Title: Barrelhouse Words
Subtitle: A Blues Dialect Dictionary
Author: Calt, Stephen
Published by: University of Illinois
Year: 2009
Date reviewed: 11.25
ISBN: 978-0-252-07660-2

Calt is an academic and an expert on the history, culture and language of The Blues – the black American music of the first half of the 20th century. After an introduction setting out his purpose and intentions for the book, and an extensive bibliography, the Dictionary itself is 270 pages of definitions, explanations and quotes from source materials.

To save you the trouble of reading it yourself I can summarise it as follows:-

a verb: to have sex;

a proper noun: the name of a musician, a preacher, a dance, a railway train, a riverboat or a sexual activity;

any other noun: a person, a type of liquor, part of the human body (especially a part involved in any sexual act);

an adjective: a skin colour, an intensifier or a word used for emphasis;

an adverb: adverbs are uncommon in the dictionary.

It’s quite good fun to pick up the book and browse a few pages now and again, especially when you come across one of Calt’s rants against any of his academic foes.