Harry Belafonte
Harry Belafonte was an American singer, actor, and civil rights activist who popularized calypso music with international audiences in the 1950s and 1960s. Belafonte's career breakthrough album Calypso was the first million-selling LP by a single artist.
Belafonte was best known for his recordings of "Day-O ", "Jump in the Line ", "Jamaica Farewell", and "Mary's Boy Child". He recorded and performed in many genres, including blues, folk, gospel, show tunes, and American standards. He also starred in films such as Carmen Jones, Island in the Sun, Odds Against Tomorrow, Buck and the Preacher, and Uptown Saturday Night. He made his final feature film appearance in Spike Lee's BlacKkKlansman.
Harry Belafonte considered the actor, singer, and activist Paul Robeson to be a mentor. Belafonte was also a close confidant of Martin Luther King Jr. during the civil rights movement of the 1950s and 1960s and acted as the American Civil Liberties Union celebrity ambassador for juvenile justice issues. He was also a vocal critic of the policies of the George W. Bush and first Donald Trump administrations.
Belafonte won three Grammy Awards, including a Grammy Lifetime Achievement Award, a Primetime Emmy Award, and a Tony Award. In 1989, he received the Kennedy Center Honors. He was awarded the National Medal of Arts in 1994. In 2014, he received the Jean Hersholt Humanitarian Award at the academy's 6th Annual Governors Awards and in 2022 was inducted into the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame in the Early Influence category. He is one of the few performers to have received an Emmy, Grammy, Oscar, and Tony, although he won the Oscar in a non-competitive category.
Early life
Belafonte was born Harold George Bellanfanti Jr. on March 1, 1927, at Lying-in Hospital in Harlem, New York City, the son of Jamaican-born parents Harold George Bellanfanti Sr., who worked as a chef, and Melvine Love, a housekeeper. There are disputed claims of his father's place of birth, which is also stated as Martinique. Belafonte also had a younger brother named Dennis.His mother was the child of a Scottish Jamaican mother and an Afro-Jamaican father, and his father was the child of an Afro-Jamaican mother and a Dutch-Jewish father of Sephardic Jewish descent. Belafonte was raised Catholic and attended parochial school at St. Charles Borromeo.
From 1932 to 1940, Belafonte lived with one of his grandmothers in her native country of Jamaica, where he attended Wolmer's Schools. Upon returning to New York City, he had a brief, unsuccessful stay at George Washington High School. It was later reported that undiagnosed dyslexia and blindness in one eye contributed to his academic difficulties. After dropping out of high school, he joined the U.S. Navy and served during World War II. In the 1940s, he worked as a janitor's assistant, during which a tenant gave him, as a gratuity, two tickets to see the American Negro Theater. He fell in love with the art form and befriended Sidney Poitier, who was also financially struggling. They regularly purchased a single seat to local plays, trading places in between acts, after informing the other about the progression of the play.
At the end of the 1940s, Belafonte took classes in acting at the Dramatic Workshop of The New School in New York City with German director Erwin Piscator alongside Marlon Brando, Tony Curtis, Walter Matthau, Bea Arthur, and Poitier, while performing with the American Negro Theater. He subsequently received a Tony Award for his participation in the Broadway revue John Murray Anderson's Almanac.
He also starred in the 1955 Broadway revue 3 for Tonight with Gower Champion.
Musical career
Early years (1949–1955)
Belafonte started his career in music as a club singer in New York to pay for his acting classes. The first time he appeared in front of an audience, he was backed by the Charlie Parker band, which included Charlie Parker, Max Roach, and Miles Davis, among others. He launched his recording career as a pop singer on the Roost label in 1949, but quickly developed a keen interest in folk music, learning material through the Library of Congress' American folk songs archives. Along with guitarist and friend Millard Thomas, Belafonte soon made his debut at the jazz club The Village Vanguard. In 1953, he signed a contract with RCA Victor, recording exclusively for the label until 1974. Belafonte also performed during the Rat Pack era in Las Vegas. Belafonte's first widely released single, which went on to become his "signature" audience participation song in virtually all his live performances, was "Matilda", recorded April 27, 1953. Between 1953 and 1954, he was a cast member of the Broadway musical revue and sketch comedy show John Murray Anderson's Almanac where he sang "Mark Twain", of which he was also the songwriter.Rise to fame (1956–1958)
Following his success in the film Carmen Jones, Belafonte had his breakthrough album with Calypso, which became the first LP in the world to sell more than one million copies in a year. He stated that it was the first million-selling album ever in England. The album is number four on Billboards "Top 100 Album" list for having spent 31 weeks at number 1, 58 weeks in the top ten, and 99 weeks on the U.S. chart. The album introduced American audiences to calypso music, which had originated in Trinidad and Tobago in the early 19th century, and Belafonte was dubbed the "King of Calypso", a title he wore with reservations since he had no claims to any Calypso Monarch titles.One of the songs included in the album is "Banana Boat Song", listed as "Day-O" on the Calypso LP, which reached number five on the pop chart and featured its signature lyric "Day-O".
Many of the compositions recorded for Calypso, including "Banana Boat Song" and "Jamaica Farewell", gave songwriting credit to Irving Burgie.
In the United Kingdom, "Banana Boat Song" was released in March 1957 and spent ten weeks in the top 10 of the UK singles chart, reaching a peak of number two, and in August, "Island in the Sun" reached number three, spending 14 weeks in the top 10. In November, "Mary's Boy Child" reached number one in the UK, where it spent seven weeks.
Middle career (1959–1970)
While primarily known for calypso, Belafonte recorded in many different genres, including blues, folk, gospel, show tunes, and American standards. His second-most popular hit, which came immediately after "The Banana Boat Song", was the comedic tune "Mama Look at Bubu", also known as "Mama Look a Boo-Boo", originally recorded by Lord Melody in 1955, in which he sings humorously about misbehaving and disrespectful children. It reached number 11 on the pop chart.In 1959, Belafonte starred in Tonight With Belafonte, a nationally televised special that featured Odetta, who sang "Water Boy" and performed a duet with Belafonte of "There's a Hole in My Bucket" that hit the national charts in 1961. Belafonte was the first Jamaican American to win an Emmy, for Revlon Revue: Tonight with Belafonte. Two live albums, both recorded at Carnegie Hall in 1959 and 1960, enjoyed critical and commercial success. From his 1959 album, "Hava Nagila" became part of his regular routine and one of his signature songs. He was one of many entertainers recruited by Frank Sinatra to perform at the inaugural gala of President John F. Kennedy in 1961, which included Ella Fitzgerald and Mahalia Jackson, among others. Later that year, RCA Victor released another calypso album, Jump Up Calypso, which went on to become another million seller. During the 1960s he introduced several artists to U.S. audiences, most notably South African singer Miriam Makeba and Greek singer Nana Mouskouri. His album Midnight Special included Bob Dylan as harmonica player.
As the Beatles and other stars from Britain began to dominate the U.S. pop charts, Belafonte's commercial success diminished; 1964's Belafonte at The Greek Theatre was his last album to appear in Billboards Top 40. His last hit single, "A Strange Song", was released in 1967 and peaked at number 5 on the adult contemporary music charts. Belafonte received Grammy Awards for the albums Swing Dat Hammer and An Evening with Belafonte/Makeba, the latter of which dealt with the political plight of black South Africans under apartheid. He earned six Gold Records.
During the 1960s, Belafonte appeared on TV specials alongside artists such as Julie Andrews, Petula Clark, Lena Horne, and Nana Mouskouri. In 1967, Belafonte was the first non-classical artist to perform at the Saratoga Performing Arts Center in Upstate New York, soon to be followed by concerts there by the Doors, the 5th Dimension, the Who, and Janis Joplin.
From February 5 to 9, 1968, Belafonte guest hosted The Tonight Show substituting for Johnny Carson. Among his interview guests were Martin Luther King Jr. and Senator Robert F. Kennedy.
Later recordings and subsequent activities (1971–2017)
Belafonte's fifth and final calypso album, Calypso Carnival, was issued by RCA in 1971. Belafonte's recording activity slowed down after releasing his final album for RCA in 1974. From the mid-1970s to early 1980s, Belafonte spent most of his time on tour, which included concerts in Japan, Europe, and Cuba. In 1977, Columbia Records released the album Turn the World Around, with a strong focus on world music.In 1978, he appeared as a guest star on an episode of The Muppet Show, on which he performed his signature song "Day-O". However, the episode is best known for Belafonte's rendition of the spiritual song "Turn the World Around" from the album, which he performed with specially made Muppets that resembled African tribal masks. It became one of the series' most famous performances and was reportedly Jim Henson's favorite episode. After Henson's death in May 1990, Belafonte was asked to perform the song at Henson's memorial service. "Turn the World Around" was also included in the 2005 official hymnal supplement of the Unitarian Universalist Association, Singing the Journey.
From 1979 to 1989, Belafonte served on the Royal Winnipeg Ballet's board of directors.
In December 1984, soon after Band Aid, a group of British and Irish artists, released "Do They Know It's Christmas?", Belafonte decided to create an American benefit single for African famine relief. With fundraiser Ken Kragen, he enlisted Lionel Richie, Kenny Rogers, Stevie Wonder, Quincy Jones and Michael Jackson. The song they produced and recorded, "We Are the World", brought together some of the era's best-known American musicians and is the eighth-best-selling single of all time, with physical sales in excess of 20 million copies. In 1986 the American Music Awards named "We Are the World" Song of the Year, and honored Belafonte with the Award of Appreciation.
Belafonte released his first album of original material in over a decade, Paradise in Gazankulu, in 1988, which contained ten protest songs against the South African Apartheid policy, and was his last studio album. In the same year Belafonte, as UNICEF Goodwill Ambassador, attended a symposium in Harare, Zimbabwe, to focus attention on child survival and development in Southern African countries. As part of the symposium, he performed a concert for UNICEF. A Kodak video crew filmed the concert, which was released as a 60-minute concert video titled Global Carnival.
Following a lengthy recording hiatus, An Evening with Harry Belafonte and Friends, a soundtrack and video of a televised concert, were released in 1997 by Island Records. The Long Road to Freedom: An Anthology of Black Music, a multi-artist project recorded by RCA during the 1960s and 1970s, was finally released by the label in 2001. Belafonte went on the Today Show to promote the album on September 11, 2001, and was interviewed by Katie Couric just minutes before the first plane hit the World Trade Center. The album was nominated for the 2002 Grammy Awards for Best Boxed Recording Package, for Best Album Notes, and for Best Historical Album.
Belafonte received the Kennedy Center Honors in 1989. He was awarded the National Medal of Arts in 1994 and he won a Grammy Lifetime Achievement Award in 2000. He performed sold-out concerts globally through the 1950s to the 2000s. His last concert was a benefit concert for the Atlanta Opera on October 25, 2003. In a 2007 interview, he stated that he had since retired from performing.
On January 29, 2013, Belafonte was the keynote speaker and 2013 honoree for the MLK Celebration Series at the Rhode Island School of Design. Belafonte used his career and experiences with King to speak on the role of artists as activists.
Belafonte was inducted as an honorary member of Phi Beta Sigma fraternity on January 11, 2014.
In March 2014, Belafonte was awarded an honorary doctorate from Berklee College of Music in Boston.
In 2017, Belafonte released When Colors Come Together, an anthology of some of his earlier recordings, produced by his son David, who wrote lyrics for an updated version of "Island In The Sun", arranged by longtime Belafonte musical director Richard Cummings, and featuring Harry Belafonte's grandchildren Sarafina and Amadeus and a children's choir.