"Boll Weevil" is a traditional blues song, also known by similar titles such as "Boweavil" or "Boll Weevil Blues". Although many songs about the boll weevil were recorded by blues musicians during the 1920s, 1930s and 1940s, this one has become well known, thanks to Lead Belly's rendition of it as recorded by folklorist Alan Lomax in 1934. A 1961 adaptation by Brook Benton became a pop hit, reaching number two on the Billboard Hot 100.

The lyrics deal with the boll weevil (Anthonomus grandis), a beetle, which feeds on cotton buds and flowers, that migrated into the U.S. from Mexico in the late 19th century and had infested all U.S. cotton-growing areas by the 1920s, causing severe devastation to the industry.

The song is known to be "at least a century old."

Perhaps as early as 1908, blues pioneer Charley Patton wrote a song called "Mississippi Boweevil Blues" and recorded it in July 1929 (as "The Masked Marvel") for Paramount Records. Some of the lyrics are similar to "Boll Weevil," describing the first time and "the next time" the narrator saw the boll weevil and making reference to the weevil's family and home. "Mother of the Blues" Ma Rainey recorded a song called "Bo-Weavil Blues" in Chicago in December 1923, and Bessie Smith covered it in 1924, but the song had little in common with Lead Belly's "Boll Weevil" aside from the subject matter.

A version recorded by the Old Time Country musician Gid Tanner in 1924 (see Country Music Records A Discography, 1921 -1942, Tony Russell, Oxford University Press, 2004) is extremely similar to Lead Belly's both in the tune and the dialog lyrics. It can be accessed at this link: https://www.myspace.com/gidtanner/music/songs?filter=featured#!

At least two other early Country versions of Boll Weevil or Boll Weevil Blues (Tanner's title) are listed in Russell.

In both Jaybird Coleman's "Boll Weevil," from the late 1920s, and Blind Willie McTell's, from the 1930s, we find the element of a dialogue between the boll weevil and a farmer. W.A. Lindsey & Alvin Condor's "Boll Weevil" recorded February 24, 1928 contains these same elements.

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