Traditional African American work song · credited on the 1977 single as Traditional and Huddie Ledbetter
The song has no identifiable author. It circulated as an African American work song, and Alan Lomax understood the title as prison slang for the whip used on inmates, though scholars have also read it as a whiskey bottle, a prison transfer wagon or, later, a vehicle. The Lomaxes printed a notated version in their 1934 book American Ballads and Folk Songs, the year after they recorded it. Lead Belly’s name sits beside “Traditional” on the writing credit that later records carry, which is a fair description of an arranger’s share and a poor description of who invented it.