The Bertha Butt Boogie
| "The Bertha Butt Boogie" | |
|---|---|
| Song | |
| B-side | "The Bertha Butt Boogie, Part 2 (instrumental track of Part 1)" |
The Bertha Butt Boogie was a song released in 1975 by The Jimmy Castor Bunch. It achieved number 16 on the US pop charts[1] and number 22 on the US R&B charts.[2]
The record was a follow-up record to the band's 1972 top 10 hit "Troglodyte (Cave Man)", which also featured the "Bertha Butt" character, who showed up on several more Jimmy Castor Bunch tracks in following years; it also calls back to two previous Castor recordings, "Hey Leroy Your Mama's Calling You" and "Luther the Anthropoid (Cave Man)," who appear with the troglodyte midway through the song to boogie with the Butt sisters.[3] It has been described by one critic as "another self-defining hit" for the band,[3] and by another as the "seminal narrative" of "celebratory butt songs" in the same vein as similarly themed records such as "Da Butt," "Rump Shaker," and "Baby Got Back".[4]
The song is considered an icon of black music, bringing humor into the larger narrative that emerged in the mid-seventies.[5]
References
- ^ Whitburn, Joel (2003). Top Pop Singles 1955-2002 (1st ed.). Menomonee Falls, Wisconsin: Record Research Inc. p. 115. ISBN 0-89820-155-1.
- ^ Whitburn, Joel (1996). Top R&B/Hip-Hop Singles: 1942-1995. Record Research. p. 69.
- ^ a b Dave Thompson, Funk (Hal Leonard Corporation, 2001), ISBN 978-0879306298, p. 83. Excerpts available at Google Books.
- ^ Erin Aubry Kaplan, Black Talk, Blue Thoughts, and Walking the Color Line: Dispatches from a Black Journalista (University Press of New England, 2011), ISBN 978-1555537661, p. 11. Excerpts available at Google Books.
- ^ Banfield, William (2010). Cultural Codes: Makings of a Black Music Philosophy. Plymouth: Scarecrow Press. p. 159. ISBN 9780810872868. Retrieved 19 December 2014.