The granddaddy of all live albums, this double-LP set captures the excitement of a Harry Belafonte concert at the height of his popularity. Sampled from two consecutive performances of identical material, Belafonte at Carnegie Hall was an anomaly at a time when only comedy albums were recorded outside of the studio environment. It wasn't the first ...
RCA's Very Best of Harry Belafonte fulfills the title in fine fashion, compiling 20 of his best-known hits onto a single CD (though it cheats slightly by adding a pair of unreleased tracks, "Bam Bam Bamba" and "Two Brothers"). Fans of his breakout Calypso LP from 1956 will find several tracks here -- the obvious "Banana Boat Song (Day-O)" plus ...
This is the album that made Harry Belafonte's career. Up to this point, calypso had only been a part of Belafonte's focus in his recordings of folk music styles. But with this landmark album, calypso not only became tattooed to Belafonte permanently; it had a revolutionary effect on folk music in the 1950s and '60s. The album consists of songs ...
All Time Greatest Hits collects most of Harry Belafonte's biggest calypso hits, including "Banana Boat (Day-O)." ~ Stephen Thomas Erlewine, All Music Guide
On May 2, 1960, Harry Belafonte returned to Carnegie Hall for what was supposed to be one of the last concerts in the venerable hall's last season. Carnegie was scheduled to be torn down, although this was an edict that was thankfully short-lived. The hall was instead renovated and remains one of New York's premier showplaces. The first Carnegie ...
An Evening With Harry Belafonte & Friends is an album to accompany the live performance of the same shown on PBS television stations in 1997. It is a remarkable album, especially considering Belafonte's longevity. The album contains multiple songs dealing with oppression and freedom, as it is one of Belafonte's major endeavors. There are some ...
Recorded in the year 2000 in Bremen and in Hawaii, Hanapepe Dream is ethnomusicologist, guitarist, and composer Taj Mahal's own gumbo of Caribbean, Polynesian, African, and American folk roots styles done up in the glorious dress of "song," for anyone who has ears to hear, feet to shuffle, and an ass to shake. Featuring a large band replete with ...
Two of Trinidad's greatest calypsonians -- both of whom excelled into the age of soca -- on one disc? It's like heaven. After all, these two dominated Trinidad's Carnival Road March from 1956-1972, and a number of those winning songs are here, from Sparrow's "May May" to Kitchener's "Miss Tourist." But simply, there's not a single dud among the 16 ...
Harry Belafonte's influence on pop music is much more far reaching then many realize, as he was one of the first performers to bring worldbeat rhythms to the U.S. charts in the postwar era. Born in Harlem, but spending a good part of his childhood in his mother's native Jamaica, Belafonte grew up straddling cultures and musical styles, and ...
Issued in the British Isles, this CD combines the contents of two Harry Belafonte LPs: The Many Moods of Belafonte, released in November 1962, and Ballads, Blues and Boasters, released in September 1964. The two albums were not consecutive releases; in between, Belafonte put out the 1963 collection Streets I Have Walked. The logical question, then ...
A three-disc box set, this anthology might be too much material for the casual Harry Belafonte fan, although there are some wonderful rare recordings included here for the collectors. The first disc is essentially a greatest-hits sequence, including his most famous Caribbean-based songs like "Banana Boat Song (Day-O)" and "Jump in the Line." The ...
The steel drum ensemble has a relatively recent history, emerging in Trinidad in the 1930s out of jump up groups who marched in festive Carnival processions banging all manner of car parts, pots, pans and tins, until the loose concept of a "steel orchestra" began to take shape. Things were helped along immeasurably when Winston "Spree" Simon began ...
Curiously, given the title of this repackaging of three European Harry Belafonte CDs, none of them is precisely an "original" release. And, in fact, they cover material from four, not three LPs, plus a couple of other stray tracks. But such qualifications are only to suggest that 3 Originals actually contains more music than you might expect. At a ...
A straight-up budget reissue of a '70s golden hits package (minus the fake electronic stereo), this brings together all of Harry's early calypso hits. Highlights include "Matilda," "Man Smart (Woman Smarter)," "Jamaica Farewell," and the obligatory "Day-O (Banana Boat Song)." Belafonte was the first great popularizer of calypso music in America, ...
This brief anthology collects some of the highlights of Harry Belafonte's long stint at RCA Victor from 1952 until his exit from the label's roster in 1972. While at RCA Belafonte was instrumental in introducing world music styles into the pop mainstream, and his tireless endorsement of folk music across all cultures led to a series of releases ...
True calypso masks hard, unflinching social commentary in bright melodies and rhythms, and although it is very much a dance music, its infatuation with sexuality, cultural inequities, street gossip, violent situations, and eye for an eye revenge scenarios coupled with its full use of bravado, humor, inflated rhetoric, and private metaphors means ...
Belafonte was an established all-around entertainer and actor by the time of this album, so it could be seen in a sense as a return to "roots" styles. In any case, it's all-out calypso, with backing by the Trinidad Steel Band, and qualifies as one of his most energetic albums, even getting rambunctious at times. ~ Richie Unterberger, All Music ...
The original release of Again! in 1975 was a reunion of sorts for Trinidad's Slinger Francisco (known to most of the world as Mighty Sparrow) and Jamaica's Byron Lee, who had first marketed themselves together on 1967's Only a Fool. Marketed is the right word here, since the two don't really collaborate but sort of do their respective things side ...
An otherwise fine retrospective of many of Harry Belafonte's best-known performances from the 1950s is spoiled by RCA producer Ethel Gabriel's insistence upon using the disastrous "electronic reprocessing" system (tinny high end on one channel, muffled low end on the other) that destroyed so many reissues in the 1960s and '70s. Although most of ...
All of the material on this 26-song, 73-minute CD was recorded for Moe Asch of Folkways Records between 1946 and 1961; half of the tracks were previously unreleased. It may be that many of the arrangements he used were more accessible to American ears than those used by some of his calypso peers, or just that the fidelity on many of these numbers ...
As a budget-line introduction to the artistry of Harry Belafonte, Folk Standards does its job -- while more definitive collections are certainly available, this brief ten-track compilation still manages to include many of the singer's biggest hits, among them "Cocoanut Woman" and the seminal "Banana Boat (Day-O)." ~ Jason Ankeny, All Music Guide
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