Green’s Dictionary of Slang

1. a prostitute, esp. later, a second-rate prostitute, one who fails, either through laziness or lack of appeal, to make enough money for her pimp.

1929		Clarence Smith ‘Big Boy, They Can’t Do That’ 🎵 They held me there for ten long days / And my mudkicker didn’t send me no mail.
1936		Archie Seale Man About Harlem 26 Sept. [synd. col.] Gamblers, mudkickers, numbers bankers, etc.
1940		D. Maurer Big Con 210: They are just as superstitious as some mudkickers.
1955		‘Ed Lacy’ Best that Ever Did It (1957) 120: You sit there [...] handing me some dope about a whore and a pimp! What’s with you, sentimental over mudkickers?
1956		‘Ed Lacy’ Men from the Boys (1967) 104: Tell your mudkickers to stop soliciting in the hallways.

2. a prostitute who robs rather than has sex with her clients.

1934		J.L. Kuethe ‘Prison Parlance’ in AS IX:1 27: mud-kicker. A woman who with promise of her body lures a man somewhere and instead of giving herself robs him.
1949		Monteleone Criminal Sl. (rev. edn).

3. a dedicated, very hard-working prostitute.

1946		Mezzrow & Wolfe Really the Blues 218: Solid ole man, pick up on this rock, and it didn’t come from no mudkicker in the block.
a.1955		‘Pimping Sam’ in D. Wepman et al. Life (1976) 147: She was a stomp-down mud-kicker with kelsey hair.
1968		N. Heard Howard Street 42: She don’t turn down no money, that bitch is a real mud-kicker.
1974		(con. 1945) M. Angelou Gather Together In My Name 162: I’m a damn good one. I’m a mud-kicker. In the streets I make more money by accident than most bitches make on purpose.
1979		‘Iceberg Slim’ Airtight Willie and Me 25: I’d [...] gattle-gun my pimp-dream shit into some mud-kicker’s frosty car.