Millie Small’s enduring legacy
My Boy Lollipop
My boy lollipop
You make my heart go giddy up You are as sweet as candy You’re my sugar dandy
My boy lollipop
Never ever leave me
Because it would grieve me My heart told me so
I love you, I love you, I love you so But I don’t want you to know
I need you, I need you, I need you so And I’ll never let you go
My boy lollipop
You make my heart go giddy up You set my heart on fire
You are my one desire
My boy lollipop
Millie Small are forgotten. How many are aware of the evolution of the sound and the history that spans an age from Millie Small to Shenseea? How many remember where it started?
The names of men swirl around in the industry’s hall of fame and the consciousness in a world dominated by men. Nothing can be taken away from the greatest in the field, the immortal Bob Marley, who “doth bestride” the music “like a Colossus, and we petty men walk under his huge legs” (Julius Caesar). However, this is music that passed through phases of metamorphosis from Ska to Rock Steady to Reggae with its own sub-types to DJ Dub to Dancehall. And along that road trod many stars like Jimmy Cliff, Toots Hibbert, Don Drummond and Buju Banton. But it all started with a teenage girl.
Millie Small (1946 – 2020) was the first singer to rocket Jamaican popular music to the international charts. She exploded onto the British and the American pop charts with “My Boy Lollipop” in 1964, the first Jamaican to make it to number one in the UK and number 2 in the USA. She was discovered, nurtured, and shepherded to fame by producer Chris Blackwell, who later managed Bob Marley and The Wailers. Such was her impact on the world, that her place was described in elevated language by The Guardian of London. She is named as the singer who introduced the Ska to an international audience and brought Jamaican music to worldwide recognition.
Small was born in Clarendon, Jamaica, the daughter of “a poorly paid overseer on a sugar estate” and she had 7 brothers and 5 sisters (The Guardian). She joined the music industry, propelled by the captivating, lilting quality of her voice, as a young teenager in 1962, recording a few popular numbers without making a much of a stir, until she was contracted and taken to London by Blackwell.
At that time, the Jamaican music industry was developing rapidly, and the definitive Jamaican rhythm known as Ska, had gained much ground from its hybrid origins in folk music, the mento, Christian spiritualist folk religions and American R&B. Jimmy Cliff had made some ground with hits like “Hurricane Hattie”, a comment on the tropical storm Hattie that wreaked havoc. Ska was the dominant popular music that had already caught the imagination of popular culture and in the dance halls.
But it was Small’s international hit recording produced by Blackwell and arranged by Jamaican guitarist Ernest Ranglin, that brought it to the world’s attention. Ska was sometimes called “the Blue Beat” in the UK, and indeed, the mix in the recording of “My Boy Lollipop” deliberately sweetened the music and polished the rhythm somewhat, removing some of the rough edges to enhance its appeal and popularity in the mainstream music of the First World. That was successful to the tune of the sale of some 7 million copies – unprecedented for this musical type.
This “opened the door for Jamaican music to the world” (Blackwell). Others walked through it, such as Desmond Dekker, who was the second Jamaican singer to crash into the European charts and market before Marley. By the time of breakthrough by Desmond Dekker and The Aces in 1967, Ska had transformed into Rock Steady, a slower, more brooding, and heavier rhythm than the more joyful Ska, driven by the bass. A number of great musicians contributed to that, including legendary trombonist Don Drummond (“Don D” or simply, “The D”), who learnt his music in the Alpha Boys School, an institution that nurtured the poor and the unprivileged.
Rock Steady grew out of the ghetto, an environment about which it produced many commentaries about the lifestyle and the emerging sub-culture. It was out of this that Dekker’s hit “007 /Shanty Town” rose to be a number one hit in the UK and Europe. This was followed by similarly rooted “Poor Me Israelite”, and the popular “A It Mek”. This was an inheritance from Small’s earlier success.
Reggae evolved out of Rock Steady and was in vogue by 1968. By 1970, it had influenced poetry, developing a form of performance poetry – Dub Poetry. As Reggae blasted its way up the ladder into international mainstream music led by Marley and then others such as Third World, Dub was evolving another offshoot, later to be called Dancehall. By the time we get to 2020, dancehall had already become the dominant form, still shaking the world, and producing Grammy Award winners.
According to The Guardian, Small “helped shift the parameters by which British listeners understood music, adjusting their ears to the offbeat but addictive Ska rhythm”. The Caribbean Beat in-flight magazine quoted a fan of Reggae as telling the magazine’s music writer, “when dem write the history of Reggae, Desmond Dekker name haffi een deh”. The same, if not more, can be said for Millicent Dolly May Small, whose case for inclusion is carried through The Guardian newspaper’s lofty praise. But the name of Millie Small already “een deh”.