Remembering Harry Belafonte
• Harry Belafonte, legendary singer, songwriter, actor and civil rights activist has died at the age of 96. Belafonte succumbed to congestive heart failure at his home in New York on Tuesday, April 24 with his wife Pamela by his side, the firm of his longtime spokesperson Ken Sunshine said in a statement.
As TMZ reminds us, Belafonte popularized calypso music in America in the early ’50s with his infectious hit song, “Banana Boat Song” … also known as “Day-O,” which reached #5 on the Billboard charts in Jan. 1957, according to RAMP‘s resident chart guru, Steve Resnik. Belafonte’s breakthrough album, Calypso became the first ever record to sell more than one million copies in a single year. Of his many recordings, three others also reached the Top 20 — “Mary’s Boy Child” (#15, 01/05 56); “Jamaica Farewell” (#17, 02/09 56), and “Mama Look a Boo Boo” (#13, 05/04/57).
As a Black leading man who explored racial themes in his 1950s movies, Belafonte would later move on to work with his friend, Martin Luther King Jr. during the U.S. civil rights movement in the early ’60s. He later became the driving force behind the celebrity-studded, 1985 famine-fighting hit song “We Are the World.”
Among the many remembrances pouring in from all corners of the industry was this note from Motown Records’ founder Berry Gordy, who said, “My friend, Harry Belafonte, was truly a man of cause, conviction and principle. Besides being a great entertainer, he was a major political activist during the Civil Rights movement. I still remember the day in 1968 when Harry and I marched side by side on the Poor People’s March to Freedom. He will be missed, and my sincere condolences go out to his family.”
• Our friends at Benztown have created an Audio Tribute to Harry Belafonte, written and produced by Thomas Green and voiced by Darren Silva.
