Juke Joint Blues

Jukin' is blues dancing made for a small, crowded, low-ceilinged room. Juke joints were the first secular gathering places Black Americans built for themselves after Emancipation, growing out of plantation community rooms and the barrelhouses at sawmill and turpentine camps, and spreading widely during Prohibition at highway crossings and railroad stops. The name descends through the Gullah joog, rowdy or disorderly, from the Wolof dzug. Because there was no space to travel, the dancing drove downward and inward: sharp, punctuated weight changes, deep knee bend, and articulation concentrated in the hips. The Spurlock Museum exhibit records several named idioms in this family. The Funky Butt, referenced in song and print since the late nineteenth century, pairs side steps with a rocking backward extension of the hips that counterbalances a partner's weight. The Grind is essentially stationary, built on a step with a circular hip movement up and to the side. The Piedmont uses a relaxed but fast shuffling triple against fingerpicked guitar; the Texas Shuffle slides with a subtle triple pulse and alternating stretch and compression; the Chicago Triple articulates the triple itself as the foundation step over electrified Chicago blues.