juke joint

noun

: a small inexpensive establishment for eating, drinking, or dancing to the music of a jukebox or a live band

Example Sentences

Recent Examples on the Web

This year’s other Blues Hall of Fame honorees include four Chicago bluesmen (Carey Bell, John Primer, Snooky Pryor and Fenton Robinson) and a Mississippi juke joint king (Junior Kimbrough). —Paul Grein, Billboard, 15 Mar. 2023

Melrose grew up far from the Louisiana juke joints where Spanish music was played or the cotton fields where the blues were sung. —Ron Grossman, Chicago Tribune, 19 Feb. 2023

As Hattie Mae, a laundress, midwife, healer, juke joint owner, and the bedrock of the story, Vann’s character spends much of her time defending her Black sons in a Jim Crow-era small town in Georgia during the ‘30s and ‘40s. —Jasmin Hernandez, refinery29.com, 24 Jan. 2023

There are tableaux dedicated to Wild Bill Hickok, to the captain’s cabin of the Flying Dutchman, to a Southern juke joint Beerits once visited in Clarksdale, Miss., and — yes — to King Arthur. —Howard Fishman, Washington Post, 31 Aug. 2022

He was influenced by the sounds emanating from Haney's Big House, a Black juke joint owned by his rich uncle Lee (who consequently may have allowed the underage Lewis the run of the place). —Philip Martin, Arkansas Online, 6 Nov. 2022

There are other complications — with the juke joint Bayou's beloved mother (Amirah Vann) has been left to run, and the bad stuff Willie Earl keeps shooting into his veins — that Jazzman unfurls between languid, hip-swaying musical numbers. —Leah Greenblatt, EW.com, 23 Sep. 2022

The multipart piece memorializes childhood summer trips from his home in Chicago to visit family in Mississippi, where an uncle operated a candy store out of a double-wide trailer, which became a juke joint at night. —New York Times, 4 Aug. 2022

Proprietor Red Paden presides over this tiny juke joint in Clarksdale, a Delta city with as strong a claim to the blues as anywhere in the region. —Jim Beaugez, Rolling Stone, 1 Aug. 2022

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Word History

First Known Use

1937, in the meaning defined above