About

"Black Betty" is a song first recorded by Leadbelly and popularized by 1970s rock band Ram Jam. The Ram Jam version of the track, with its chorus of "Whoa Black Betty, bam-a-lam," inspired puns in the 2010s wherein people would write "whoa black betty," then include an image of an object or text that sounded like "bam-a-lam," similar to the Whoa We're Halfway There meme developed with Bon Jovi's "Livin' On a Prayer."

Origin

Though it is unclear who authored the original song, it is often credited to Leadbelly, who released a recording of the song in 1939 (shown below, left). The track was popularized by the band Ram Jam in 1977, as their rock recording of the track peaked at number 18 on the Billboard hot 100 (shown below, right). It was also covered by the Australian band Spiderbait in 2004 for the film Without a Paddle and appeared in numerous other films including Miss Congeniality 2: Armed and Fabulous and Guess Who.

Spread

In the 2000s, the song grew popular online in memes wherein people made jokes by inserting pictures and words that rhymed with the nonsensical "ram-a-lam" lyric into the song. Some of the earliest examples include references to the Amber Lamps meme from 2010 (examples shown below).

The jokes appeared consistently throughout the 2010s. For example, on April 10th, 2017, Imgur user uglyshirts^[1] posted a compilation of jokes (examples shown below). User LuckyStampede did the same on April 29th.^[3] A question about the song's popularity was posted to /r/outoftheloop^[2] on February 28th, 2019.

Various Examples

Search Interest

External References