New York rock band, 1977-1978 · built around guitarist Bill Bartlett, formerly of the Lemon Pipers
Bill Bartlett left the bubblegum-pop Lemon Pipers to form Starstruck, taking bassist Steve Walmsley and organist Bob Nave with him, and it was there that he arranged and recorded his hard-rock reading of Lead Belly’s 59-second version, issuing it on the band’s own TruckStar label to regional success. Producers Jerry Kasenetz and Jeffry Katz then assembled Ram Jam in New York around Bartlett and put the track out on Epic in June 1977, where it reached No. 18 in the US and No. 7 in the UK. The NAACP and the Congress of Racial Equality called for a boycott over the song’s words; the boycott failed and the record became a permanent fixture of rock radio and stadium sound systems. It is a tremendous piece of arranging, and the only thing wrong in the popular account of it is the chronology.