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Hidden History: Ram Jam's "Black Betty" [1]
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Date: 2025-05-13
In the 1970s, the rock band Ram Jam had a monster hit with its adaptation of the song “Black Betty”. But the song was not about what you may think it was about.
"Hidden History" is a diary series that explores forgotten and little-known areas of history.
In 1935, the US was in the throes of the Great Depression, and to deal with the economic dislocation, the Federal Government under President Franklin Roosevelt undertook a massive stimulus effort which was known as the New Deal. Under various programs, the New Deal created work programs under agencies like the Civilian Conservation Corps and the Works Progress Administration which provided government-funded jobs to the unemployed.
One of these programs was titled the Federal Music Project. In this effort, the Works Progress Administration partnered with the Library of Congress to pay people to collect and record as much traditional American folk music as they could, before it all faded from memory and disappeared. Using newly-invented mechanical recording devices (portable machines which could record sound onto lacquer-coated aluminum disks), teams of researchers traveled around the country visiting cowboys in rural farms, workers in mining camps, and other places, gathering folk songs from a variety of people. One of the most active of these teams was made up of John Lomax and his son Alan, who were particularly interested in the spirituals and blues songs of African-Americans in the south.
In 1933, Lomax and his son visited the State Prison Farm in Sugarland TX, where inmates were rented out to work in sugar cane and cotton fields. Lomax was interested in prisons because he thought the traditional folk music preserved there was less likely to be influenced by more modern music. Over the next ten months, Lomax recorded over 50 songs from the prison inmates.
One of the people that Lomax met in Sugarland was James Baker, an African-American inmate who was serving a 99-year sentence for a string of burglaries. Inside the prison, Baker was known as “Iron Head” (a nickname that resulted from an incident in which a tree branch had fallen on him while he was out working in the fields). Iron Head performed a song for Lomax that he called “Black Betty”, which Lomax recorded and transcribed. They also recorded another song, a “work chant” called “Hammer Ring”, which was much older and may have dated all the way back to the slave days. The opening words went:
“Oh my hammer, hammer ring, Oh my hammer, hammer ring, Ringing on the building, hammer ring, Ringing on the building, hammer ring.“
In 1934, Lomax published a book titled American Ballads and Folk Songs, which contained the words and music for both “Hammer Ring” and “Black Betty”. In his accompanying notes, Lomax pointed out two things. First, a note under “Hammer Ring” said, “This work chant is to the same air as ‘Black Betty’.” So it is likely that “Black Betty” is a derivative of the earlier “Hammer Ring” song.
And under “Black Betty”, a note said, “Black Betty is not another Frankie [*], nor yet another two-timing woman that a man can moan his blues about. She is the whip that was and is used in some Southern prisons. A convict on the Darrington State Farm in Texas, where, by the way, whipping has been practically discontinued, laughed at Black Betty and mimicked her conversation in the following song.” [*] (A “Frankie” was a traditional folk murder ballad.)
The published lyrics were those that had been given to Lomax by Iron Head. They begin with:
“Oh lawd, Black Betty, bam-ba-lam, Oh lawd, Black Betty, bam-ba-lam, Black Betty had a baby, bam-ba-lam, Black Betty had a baby, bam-ba-lam, It’s the Capn’s baby, bam-ba-lam, It’s the Capn’s baby, bam-be-lam, But she didn’t feed the baby, bam-ba-lam, But she didn’t feed the baby, bam-ba-lam
Since that time, the title “Black Betty” has been interpreted as referring to anything from “a bottle of whiskey” to “the prison van that transports inmates”—and, of course, to an African-American woman named Betty. But Lomax makes it clear that the original meaning referred to the prison whip that was used to beat the inmates.
Iron Head, with Lomax’s help, was released from his sentence for good behavior and accompanied Lomax for several years as they traveled around the country recording prison songs. Sadly, though, after the New Deal program ended, Iron Head fell again into crime and ended up back in prison. He died from cancer in 1944.
Meanwhile, another prisoner who had been interviewed and recorded by Lomax, Huddie Ledbetter, had been pardoned in 1934 by the Texas Governor after serving several years for killing a man in a drunken brawl. Having learned to play the guitar in prison, he began performing traditional African-American folk songs using his prison nickname “Lead Belly” as his stage name, won a recording contract, and in 1939 he released his version of “Black Betty”:
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The song was then mostly forgotten.
But in the early 1960s there was a revival of American Folk Music, and African-American artists like Lead Belly were rediscovered. New versions (mostly with new lyrics) were released by Odetta and by Dave “Snaker” Ray, and in 1964 Alan Lomax, who had helped his father record the original song from Iron Head back in the 1930s, released his own version of “Black Betty”. This was followed in 1968 by the British artist Manfred Mann (who would later go on to have rock hits with “Blinded By The Light” and “Mighty Quinn”). Mann adapted the lyrics and changed the title to “Big Betty”.
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Mann performed the song live on-air for the BBC-TV in 1972, but never released the recording on an album.
Then came Ram Jam.
By 1975, singer/guitarist Bill Bartlett had already had a number one hit in 1967 titled “Green Tamborine” with the band Lemon Pipers, and had then formed a new band called Starstruck. After hearing an old version of “Black Betty” by Leadbelly, Bartlett wrote new lyrics and expanded its length to three minutes. Starstruck became a successful regional band and attracted the attention of record company producers, including Jerry Kasenetz and Jeffry Katz, who signed Bartlett to a contract. They formed a new band called Ram Jam, re-arranged the song a bit, and released it in 1977.
It became a huge hit, reaching number 18 on the American charts and selling over two million copies worldwide. The driving guitar riffs made every teenage guy in the world want to stand up and air-guitar.
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Almost immediately, though, there was trouble. The African-American civil rights group CORE (Congress of Racial Equality) called for a boycott of the song, concluding that it was insulting and demeaning to African-American women. The boycott never took off, though, and “Black Betty” became a mega-hit. Decades later it would be featured in the soundtracks for the Hollywood movies “The Dukes of Hazzard” and “Blow”.
The band Ram Jam was less successful. Their follow-up album, “Portrait of the Artist as a Young Ram”, was a commercial failure, and the band broke up in 1978. They are now noted as a “one-hit wonder”.
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