The Bertha Butt Boogie

"The Bertha Butt Boogie"
single cover artwork
Single by Jimmy Castor Bunch
from the album Butt of Course
B-side
  • "The Bertha Butt Boogie, Part 2"
  • (instrumental track of Part 1)
ReleasedFebruary 1975
GenreFunk
Length3:10
LabelAtlantic
Songwriter(s)Jimmy Castor, Johnny L Pruitt
Jimmy Castor Bunch singles chronology
"Soul Serenade"
(1975) 		"The Bertha Butt Boogie"
(1975) 		"Potential"
(1975)
Alternative cover

"The Bertha Butt Boogie" is a 1975 song by the Jimmy Castor Bunch. It achieved a No. 16 placing on the US pop chart[1] and reached No. 22 on the US R&B chart.[2] It was also a top 40 hit in Canada.[3]

The record was a follow-up 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.[4] It has been described by one critic as "another self-defining hit" for the band,[4] 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".[5]

The song is considered an icon of black music, bringing humor into the larger narrative that emerged in the mid-seventies.[6]

  1. ^ Whitburn, Joel (2003). Top Pop Singles 1955-2002 (1st ed.). Menomonee Falls, Wisconsin: Record Research Inc. p. 115. ISBN 0-89820-155-1.
  2. ^ Whitburn, Joel (1996). Top R&B/Hip-Hop Singles: 1942-1995. Record Research. p. 69.
  3. ^ "Item Display - RPM - Library and Archives Canada". Collectionscanada.gc.ca. 1975-04-26. Retrieved 2018-05-27.
  4. ^ a b Dave Thompson, Funk (Hal Leonard Corporation, 2001), ISBN 978-0879306298, p. 83. Excerpts available at Google Books.
  5. ^ 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.
  6. ^ Banfield, William (2010). Cultural Codes: Makings of a Black Music Philosophy. Plymouth: Scarecrow Press. p. 159. ISBN 9780810872868. Retrieved 19 December 2014.