ENJOYING
Songwriting great going strong at 93
ELVIS’ SWIVELING hips, rock and roll, and a hit parade of pop and country ruled the 1956 music scene when a seemingly modest Caribbean calypso album struck “gold” for Brooklyn-born songwriter Irving Burgie.
And the music industry was forever changed.
The album was singer Harry Belafonte’s groundbreaking “Calypso,” the first million-selling album by a single artist in history. And Burgie’s tunes — eight of the longplaying album’s 11 songs — fueled phenomenal sales figures and set a new industry benchmark.
Known for the popular versions of the timeless “Day-O (The Banana Boat Song),” “Jamaica Farewell” and others, Burgie’s musical creations have made it onto the Billboard charts, into Hollywood films and even into outer space. He is not resting on his laurels. “I’ve lived a wonderful life,” Burgie reminisced recently. “My two boys both graduated from Yale University. I’ve really been around the world a couple of times with my family, in a leisurely manner,” he said, linking his good fortune to his continued successes.
With a lifetime of accomplishments already logged, Burgie, who turns 93 on Friday, has set some new goals — an album featuring of some of the songs he wrote for Belafonte, starting a music program for schoolchildren, and making a musical film he’d like Rihanna to star in.
“I’m working with a musical I’ve been nursing all these years,” he said of “Ballad for Bimshire.” He’s crafting a screenplay version of the 1963 Off-Broadway show that was set in Barbados and starred Ossie Davis. Burgie is hoping Rihanna (photo below) might get involved.
“I’m trying to make a connection with Rihanna,” he said. “I want her to star in it.”His Caribbean connections may strike a chord with the Barbadosborn songstress. Burgie’s mother was a native of Barbados — and he penned the national anthem for the former British colony.
A member of the Songwriters Hall of Fame, his songs have sold well around the world and they’ve been covered by famous performers, including Jimmy Buffett, Brian Wilson of The Beach Boys, Carly Simon, Chuck Berry and Sam Cooke, but Burgie’s initial fame is tied to Belafonte, “Calypso” and “Day-O.”
Belafonte, a handsome folk singer, was already headed to stardom with a 1955 hit album when “Calypso,” propelled by “Day-O,” shook the industry the following year. Under his stage name, Lord Burgess, Burgie wrote more than 30 songs for the increasingly popular Belafonte, on three albums from the 1956 to the early 1960s.
Before it appeared on the “Calypso” album, Burgie’s version of “Day-O” (cowritten by William Attaway) was originally created for a Belafonte performance with the “Song of the Century on “The Colgate Comedy Award” from Cherry Lane Music Hour” television variety show. publishers and the Sunshine
As he did with “Jamaica Farewell,” Music Awards. Burgie wrote new lyrics for “And of course you, remember “Day-O,” creating the now-famous the ‘Beetlejuice’ thing,” he said excitedly version from a traditional about “Day-O’s” use in the Caribbean folk song. 1988 Oscar-winning Tim Burton
“It’s been used in all types of situations film, starring Michael Keaton. — baseball games, football The song was the key element of games, basketball games — besides the movie soundtrack and a memorable show business,” the songwriter scene when ghost-possessed said about “Day-O” — dinner guests sing, dance named one of the select “Top 365 and sway around the table to the Songs of the Twentieth Century,” tune. by the Recording Industry Association The song was so popular it of America and recognized even had listeners in outer space. It was twice used as a NASAtransmitted wakeup call to rouse sleeping Space Shuttle astronauts, in 1990 and 1997.
A native New Yorker, he was born in 1924 in a Brooklyn apartment, with the help of a midwife. Viola Calendar, his mother, was an immigrant from Barbados who found employment as a domestic worker. His father, Louis Burgie, came to New York from a small town in Virginia, and worked as a day laborer at a slaughter house.
As a youngster, he was a typical city kid when outdoors — taking swims at the Coney Island beach, playing stickball, punch ball, stoop ball and other street games.
But the atmosphere in his “West Indian” home was less playful for Burgie, his older sister and younger brother.
“West Indian parents considered the American way of life too loose compared to West Indian standards. Since my mother ran the household, we were strongly influenced by aspects of the culture of the West Indies,” Burgie wrote in his 2007 autobiography. “Kids (of West Indian parents) kept out of trouble, not for