music friday: harry belafonte
Friday, April 28, 2023
I'm like a lot of people ... I toss around the word "legend" too often. But Harry Belafonte was a legend.
When I was growing up, I assumed certain things were specific to our family. So I thought the fact that we owned Harry Belafonte's album Calypso was unique. Well, it wasn't. As with so many things, what I saw as unique was just being a typical middle-class suburban family in the 1950s. Calypso was the first LP to sell more than one million copies. It was ubiquitous, even if I didn't realize it at the time. Here are a few of the "lesser-known" songs from that album:
A few years later, his Belafonte at Carnegie Hall was another monster hit:
A few years later, "Matilda" inspired Allan Sherman to record his version for his first album, which was also a monster success:
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