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The Serbian comedy rock band the Kuguars, consisting of famous Serbian actors, covered the song in 1998, with lyrics in Serbian dedicated to the, at the time, Yugoslav national soccer team player Dejan "Dejo" Savićević. The song became a nationwide hit, and a promotional video for the song had been recorded. It is a call and response work song, from the point of view of dock workers working the night shift loading bananas onto ships. The lyrics describe how daylight has come, their shift is over, and they want their work to be counted up so that they can go home. For an ad campaign that started in 1991, now-defunct Seattle-based department store chain The Bon Marché used a version of the song with alternate lyrics in their commercials.
Eric Clapton wrote "Layla" about his love for Pattie Harrison, who was married to George Harrison at the time. He eventually married Pattie, and managed to stay friends with George. A variation of this song (a sample is "Day-O, One-Day Sale, Sunday Only at the Bon Marche) was used in sale commercials for the now-defunct Bon Marche high-end department store chain for many years. "The Bon" was very prominent in the Pacific Northwest, which is where I live and was taken over by Macy's some years ago. In 1980, Canadian children's singer Raffi covered the song, releasing it as a single from his album Baby Beluga. Talking Heads drummer Chris Frantz on where the term "new wave" originated, the story of "Naive Melody," and why they never recorded another cover song after "Take Me To The River."
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OnDecember 23rd, 1956, two versions of "The Banana Boat Show" entered Billboard's Top 100 chart; the Fontane Sisters version peaked at #13 and spent 18 weeks on the Top 100 while Sarah Vaughan's version reached #19 and stayed on the Top 100 for 14 weeks... When he hears the lyric about the "deadly black taranch-la" (actually the highly venomous Brazilian wandering spider, commonly dubbed "banana spider"), the beatnik protests, "No, man! Don't sing about spiders, I mean, oooo! like I don't dig spiders". Freberg's version was popular, reaching number 25 on the US Top 40 charts in 1957, and received much radio airplay; Harry Belafonte reportedly disliked the parody. The song was first recorded by Trinidadian singer Edric Connor and his band Edric Connor and the Caribbeans on the 1952 album Songs From Jamaica; the song was called "Day Dah Light". Belafonte based his version on Connor's 1952 and Louise Bennett's 1954 recordings. And on January 24th, 1957 the Tarriers' covered version reached #4 on Billboard's Most Played by Jockeys chart...
In 1955, American singer-songwriters Lord Burgess and William Attaway wrote a version of the lyrics for The Colgate Comedy Hour, in which the song was performed by Harry Belafonte. Belafonte recorded the song for RCA Victor and this is the version that is best known to listeners today, as it reached number five on the Billboard charts in 1957 and later became Belafonte's signature song. Side two of Belafonte's 1956 Calypso album opens with "Star O", a song referring to the day shift ending when the first star is seen in the sky. During recording, when asked for its title, Harry spells, "Day Done Light". Also in 1956, folk singer Bob Gibson, who had traveled to Jamaica and heard the song, taught his version to the folk band the Tarriers. They recorded a version of that song that incorporated the chorus of "Hill and Gully Rider", another Jamaican folk song.
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It's the same tune except the dock workers are starting their shift. My dad played it often when I was growing up so it reminds me of my childhood. He co-composed "Day-O ", and on February 14th, 1957 Harry Belafonte's original version of the song peaked at #5 on Billboard's Top 100 chart, it spent twenty weeks on the Top 100...
The song has mento influences, but it is commonly classified as an example of the better known calypso music. Collaborating with T Bone Burnett, Leslie Phillips changed her name and left her Christian label behind - Robert Plant, who recorded one of her songs on Raising Sand, is a fan. One of the first hit songs used in a major marketing campaign was "Start Me Up" by The Rolling Stones. The "Don't Stop Believin'" resurgence started when the Journey song was used in a roller skating scene of the 2003 movie Monster.
DayO (Banana Boat Song)
Cure lead singer Robert Smith originally wrote "Lovesong" as a wedding present for his fiancée, Mary, shortly before their marriage. When initially recording the song, being asked for the title, Harry named it, "Day Done Light". During the first leg of the thirty-second season of the American version of The Amazing Race, contestants had to play a section of the song on a steelpan during a Roadblock challenge. Find the exact moment in a TV show, movie, or music video you want to share. The country sweetheart opines about the demands of touring and talks about writing songs with her famous father. For what it's worth; the song at #2 was "Young Love" by Sonny James, while at #3 was Tab Hunter's version of the same song...
This release became their biggest hit, reaching number four on the pop charts, where it outperformed Belafonte's version. The Tarriers' version was recorded by the Fontane Sisters, Sarah Vaughan, and Steve Lawrence in 1956, all of whom charted in the US Top 40, and by Shirley Bassey in 1957, whose recording became a hit in the United Kingdom. The Tarriers, or some subset of the three members of the group are sometimes credited as the writers of the song. As noted above, also in 1957 four other covered versions charted on Billboard's national charts, Fontane Sisters , Steve Lawrence , Sarah Vaughan , and Stan Freberg's parody version reached #25 on the Best-Sellers in Stores chart...
Popular Harry Belafonte Lyrics
In the TV series Legends of Tomorrow season 2 episode 14 "Moonshot", the character Martin Stein abruptly starts singing the song to cause a distraction. The Fontane Sisters recorded the Tarriers version in a recording of the song for Dot Records in 1956. "Louie Louie" was first recorded in 1955 by an R&B singer named Richard Berry, and his lyrics are easy to understand. When The Kingsmen recorded the hit version, their lyrics were indecipherable.
It was sung by Beetlejuice and Lydia in the first episode of the television animated series, and it appeared in the Broadway musical adaptation. The Rockin Roll Morning show on KOMP 92.3 created a flash video called Osama bin Laden Nowhere to run - nowhere to hide that features United States Secretary of Defense Colin Powell singing a parody of the song about Osama bin Laden getting bombed. German band Trio performed a parody with "Bommerlunder" substituted for the words "daylight come" in the 1980s. Sarah Vaughan and an orchestra conducted by David Carroll recorded a jazzy version for Mercury Records in 1956, credited to Darling, Carey, and Arkin of the Tarriers.
Chilean program 31 minutos used the song "Arwrarwrirwrarwro" by Bombi which was based on "Day-O ". The Swedish humor show Rally, which aired between 1995 and 2002 in Sveriges Radio P3 made a version called "Hey Mr. Taliban", which speaks about Osama Bin Laden.
At the time the Tarriers' original version was at #7 on Billboard's Best Seller in Stores chart; and one position higher at #6 was Harry Belafonte's covered version of the song... The story told in the lyrics is actually horror-inspiring, as banana boat stevedores were little better than slaves, peons at mildest. And theirs were extremely hard lives, filled with especially cruel treatment from their bosses and/or forepeople. Worst of all was that so many of them were killed on the job from being literally worked to death--and treated as expendable. The original 1956 Belafonte recording is heard in the 1988 film Beetlejuice in a dinner scene in which the guests are supernaturally compelled to dance along to the song by the film's protagonists.
In the TV series The Muppet Show season 3 episode 14, Harry Belafonte performs the song accompanied by Fozzie Bear and other muppets. Fozzie Bear requests to be a tally man as identified in the lyrics of the song. Harry Belafonte explains what a tally man is as he proceeds to sing with other muppets accompanying singing the songs answer.
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