Black Betty Video (MV)

• This was originally a 20th-century African-American work song, popularized by Huddie "Lead Belly" Ledbetter before his death in 1949.

• Civil rights groups NAACP and Congress of Racial Equality called for a boycott of the song when Ram Jam released it, because they felt the lyrics were disrespectful to black women.

• Some sources claim the song is derived from an 18th-century marching cadence about a flint-lock musket with a black painted stock. In this interpretation:

- The "bam-ba-lam" lyric refers to the sound of the gunfire.

- Soldiers in the field were said to be "hugging Black Betty".

- The child in the song is likely referring to the bullet.

- "that child is wild" meaning the bullet didn't always go where it should.

- "The child is blind" meaning it did not care who it hit, friend or foe.

- "Black betty don't care" meaning the musket also doesn't care who is killed by its child

- "that child ain't mine" meaning "it wasn't me who shot my buddy in the back of the head".

- The line "she's from Birmingham" also fits as the place where muskets were manufactured.