Today is Harry Belafonte's 86th birthday. I strongly encourage you to begin any celebrating you undertake this weekend by toasting the living legend and watching his 1997 performance of "Matilda."
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Belafonte's 1956 album, Calypso, was the first US LP to sell more than 1 million copies in a year. His recording of the "The Banana Boat Song (Day-O)" made the Jamaican folk song so famous that in 1993 Al Bundy could sing an extended parody on Married With Children. His (Belafonte's, not Bundy's) beautiful "Jamaica Farewell" forces even the most hearty Minnesotan to wonder why he shouldn't move someplace where "the rum is fine any time of year." That wedding where you tripped trying to lead a conga line and everyone dominoed behind you and the bride's parents quietly asked you to leave? You were probably dancing to Harry Belafonte.
He was friends with Martin Luther King. And John F. Kennedy. And Bobby Kennedy. In 1961 Belafonte helped to convince JFK that he should provide airlifts for a group of Kenyan students and issue them visas to study in the United States. "[O]n one of those planes, we had Barack Obama's father." Two weeks ago he was given the NAACP's highest honor, the Spingarn Medal, and he delivered this amazing speech.
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Harry Belafonte's 1959 recording, Live at Carnegie Hall, was the first commercially successful live album, which means that the double vinyl LP is easy to find and cheap. (I bought my copy for fifty-cents.) The CD format cut four songs and all of Belafonte's stage banter so that the recording would not spill onto a second disc. Both formats include his performance of "The Marching Saints", but only the LP includes his 90-second introduction to the song.
It is a choreographed introduction. Belafonte wonders to his audience, what would "When The Saints Go Marching In" sound like if the gospel hymn popularized by Louis Armstrong had instead grown out of the English madrigal tradition? Then, at Carnegie Hall in 1959, Belafonte adopts a wonderfully haughty, over-enunciated British accent and sings the first verse as if he were a prim Episcopalian warming up for choir rehearsal. "Tra-la-la-la-la-la-la" follows each phrase and he closes to laughter and applause -- "Good show, good show!" His voice then subtly hardens as he addresses an audience not actually so different from the one he has just satirized.
But it wasn't meant to be a madrigal; it was meant to be exactly what it was. An historical opportunity for a group of Negro musicians down in New Orleans to play and to celebrate on some festive occasion. And at the time that this song came about, what could have been more festive during that period than a funeral?
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Fifty-four years later, Harry Belafonte deserves a rum and Coca-Cola and a festive Friday for his 86th birthday. Don't stop the carnival!
(BONUS: Here's Belafonte performing a 14-minute "Matilda" and showcasing his Swedish language talents in 1966!)
