#89: Ma Baker by Boney M

City: Ottawa, ON
Radio Station: CFGO
Peak Month: October 1977
Peak Position in Ottawa ~ #6
Peak position in Vancouver ~ did not chart
Peak Position on Billboard Hot 100 ~ #96
Peak Position on Austrian Singles chart ~ #1
Peak Position on Belgian Singles chart ~ #1
Peak Position on Dutch Singles chart ~ #1
Peak Position on French Singles chart ~ #1
Peak Position on Norwegian Singles chart ~ #1
Peak Position on Swedish Singles chart ~ #1
Peak Position on Swiss Singles chart ~ #1
Peak Position on West German Singles chart ~ #1
Peak Position on New Zealand Singles chart ~ #2
Peak Position on UK Singles chart ~ #2
YouTube: “Ma Baker”
Lyrics: “Ma Baker”

Franz Reuther was born in 1941 in Kirn, Germany, in the Rheinland-Pfalz region bordering France. After graduating from school, he began to work as a cook. But in 1967 he released a single credited to Frank Farian. In 1974 he wrote a song titled “Baby Do You Wanna Bump”. In 1975 the single was released under the pseudonym Boney M. He got Marcia Barrett and Liz Mitchell to sing vocals for the debut Boney M. album. Barrett was born in Saint Catherine Parish in Jamaica in 1948. She moved to England in 1963 with her parents. In the late 60s, Barrett moved to West Germany and sang with Czechoslovakian singer Karel Gott who was known as “the Golden Voice of Prague.” Gott had three Top Ten albums in Germany between 1968 and 1971. Barrett also toured with the band of German singer Rex Gildo. After signing with a West German record label in 1971, Marcia Barrett toured with her German-language covers of “Son Of A Preacher Man” and “Oh Happy Day”.

In 1975 Marcia Barrett was one of a group of models and dancers, to make discothèque and television performances of “Baby Do You Wanna Bump”. Another one of the dancers in video and live performances of the song was Claudja Barry. When Barry left to go solo in 1976, at Marcia Barrett’s suggestion, she was replaced by Liz Mitchell. In 1952 Elizabeth Rebecca Mitchell was born in Clarendon, Jamaica. Her family moved to England in 1963. She auditioned for the Shaftesbury Theatre production of Hair that opened in 1968, but was not chosen. Mitchell moved to West Germany and replaced Donna Summer in the Munich production of Hair. In 1976 she was part of the Les Humphries Singers who represented West Germany in the Eurovision Song Contest, performing “Sing Sang Song”.

In addition to Farian, Barrett and Mitchell providing vocals in the recording studio there were other members of Boney M. These were Maizie Ursula Williams and Bobby Farrell. Williams was born in Birmingham, England, in 1951. She started to work as a model, and in 1973 won England’s  Miss Black Beautiful contest. From there, she fronted a band named Black Beautiful People. After moving to West Germany, she was approached in a restaurant in 1975 by a talent agent. Williams was asked if she was interested in becoming a member of a new disco group called Boney M. Williams recalls the agent asked her if she could sing. Williams later recalled in an interview she had been told off by her brother Billy: “You have a terrible voice. Better keep working as a walking clothes-hanger.” But, since Williams was being asked only to dance and mime the words for TV performances and music videos, singing was actually not a necessary skill. So she said “yes.”

Roberto Alfonso Farrell was born in the Dutch Caribbean island of Arbua in 1949. At the age of 15 he became a sailor and moved to Norway at the age of 17. After working as a DJ in the Netherlands and West Germany, in 1976 he was hired to be the lone male dancer, lip-synching lyrics for Boney M.

In 1976 Boney M. released “Daddy Cool”. The single shot to #1 in West Germany, Austria, Belgium, France, Norway, Spain, Sweden, and Switzerland. The single also peaked in the Top Ten nationally in Australia, Canada, the Netherlands, South Africa and the UK. However, it stalled in the USA at #65 on the Billboard Hot 100. Later in 1976 Boney M. recorded a cover of the 1966 Bobby Hebb tune “Sunny”. Their cover also climbed to #1 in 1976 in Austria, Belgium, France, the Netherlands, South Korea, and West Germany. It also made the Top Ten in Ireland, Norway, Switzerland and the UK.

In 1977 Boney M. released their second studio album Love For Sale. Its debut single was “Ma Baker”.

The song was based on the notorious 1930s American criminal Ma Barker (and Boney M. changed the surname in the song to Baker because it scanned better vocally). Arizona Donnie Clark was born in 1873 in Ash Grove (MO). J. Edgar Hoover said of Ma Barker that she was “the most vicious, dangerous, and resourceful criminal brain of the last decade.” Ma Barker’s sons were involved, with other gang members, in the killing of up to 23 people between 1921 and 1939. The FBI said she died in an hours-long gunfight in a house in Lake Weir (Florida) on January 16, 1935. Later reports consistently conclude that Kate Barker’s role in her sons’ crimes was falsely created by the media (and J. Edgar Hoover) to increase newspaper and media sales.

Kate “Ma” Barker (1932) was also known as Arizona Barker

The song “Ma Baker” told about some of the highlights of Ma Barker’s criminal activities. This includes the fact she threw her husband out of their house in 1928 since he wasn’t tough enough for her gang. The actual conflict between Ma Barker and her husband George had to do with her accepting their son Lloyd after one of his arrests. While George thought his son should be punished for his crime.

The lyrics tell “Ma Baker she taught her four sons…to handle their guns.” Her four sons were Herman Barker (1893-1927), Lloyd Barker (1897-1949), Arthur Barker (1899-1939), and Fred Barker (1901-1935). After Ma Barker and George Barker split up, she had a common-law husband named Arthur Dunlop. He was said to be loose-lipped when drunk, and he was not trusted by members of the gang. The gang apparently believed that Dunlop’s loose lips had given them away, and they murdered him while traveling. His naked body was found near Webster, Wisconsin with a single bullet wound to the head. In the song, the lyrics summarized: “Then came a man she liked. She thought she’d stay with him. When he informed on them, they did away with him.”

Barker’s children were involved in a series of robberies, murders, kidnappings, and other criminal activities. Ma Barker knew of the gang’s activities and even helped them before and after they committed their crimes, and this made her an accessory, but there is no evidence that she was involved in planning them. Her role was in taking care of gang members, who often sent her to the movies while they committed crimes. According to Claire Bond Potter, “Her age and apparent respectability permitted the gang to hide out ‘disguised’ as a family. As ‘Mrs. Hunter’ and ‘Mrs. Anderson’, she rented houses, paid bills, shopped, and did household errands.

Alvin Karpis was probably the real leader of the gang, and he later said that Ma was just “an old-fashioned homebody from the Ozarks… superstitious, gullible, simple, cantankerous and, well, generally law abiding”. He concluded:

The most ridiculous story in the annals of crime is that Ma Barker was the mastermind behind the Karpis–Barker gang. … She wasn’t a leader of criminals or even a criminal herself. There is not one police photograph of her or set of fingerprints taken while she was alive… she knew we were criminals but her participation in our careers was limited to one function: when we traveled together, we moved as a mother and her sons. What could look more innocent?

However, her legend as America’s most wanted was created by J. Edgar Hoover and the FBI, and fanned by the media. Hoover’s depiction of Ma Barker justified his agent’s killing of an old woman. Kate “Ma” Barker was 61 when she died from a gunshot wound from an FBI agents bullet on January 16, 1935.

Kate (Ma) and Fred Barker died in the upper left bedroom of this Lake Weir (FL) cottage.

The Lake Weir Chamber of Commerce stages an annual “Ma Barker Shootout” on “Ma Barker Day” in a building near the actual location of her death. In October 2016, the Barker death house was relocated via barge across Lake Weir to Carney Island in Marion County in preparation for being opened to the public as a museum in late 2017 or 2018. The land where it had sat since 1930 was sold by its owners. Just prior to the relocation of the house, a vintage ring which bears the initials, “F.B” was found when a team using metal detectors gained permission to scan the location. The ring is presumed to have been owned by Fred Barker and it has been added to the collection along with several bullet casings and assorted paraphernalia.

“Ma Baker” peaked at #6 in Ottawa, and in the Top 30 in San Francisco. Internationally, it climbed to number-one in Austria, Belgium, France, the Netherlands, Norway, Sweden, Switzerland and West Germany, #2 in Finland, Italy, New Zealand. Portugal, South Africa, and the UK, #4 in Argentina and Ireland, and #5 in Australia. In the United States the song stalled at #96 on the Billboard Hot 100.

A second single from Love For Sale was “Belfast”. The single shot to number-one in Belgium, France, Ireland, Switzerland and West Germany. It made the Top Ten in Austria, the Netherlands, Spain and the UK. The single was about “the Troubles” in Ireland.

In 1978 Boney M. was at the zenith of their popularity with the release of their third studio album Nightflight to Venus. The debut song from the album was “Rivers Of Babylon”. The song drew on the Biblical texts from Psalms 19 and 137. Originally recorded by the Jamaican group the Melodians in 1972, “Rivers Of Babylon” was Boney M’s biggest hit. It topped the charts in Australia, Austria, Belgium, France, Ireland, the Netherlands, New Zealand, Norway, South Africa, Spain, Sweden, Switzerland, the UK and West Germany. It was the number-one song for the year of 1978 in six of these countries. The B-side, “Brown Girl In The Ring”, was also a hit in selected radio markets.

At the end of the year Boney M. had a Christmas hit with “Mary’s Boy Child” which peaked at #1 in Sweden, Switzerland, the UK and West Germany, #2 in the Netherlands, #3 in Austria, #4 in Belgium, and #8 in New Zealand. A followup international hit was “Rasputin”.

In 1979 Boney M. had more international hits with “Hooray! Hooray! It’s a Holi-Holiday” and “El Lute”/”Gotta Go Home”. Into the early 80s the band continued to have some international success outside of North America. Their hits included “I’m Born Again” which was based on an Irish folksong “Buachaill Ón Éirne”; “I See a Boat on the River”; A cover of an Italian hit from 1979 which they retitled “Felicidad (Margherita)”; And an adaptation of a Swahili song titled “Malaika”.

And in 1984 Boney M. had a modest hit with “Kalimba de Luna”, which made the Top 20 in Montreal. This was their last hit, aside from several successful remixes of their hits between 1988 and 1999, variously in France, Ireland, New Zealand, Norway, Sweden and the UK.

In the 1990s Liz Mitchell, Bobby Farrell and Maizie Williams each headed their own Boney M. tours. In 2007 the Latvian cello-rock trio Melo-M, featuring Maizie Williams on vocals, had a number-one hit in Latvia with a new rendition of “Daddy Cool”. A musical on the music of Boney M., titled Daddy Cool, played to theatre audiences in London in 2006, Berlin in 2007, Aberdeen, Scotland, in 2008, Denmark in 2009, and the Netherlands in 2011-2012. More recently, the musical toured across Germany in 2017.

In July 2010, Maizie Williams headlined a Boney M. performance at Ramallah’s Cultural Palace, in the West Bank, as part of the Palestine International Festival. The band played “Daddy Cool”, “Ma Baker” and “Brown Girl in the Ring”, but refrained from playing “Rivers of Babylon”, rumored to be at the event organizers’ request because of its description of the Jewish yearning for Zion.

On the anniversary of Rasputin’s death – December 30, 1916 – Boney M. bandmate Bobby Farrell died on December 30, 2010. Ironically, Farrell died of heart failure in St. Petersburg, Russia, where he had been performing.

September 22, 2025
Ray McGinnis

References:
Nathalie Raffrey, “Liz Mitchell: Harlesden’s pop icon celebrates the 40th anniversary of Boney M’s chart topping Mary’s Boy Child,” Kilburn Times, London, UK, December 13, 2018.
“‘The Group Collapsed’: Boney M Singer Reveals Real Reason ’70s Band Split Up,” Starsat60.com, September 28, 2018.
“Marcia Barrett,” Wikipedia.org.
“Liz Mitchell,” Wikipedia.org.
“Maizie Ursula Williams,” Wikipedia.org.
“Frank Farian,” Wikipedia.org.
Martin Wainwright, “Boney M singer Bobby Farrell Dies at 61,” Guardian, December 30, 2010.
Joe Callahan, “Signet ring of notorious gangster found at Ocklawaha shootout site,” Ocala Star-Banner, December 25, 2016.
Tim Mahoney, Secret Partners: Big Tom Brown and the Barker Gang, (Minnesota Historical Society Press, 2013).

CFGO 1440-AM Ottawa Top Ten | October 31, 1977