: Love to take my trumpet and get to play in a gutbucket six.
1958		G. Lea Somewhere There’s Music 73: The band played gutbucket boogie.
1969		‘Iceberg Slim’ Pimp 121: The juke box was moaning gut-bucket blues.
1971		L. Bangs in Psychotic Reactions (1988) 69: At least there’s no folkie scene and lots of people still care about getdown gutbucket rock ’n’ roll passionately.
1983		G. Tate ‘Electric Miles’ in Flyboy in the Buttermilk (1992) 83: When you talk about gut-bucket funk has any other of Miles’s new music come close to matching ‘Backseat Betty’.
1986		Joe Louis Walker ‘Moanin’ News’ 🎵 He irons his pants, and shines those pair of shoes / And then he moan that gutbucket downhome blues.
2003		G. Tate Midnight Lightning 113: Gutbucket blues was the style.

2. in fig. use, raw.

1937

Charleston (W.Va.) Daily Mail 27 Mar. 6/7: Swing lingo has become so complex [...] The young crowd [...] has spawned a strange ‘gut-bucket’ gibberish all its own.