The Song "My Boy Lollipop" And The American Roots Of Jamaican Ska Music

The LimePopsicle, August 10, 2010

This is the original version of this song, originally spelled "My Boy Lollypop". Barbie was 14 at the time of this recording. Millie Small did a remake in 1964 which became a huge hit. It's said that songwriter Ellie Greenwich enjoyed this recording so much that she used "Ellie Gaye" as her first recording name as a tribute. Did not chart nationally in Billboard, but released as a single in 1956. Written by Robert Spencer and Johnny Roberts. B-side is "Say You Understand". **** Edited by Azizi Powell This pancocojams post showcases a sound file of the record "My Boy Lollipop" that was recorded in 1956 by White American Barbie Gaye. This post also showcases a YouTube video of "My Boy Lollipop" that was recorded in 1964 by Jamaican Millie Small. This post also includes an excerpt from the Wikipedia page about the history of Ska music as well as the Wikipedia page about the song "My Boy Lollipop". The content of this pancocojams post is presented for historical, socio-cultural, entertainment, and aesthetic purposes. All copyrights remain with their owners. Thanks to the composers of the "My Boy Lollipop" song. Thanks to Barbie Gaye and Millie Smalls for their musical and cultural legacies. Thanks to all those who were associated with these songs and thanks to the publishers of these records on YouTube. Thanks also to all those who are quoted in this post. **** SHOWCASE YOUTUBE EXAMPLE #2 - Millie Small My Boy Lollipop 1964 HQ
Greaser Greaser, April 16, 2012 **** EXCERPT OF THE WIKIPEDIA PAGE ABOUT SKA MUSIC https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ska
" "Ska" is a music genre that originated in Jamaica in the late 1950s and was the precursor to rocksteady and reggae.[1] It combined elements of Caribbean mento and calypsowith American jazz and rhythm and blues. Ska is characterized by a walking bass line accented with rhythms on the off beat. It was developed in Jamaica in the 1960s when Stranger Cole, Prince Buster, Clement "Coxsone" Dodd, and Duke Reid formed sound systems to play American rhythm and blues and then began recording their own songs.[2] In the early 1960s, ska was the dominant music genre of Jamaica and was popular with British mods and with many skinheads.[3][4][5][6]

Music historians typically divide the history of ska into three periods: the original Jamaican scene of the 1960s; the 2 Tone ska revival of the late 1970s in Britain, which fused Jamaican ska rhythms and melodies with the faster tempos and harder edge of punk rock forming ska-punk; and third wave ska, which involved bands from a wide range of countries around the world, in the late 1980s and 1990s.[7]

[...]

After World War II, Jamaicans purchased radios in increasing numbers and were able to hear rhythm and blues music from the Southern United States in cities such as New Orleans by artists such as Fats Domino, Barbie Gaye, Rosco Gordon and Louis Jordan[15] whose early recordings all contain the seeds of the "behind-the-beat" feel of ska and reggae.[16] The stationing of American military forces during and after the war meant that Jamaicans could listen to military broadcasts of American music, and there was a constant influx of records from the United States. To meet the demand for that music, entrepreneurs such as Prince Buster, Coxsone Dodd, and Duke Reid formed sound systems.

As the supply of previously unheard tunes in the jump blues and more traditional R&B genres began to dry up in the late 1950s, Jamaican producers began recording their own version of the genres with local artists.[2] These recordings were initially made to be played on "soft wax" (a lacquer on metal disc acetate later to become known as a "dub plate"), but as demand for them grew eventually sometime in the second half of 1959 (believed by most to be in the last quarter) producers such as Coxsone Dodd and Duke Reid began to issue these recording on 45rpm 7-inch discs. At this point, the style was a direct copy of the American "shuffle blues" style, but within two or three years it had morphed into the more familiar ska style with the off-beat guitar chop that could be heard in some of the more uptempo late-1950s American rhythm and blues recordings such as Domino's "Be My Guest" and Barbie Gaye's "My Boy Lollypop", both of which were popular on Jamaican sound systems of the late 1950s.[17] Domino's rhythm, accentuating the offbeat, was a particular influence.[18]

[...]

Famous ska band the Skatalites recorded "Dynamite", "Ringo" and "Guns of Navarone".[20] One theory about the origin of ska is that Prince Buster created it during the inaugural recording session for his new record label Wild Bells.[19] The session was financed by Duke Reid, who was supposed to get half of the songs to release. The guitar began emphasizing the second and fourth beats in the bar, giving rise to the new sound. The drums were taken from traditional Jamaican drumming and marching styles. To create the ska beat, Prince Buster essentially flipped the R&B shuffle beat, stressing the offbeats with the help of the guitar. Prince Buster has explicitly cited American rhythm and blues as the origin of ska: specifically, Willis Jackson's song "Later for the Gator" (which was Coxsone Dodd's number one selection).

****.
EXCERPT FROM THE WIKIPEDIA PAGE ABOUT THE 1956 & 1964 RECORDS "MY BOY LOLLIPOP" https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/My_Boy_Lollipop ""My Boy Lollipop" (originally "My Girl Lollypop") is a song written in the mid-1950s by Robert Spencer of the doo-wop group The Cadillacs, and usually credited to Spencer, Morris Levy, and Johnny Roberts. It was first recorded in 1956 by American singer Barbie Gaye under the title "My Boy Lollypop". A later version recorded by Jamaican singer Millie Small in 1964, with very similar rhythm, became an international hit that time and is one of the first songs to introduce ska music.

Barbie Gaye original version

The original song "My Girl Lollypop" was written by Robert Spencer of the doo-wop group The Cadillacs. Notorious record company executive Morris Levy agreed to purchase the song from Spencer. Although not involved in writing the song, Levy and alleged gangster Johnny Roberts listed themselves as the song's authors. In an effort to avoid sharing any royalties with Spencer, Levy removed Spencer's name from the original writing credits. Levy even claimed that Robert Spencer was his pseudonym.[1]

The song caught the attention of one of Levy's partners, the later convicted mobster and music mogul Gaetano Vastola, aka "Corky". Vastola had recently discovered 14-year-old singer Barbie Gaye (born Barbara Gaffney) after hearing her sing on a street corner in Coney Island, Brooklyn.

Vastola was so impressed that he immediately took her to meet New York radio DJ Alan Freed. Gaye sang a few songs for them and Freed was equally impressed. Vastola became Gaye's manager and within days, he acquired the sheet music and lyrics for "My Girl Lollypop" from Levy. He gave them to Gaye, with no specific instructions except to change the gender of the song's subject and be ready to perform it by the following week. Gaye changed the song's title to "My Boy Lollypop" and rewrote the song accordingly. She added non-lyrical utterances such as "whoa" and "uh oh", chose the notes for the lyrics, shortened and lengthened notes, decided which lyrics to repeat ("I love ya, I love ya, I love ya so") and added the word "dandy" to describe the subject.[citation needed]

When it came time to record, Gaye cut school and took thesubway to a recording studio in Midtown Manhattan. Gaye met the three members of the session band, guitarist Leroy Kirkland, saxophonist Al Sears and drummer Panama Francis. The band leader, Kirkland, asked Gaye to sing the song for them. After listening to her, they improvised music to match her vocals. They decided to record the song in a relatively new style of R&B called shuffle.

The four musicians, including the white teenage girl, went into the studio and recorded the song in one take. Barbie Gaye was paid $200 for her writing contributions to "My Boy Lollypop" and her studio recording.[2] The shuffle sound was developed in the early 1940s in America's black community and made popular by Professor Longhair, Rosco Gordon and Louis Jordan. The Jamaican artists, Clement "Coxsone" Dodd and Arthur "Duke" Reid, introduced the R&B shuffle beat to Jamaica in the late 1950s.[3]

Barbie Gaye's recording was released as a single by Darl Records in late 1956. It was heavily played by Alan Freed, and listener requests made the song No. 25 on Freed's Top 25 on WINS, New York in November 1956.[4] The record sold in sufficient quantities locally to gain her a place in Freed's annual Christmas show at the New York Paramount in December 1956, when she opened for Little Richard. The following year, Gaye toured with Richard and Fats Domino. The singer and songwriter Ellie Greenwich, then a teenager living on Long Island, was so taken by the record that she named herself Ellie Gaye when she embarked on her recording career.[5][6] Gaye's recording of "My Boy Lollypop" was popular in New York City, and a few other Northeastern cities. In the late 1950s, Chris Blackwell, founder of Island Records, sold copies of the song to the Jamaican Sound Systems,[7] where it became a popular song among sound system patrons, despite the fact that its singer was not of African descent.[8] Her manager, Gaetano Vastola, routinely counterfeited his artists' music to keep all the profits, so the record's sales are difficult to determine.[9]"... -snip- Barbie Gaye's "My Boy Lollipop" record is categorized as Rhythm & Blues. **** Thanks for visiting pancocojams.

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