Black Snake Blues is one of Victoria Spivey's most famous and influential songs. Written by Spivey herself at just 19 years old, it immediately became a major hit within the African-American community. While many contemporary Blues songs used the image of the "Black Snake" with sexual double entendre, Victoria Spivey insisted that her original version literally described the genuine fear of a sharecropper in Texas encountering a black field snake. However, the ambiguity of the lyrics allowed for