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The recording rose to number 1 on the Australian music charts.
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In 2004 the Australian band Spiderbait released a slightly faster version of Black Betty on their album Tonight Alright, produced by Sylvia Massy. At the same time, civil rights organizations such as NAACP and Congress of Racial Equality called for a boycott of the song. The recording reached number 18 on the Billboard Hot 100 in the United States, number 7 in the British singles chart and number 25 in Germany. In 1977 the American rock band Ram Jam - which also included former Starstruck and Lemon Pipers guitarist Bill Bartlett - played the Starstruck version again for Epic Records Producers were Jerry Kasenetz and Jeff Katz. In 1976, the Cincinnati band Starstruck recorded a rock version of the song with altered lyrics, but it was not very successful. With changed text, this became the track Look Around of the album Glorified Magnified. 1972 played Manfred Mann's Earth Band Black Betty live in John Peel's BBC telecast In Concert. In 1968 Manfred Mann published a version with changed text on the album Mighty Garvey under the name Big Betty. In 1964 there were three recordings in the style of folk music, namely by Odetta (as a medley with Looky Yonder ), by Dave "Snaker" Ray and by Alan Lomax himself. While Leadbelly's version from 1939 was also still a cappella, most of the subsequent recordings included at least one guitar as an accompanying instrument. The recording was released in the same year in an album called Negro Sinful Songs sung by Lead Belly with 5 shellac records. In 1939, Leadbelly recorded his version of the song in New York for Musicraft Records, as a medley with two other songs, Looky Looky Yonder and Yellow Woman's Doorbells. In the period that followed, the two music researchers recorded other versions of the song. The song was first recorded in 1933 by musicologists John and Alan Lomax, performed a cappella by James Baker and other prisoners in the Sugar Land State Prison, Texas. According to various sources, each of these terms can be used as the motif of the song. In the past, "Black Betty" was used as a nickname for a variety of things, such as a musket, bottle of whiskey, whip, or a prisoner truck. The origin and meaning of the lyrics are controversial.
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