My Boy Lollipop singer introduced the world to a new style of Jamaican music

‘‘I saw how the other half live. It’s something I chose to do.’’ Millie Small on being penniless in London with a young daughter

Millie Small

singer b October 6, 1946 or 1947 d May 5, 2020

Millie Small, who recorded and performed simply as Millie, was the first artist to bring ska music out of the Caribbean to a global audience, starting in her adopted Britain and later in the United States and beyond.

Discovered and managed by the Londonborn Jamaican-resident music producer Chris Blackwell, her teenage success, though fleeting, paved the way for first ska, then rocksteady and later reggae artists such as another Blackwell discovery, Bob Marley.

Although he said he hadn’t seen the reclusive singer in person for 12 years, Blackwell had been her guardian since she was a teenager, and it was he who revealed to the Jamaica

Observer that she had died in

London after an apparent stroke. ‘‘I would say she’s the person who took ska international,’’ he said. (She was variously reported to be 72 or 73.)

Small was a one-hit wonder – her lyrically shallow but catchy version of My Boy Lollipop reached No 2 in 1964 on both the US and British charts, second only to the Beach Boys’ I Get Around.

My Boy Lollipop sold seven million copies, still one of the best-selling ska or reggae songs. But a black female teenager with a near-falsetto voice singing electric Caribbean street music, rather than the gentle calypso of Harry Belafonte, was a new phenomenon during Britain’s ‘‘Swinging 60s’’ dominated by the Beatles, Rolling Stones, Motown and Bob Dylan.

Ska, which originated in Jamaica in the late 1950s, is usually defined by a ‘‘walking’’ bass line and an upstroke guitar chop on the off beat, known in Jamaica as the ‘‘skank’’, a rhythm that a decade later metamorphosed into reggae.

When Small arrived in New York from London in 1964, still in her teens, she received a rapturous welcome not far short of that given to the Beatles earlier that year. Thirty of New York’s finest had to bundle her through adoring, screaming and even dancing fans at the airport, while newsmen scrambled for footage or interviews. One fan presented her with what was described as ‘‘the world’s largest lollipop’’.

Although her later recordings, and three albums, had only limited success, Small became an icon among Britain’s black community after she sang what is considered one of the country’s first black protest songs.

In 1968, Right-wing Conservativemp and former cabinet minister Enoch Powell had made a fiery anti-immigration address that became known as the ‘‘rivers of blood’’ speech. It was still dividing Britons in 1970 when the pint-size Millie got onstage during a packed Caribbean music concert at London’s Empire Pool, since renamed the Wembley Arena. She sang a reggae song she called

Enoch Power, which contained references to the Jamaica capital city of Kingston and to Powell’s former constituency, Wolverhampton.

She had recorded the song only as the B-side of a single, but it had an empowering effect on Caribbean immigrants who had been invited by postwar governments to help rebuild the ‘‘mother country’’ after six years of war.

Millicent Dolly May Small was born on a sugar plantation in the small Jamaican spa town of Milk River. She was the youngest of 12 children of the plantation’s supervisor.

She was 12 when she won a high-profile talent contest, the Vere Johns Opportunity Hour. To pursue a singing career, she moved in with relatives in Kingston and recorded duets with some of the island’s top male ska musicians. Recording as Roy and Millie, she had a Jamaican hit with Roy Panton called We’ll meet.

That brought her to the attention of Blackwell, who, with her mother’s blessing, became her legal guardian and took her to London to give her singing, diction and dancing lessons. Blackwell had founded a new label, Island Records, as a 22-year-old in Jamaica in 1959 – the label that would later introduce Marley to the world.

Blackwell produced and in February 1964 released My Boy Lollipop, which had been written by Bobby Spencer (latterly of the Harlem-based group the Cadillacs) and first recorded in 1956 by a 14-year-old-white girl from Coney Island, called Barbie Gaye, to little acclaim.

Jamaican guitar maestro Ernest Ranglin made a new arrangement for Small. Pirate radio stations began playing it round-theclock, and soon the wide-grinning Millie was appearing on the biggest British TV shows.

By the early 1970s, she disappeared from public view and was believed to have lived in Singapore and New Zealand before returning to London for the rest of her life. She had a daughter, Jae lee, a London-based singer.

In a rare interview in 1987, she told London’s Thames TV channel that she had once been penniless in London, and that she and her infant daughter had lived in a youth hostel. ‘‘That’s all experience. It was great. I didn’t worry because I knew what I was doing. I saw how the other half live. It’s something I chose to do.’’ – Washington Post