Songfacts®:

• Although "Ma Baker" is a typical Boney M song, unlike "Daddy Cool" the lyrics are not totally meaningless because it is based on a real person. Kate Barker, born Arizona Clark, married her husband George in 1892 and bore him four sons who became gangsters in the fashion of Bonny & Clyde and John Dillinger.
  
  Like many of the crime figures from this era - on both sides of the law - her life has become the stuff of legend. In the song she is portrayed in similar fashion, in particular as the leader of the Barker-Karpis gang, in reality though she was more of an accessory to her sons' crimes. Along with her son Fred, she was killed by the FBI near Ocklawaha, Florida in January 1935. Some 1500 rounds of ammunition were said to have been fired in what was the longest-ever FBI shootout.
• "Ma Baker" was written by the team of Frank Farian, George Reyam and Fred Jay; it was released in the UK on the Atlantic label backed by "Still I'm Sad." Fred Jay, who wrote the lyric, was living in Germany but had spent many years in America, where he heard the Ma Baker story. >>

  Suggestion credit:
  Alexander Baron - London, England, for above 2
• The contributions of Bill Swisher as the Radio Announcer and Linda Blake as Ma Baker were not credited. Swisher was Boney M producer Frank Farian's American friend who was a soldier in Germany at the time; he was later used on "Rasputin." Blake was Swisher's wife.