Who or what is 'Black Betty'

The sticking point seems to be that couplet:

Black Betty had a child
Damn thing gone blind

Or have I got that lyric wrong? If I haven't, it seems to restict the range of interpretations.

BLACK JACK!!
BIG BLACK BETTY!
LITTLE SPANISH EDDIEEEE!!!!!!!!!!!!

(repeat about 5,822,613,275,907.06 times)

Also here's the full lyric. Black Betty's from Birmingham!

Whoa, Black Betty (Bam-ba-Lam)
Whoa, Black Betty (Bam-ba-Lam)
Black Betty had a child (Bam-ba-Lam)
The damn thing gone wild (Bam-ba-Lam)
She said, "I'm worryin' outta mind" (Bam-ba-Lam)
The damn thing gone blind (Bam-ba-Lam)
I said Oh, Black Betty (Bam-ba-Lam)
Whoa, Black Betty (Bam-ba-Lam)

Oh, Black Betty (Bam-ba-Lam)
Whoa, Black Betty (Bam-ba-Lam)
She really gets me high (Bam-ba-Lam)
You know that's no lie (Bam-ba-Lam)
She's so rock steady (Bam-ba-Lam)
And she's always ready (Bam-ba-Lam)
Whoa, Black Betty (Bam-ba-Lam)
Whoa, Black Betty (Bam-ba-Lam)

Whoa, Black Betty (Bam-ba-Lam)
Whoa, Black Betty (Bam-ba-Lam)
She's from Birmingham (Bam-ba-Lam)
Way down in Alabam' (Bam-ba-Lam)
Well, she's shakin' that thing (Bam-ba-Lam)
Boy, she makes me sing (Bam-ba-Lam)
Whoa, Black Betty (Bam-ba-Lam)
Whoa, Black Betty BAM-BA-LAM

-- the music mole (colinsbarro...), April 18th, 2004.

But 'had a child' could be about anything that has consequences and ''gone blind' mitgh just mean those consequences were bad.

So it could still be practically anything.

Black Betty had a child (with the white master)
The damn thing gone wild (because of mixed race)
She said, "I'm worryin' outta mind"
The damn thing gone blind (because of the beating before it was born)

what is about the story of the woman black betty.

She really gets me high (to an euphoric state, past pain)
You know that's no lie (black men are honest)
She's so rock steady (hard and never breaks)
And she's always ready (can whip at any time)

She's from Birmingham
Way down in Alabam' (the distance the whip has come/travelled, possibly with the chain gang or prison guards. could refer also to how far the song is sung)
Well, she's shakin' that thing (cracking of the whip)
Boy, she makes me sing (the whip makes them cry out)

are all referring to the whip.

i'm not sure how much of that is truth or embelishment or which one is actually true, and no amount of searching on the net will tell me anything about these stories.

if anyone out there has any information at all on the origin of the song or the whip please email me. thanks.

my careworn red vauxhall cavalier is now called 'cherry bomb', because cherries are red and the runaways' song is one of my all time favourites

cute

http://www.triplej.net.au

They had a sample of a song that was sung by the negro workers in the USA, it would have been recorded pre 1950's by the sound of it.

Ram Jam had changed the lyrics, Black Betty was originally about a whip and possibly Ram Jam had turned Black Betty into a woman.

There was an uproar in the 70's when the song came out as not only was it seen to be degrading to single mothers but the woman in question was a negro - double minority.

s

Bam Ba Lam was the sound the whip made when it cracked.

s

Where was the uproar, exactly? I was there when it was a "hit" on radio and don't recall any such thing. Ram Jam's album with "Black Betty" on it wasn't a particularly hot seller and was a product of the Kasenetz-Katz production team, the same people who gave us the 1910 Fruitgum Company. The album itself is a fairly good representation of meat and potatoes redneck rock. Actually smarter in execution than the remake of "Dukes of Hazzard" it has been revived by.

Basic song themes on from Ram Jam -- "Too Bad on Your Birthday," "Hey Boogie Woman," "All for the Love of Rock 'n' Roll," "No One Can Do What You Do to Me Honey (When You're Right On the Money)." Stereotypical, excellently performed, roadhouse biker rock.

(http://thesurrealist.co.uk/priorart.cgi)

That being the case, they were obviously so successful virtually no one paid attention to them. "Black Betty" was and is still embedded in classic rock radio in portions of the country. First album sold the best but wasn't spectacular, which seemed to have the result that Kasenetz-Katz completely changed the line-up of ringers in the act in producing a second album, "Portrait of the Artist as a Young Ram." KK turned Ram Jam into a far more over the top pop metal act and that record sold much less although HM critics tend to give it love when they hear it.

The second album kicks off with "The Kid Next Door" which purely smokes. Utterly strange transition and I'll be damned if I here Blauvelt anywhere on the second, not that it mattered to the party.

You know, I like Ram Jam so much even the association of that actor fool who played Stifler, the guy who ate the excrement of a dog in "American Wedding," can't ruin it.

http://home.att.net/~bubblegumusic/ramjam.htm

And here, from a seller of the original 45:
Black Betty/ I Should Have Known by Ram Jam
Label: Epic 50357
Year: 1977
Factory sleeve included
Condition: M-
$8.00
No images available.
Chart info: #18p in June 1977
Condition Detail:
Label: M- Vinyl: M- Audio: M
Written by: H. Ledbetter (A), W. Bartlett (B)
Produced by: Kasenetz-Katz (A), W. Bartlett (B)

It being the web, caveats apply. But it sounds reasonable.

http://www.foxnews.com/story/0,2933,183133,00.html

Black Betty

The University of New Hampshire has stopped playing the song "Black Betty" at its hockey games after someone complained that it was "theoretically racist," reports the The New Hampshire Online.

The song by Ram Jam, which has been a staple of UNH games for years, was quietly discontinued recently following complaints from someone "significant." The school would not say who that someone was.

The Ram Jam version of the song is a cover of a song originally recorded by the blues legend Leadbelly in the early 20th century.

Oh, and I messed up the credits upstream. Bartlett was the guy from the Lemon Pipers who made the first album good

It is indeed the same guy. Guitarist on "Green Tambourine", vocals/guitar on "Black Betty" and obviously way more into the latter than the former.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Po0CDHbnI4o

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=I_2D8Eo15wE

I was confronted after singing this recently at karaoke that this was a racist song and i shouldnt sing it anymore

They'd be ok with "White Christmas" though?

I was confronted after singing this recently at karaoke that this was a racist song and i shouldnt sing it anymore

Bill Bartlett had been in the Lemon Pipers and then formed a group called Starstruck. While in Starstruck, Bartlett took Lead Belly's 59-second long "Black Betty" and arranged, recorded and released it on the group's own TruckStar label. "Black Betty" became a regional hit. Producers Jerry Kasenetz and Jeffry Katz in New York formed a group around Bartlett called Ram Jam. They re-released the song, and it became a hit nationally. The Ram Jam version was actually the same one originally recorded by Starstruck (albeit significantly edited to rearrange the song structure). The song became an instant hit with listeners, and reached number 18 on the singles charts in the United States and achieved more success in the UK and Australia reaching the top ten.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=I73T5EJmaS4

*(from wikipedia)

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=oPIuxH_uitU

So I guess it was the Truckstar version of "Black Betty" that got FM airplay in Cincinnati when I was in high school circa 1975. I thought it was kind of annoying tbh.

it's funny to watch the video for Black Betty and remember that the guy on the left playing tambourine is actually the lead singer of Ram Jam and is not actually featured on this cut-up version of a record by his guitarist's previous group, which would turn out to be their only hit.

Similarly I appreciate the audacity of the second Ram Jam album apparently being the work of a completely different band, or a different singer with studio musicians - the Buddha Records/bubblegum aesthetic applied to hard rock. Researching the disco era several years ago, I was stuck by how many DJ playlists included Ram Jam's "Black Betty."