Green’s Dictionary of Slang

1. (orig. US black) a very basic, raw, unsophisticated style of jazz.

1937		R.B. Nye ‘A Musician’s Word List’ in AS XII:1 46: gutbucket. Genuine swing music.
1938		Eve. Sun (Baltimore, MD) 19 Dec. 21/4: Gutbucket: rough swing, lowdown blues.
1964		D. Gregory Nigger 75: She didn't want to dance to the blues, the gut bucket, the funky songs. Her crowd just came out on the floor for the sweet ballads.
1998		(con. 1920s) Govenar & Brakefield Deep Ellum 124: ‘We called that kind of music gutbucket or barrelhouse. [...] a lot of it started around here on these medicine shows. [. . . .] [T]he boys would get up and blow [...] to attract another bunch of suckers’.

2. (US black) a bucket used to carry food or drink, thus inferior liquor.

1932		R. Fisher Conjure-Man Dies 234: Here – git yo’self a pint o’ gut-bucket.
1939		in R.S. Gold Jazz Talk (1975).
1960, 1975		Wentworth & Flexner DAS.

3. (US black) a low place or dive.

1942		Z.N. Hurston ‘Story in Harlem Sl.’ in Novels and Stories (1995) 1009: Gut-bucket: low dive, type of music.
1957		R.S. Gold ‘Vernacular of the Jazz World’ in AS XXXII:4 279: gut-bucket. A low dive.
1994		T. Wolff In Pharoah’s Army 156: I had brought him [i.e. a black colleague] to a redneck gutbucket .

4. (US, also gutbucket fiddle) a washtub bass.

1960		Mad mag. Jan. 49: [It] bounced when he cracked, like a gutbucket fiddle.
1964		Golden Ring (Folk-Legacy FSL-16) [LP; insert p. 17] [...] ‘thumping away’ on his homemade washtub bass, commonly called a ‘gut-bucket’ [HDAS].
1985		E. Leonard Glitz 121: They’re beating on everything but a washboard and a gutbucket.

5. a jazz musician.

1971

J. Curtis Banjo 220: I got the word [...] from a gut-bucket in from Philly.