Artist: Mohammed Hanesh
Author: Mohamed Sousse/Mohamed Hammanet
Label: Omega Internationaal
Year: 1970

Originally a Tunesian folk song. A discofied version went to n°1 there in '75 (Ariola). Cheikha Rimitti's Sidi Mansour is a different song.

The real Kate 'Ma' Barker was a notorious female mobster (1877-1935), leading a gang with her four sons: Herman, Lloyd, Arthur and Fred. First hitting their native Oklahoma, later Missouri, Minnesota, California, Ohio, Florida, Texas and even Cuba's Havana. She was the brain behind a series of crimes ranging from murder to kidnapping, armed robbery and burglary, while her boys performed at her command. Herman died in '27 during a bank robbery after killing a police officer, Lloyd was sentenced to 25 years for robbing the Mail and Arthur was arrested in Chicago, leading the way to his Ma's final hideout. Cornered in January 1935, she and her youngest son Fred preferred to die, Tommy gun in hand. Their bodies were abandoned for almost a year before being buried next to Herman's grave in Welch, Oklahoma. Belgian comic strip author Morris of Lucky Luke fame modelled The Daltons (Averell, Joe, William & Jack) on the Barker gang and to stretch the evidence he published a Lucky Luke album in '71 introducing Ma Dalton. That was a year after Roger Corman's film Bloody Mama came out, starring Shelley Winters as our criminal subject and a young Robert DeNiro as one of her sons.