The Playboy Jazz Festival was founded by Hugh Hefner, the first in 1959 featured Miles Davis, Louis Armstrong, Ella Fitzgerald, Nina Simone, Coleman Hawkins, Sonny Rollins, Dave Brubeck, Dizzy Gillespie, Duke Ellington, and many more. Now the “Hollywood Bowl Jazz Festival”, it has been running continuously since 1979.

The frantic 1977 smash hit “Black Betty” by Ram Jam was a cover of a Leadbelly prison work song — the bluesman told John Lomax the “BAMBALAM” simulated the prisoner’s axes hitting trees, and Black Betty was the foreman’s whip (or maybe the prison wagon).

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