American Variations
At one time the American and Caribbean expression 'kickeraboo' used to be explained as a deformed version of 'kick the bucket'. The expression occurs as the title of a mid-19th century American minstrel ballad with the ending 'Massa Death bring one bag and we Kickeraboo'. However, it is now thought that it may have derived from a native word in one of the West African creoles. The expression 'kek(e)rebu' is first recorded in 1721 with the meaning 'to die' in the Krio language of Sierra Leone. Earlier still 'Kickativoo' is recorded in Ghana (then known as the Gold or Slave Coast). In 1680 it referred to the capsizing of a canoe but also had the meaning 'to die'.
Whatever African American usage might have been in the 19th century, by the 20th century they were using the idiom 'kick the bucket'. It occurs in the jazz classic Old Man Mose, recorded by Louis Armstrong in the USA in 1935, and in the West Indies it figured in the title of the reggae hit “Long Shot kick de bucket”, recorded by The Pioneers in 1969. In the case of the latter, the song refers to the death of a horse.
In North America, a variation of the idiom is 'kick off'. A related phrase is to "hand in one's dinner pail", a bucket that contains a worker's dinner.
Read more about this topic: Kick The Bucket
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