Jester Hairston - Every UK Number 1

The Intro

So we reach the end of 1978. Finally, the singles chart and pop in general has become important to the public once more. Singles by Wings, Boney M and John Travolta and Olivia Newton-John remain among the biggest sellers of all time. Punk may have never officially had a number 1, but its presence had shaken pop up, and god was it needed. As the 70s draws to a close, the chart-toppers take on a whole new freshness and 1979 is the most exciting year for pop number 1s in over 10 years.

Before

But first, this. Manufactured disco quartet Boney M capped off an enormously successful year with the festive number 1. Rivers of Babylon had been number 1 for five weeks in the spring/summer of 1978. It was the bestseller that year and is still the seventh best-selling single of all time in the UK. The album it came from, Nightflight to Venus, was also huge and also spawned Rasputin. Number 1 across Europe, it stalled at two here, and unlike most of their oeuvre, I can enjoy that one. Maybe.

In November, the mastermind behind Boney M, Frank Farian, assembled the group to hastily record a Christmas single. He decided to cover Mary’s Boy Child, which had been the UK Christmas number 1 for US singer Harry Belafonte in 1957.

If you read my review of that single when it was live here, or have since read my book Every UK Number 1: The 50s, you’ll know it was composed by Jester Hairston. His friend, who he was at the time sharing a room with, asked Hairston to write him a song for a birthday party. He came up with the calypso tune He Pone and Chocolate Tea but it was quickly forgotten about. But when the composer Walter Schumann asked Hairston for a festive song for Schumann’s Hollywood Choir to perform in 1956, he reworked He Pone and Chocolate Tea and it became Mary’s Boy Child. Belafonte heard the choir’s rendition and recorded it that year, before releasing a longer version the following year. It was the latter which took the Christmas top spot.

Farian, the opportunist that he was, decided to tack a new song on the end, therefore ensuring he and Fred Jay would receive royalties.

Review

Mary’s Boy Child/Oh My Love may be the 12th biggest-selling UK number 1 of all time, but it leaves me as cold as the weather that winter. This is the weakest Christmas number 1 since Little Jimmy Osmond in 1972. Farian takes a stately festive ballad and gives it the cheesy disco-lite touch. He keeps it similar enough to the original to perhaps encourage record buyers ready for some 50s nostalgia, while making it disco enough for the young at the time. The result is a tacky, boring affair. And if it wasn’t already too long, the Oh My Lord section then starts up and it seems as though Boney M are never going to stop. I love Christmas tackiness, but I find it very hard to think of any positives here.

After

Boney M’s huge sales dropped from here on in. In 1979 they reached 10 with Painter Man. But Hooray! Hooray! It’s a Holi-Holiday peaked at three that summer and remained a kids’ holiday club staple well into the 80s. Their next album Oceans of Fantasy spawned double A-side Gotta Go Home/El Lute, which reached 12 and I’m Born Again, which went to 35. Their last new song to reach the top 40 was the interestingly named We Kill the World (Don’t Kill the World). It only got to 39 in 1981. That same year, the dancer Bobby Farrell, who mimed to Farian’s vocals, was sacked for being too unreliable.

In 1982 Reggie Tsiboe replaced Farrell but it made little difference to Boney M’s decline. Farrell eventually returned but in 1986 Farian had got bored and pulled the plug on Boney M after their eighth LP Eye Dance. For the rest of the 80s, various incarnations of Boney M existed, with or without Farian’s approval. In 1988 the ‘classic’ line-up reunited without him briefly.

There was a renewed interest in the group in 1992, thanks to Mega Mix, a number seven hit which also featured a remix of Mary’s Boy Child/Oh My Lord. The only noteworthy member of Boney M at this point was singer Liz Mitchell, who Farian once described as the only irreplaceable member of the group. The following year Brown Girl in the Ring (Remix) took them to 38. Another remix, Ma Baker (Somebody Scream), is their last hit to date, peaking at 22 in 1999.

In 2010 Farrell died of heart failure, aged 61. Mitchell tours as Boney M, featuring Liz Mitchell (well you would, wouldn’t you?). Marcia Barrett, who sang the a cappella intro to Mary’s Boy Child/Oh My Lord, lives in Berlin. Maizie Williams, who never sang on any original studio recordings by Boney M, now performs them live.

The Outro

Farian was the man behind another manufactured group. He formed the duo Milli Vanilli in 1988. Fab Morvan and Rob Pilatus never sang a note but they became one of the biggest names of the era. He promised them he’d cover their backs but when the miming scandal broke, Farian fired them and announced they never sang for real on their records. Something that hadn’t bothered the pop world when Boney M were at large destroyed Milli Vanilli, and Pilatus was found dead in 1998 of a suspected drink and drugs overdose.

The Info

Written by

Jester Hairston, George Reyam, Frank Farian & Fred Jay

Producer

Frank Farian

Weeks at number 1

4 (9 December 1978-5 January 1979)

Trivia

Births

16 December: Actor Joe Absolom
23 December: Model Jodie Marsh

Deaths

23 December: Academic Malcolm Caldwell (see ‘Meanwhile…’)

Meanwhile…

14 December 1978: The Labour minority government narrowly survives a vote of confidence.

21–22 December: BBC One and BBC Two are taken off air when the BBC members of the ABS union decide to strike over pay. The following day, the union calls its radio members out on strike. This leads to the merging of BBC Radio 1, 2, 3 and 4 into one national radio network. From 4.00pm that day, the management runs a schedule of news and music. BBC One controller Bill Cotton begins to panic that the strike will ruin ratings over the all-important Christmas period. He prepares two Christmas schedules for BBC One, one if there is no strike, and one filled with repeats and films if there is. Luckily for him, the BBC and ABS go to the government’s conciliation service ACAS, and a deal is reached by 10pm on 22 December, with the unions getting a 15% pay rise. All BBC TV and radio services return to normal service by lunchtime on 23 December.

23 December: Marxist writer Malcolm Caldwell is shot dead in Cambodia shortly after meeting Pol Pot.

5 January 1979: Lorry drivers go on strike, causing new shortages of heating oil and fresh food. With terrible freezing conditions damaging the economy at the same time, Labour’s ‘Winter of Discontent’ had begun.

The Intro

Each year before 1957 had brought hints of the progression in music and popular culture that rock’n’roll brought about, but these were often few and far between, with the charts still dominated by fluffy, overwrought, orchestrated love songs, often performed by a revolving door of crooners.

Before

1957 had changed all that. By and large, rock’n’roll ruled, with Guy Mitchell and Frankie Vaughan the only crooners to hit the top spot, and even then, Mitchell was aping the new sound. It was also entirely male-dominated. Female singers didn’t get a look in. As winter and Christmas loomed though, record buyers once more turned to something cosier.

Mary’s Boy Child had been written by Jester Hairston a US songwriter, actor and leading expert on Negro spirituals. Originally called He Pone and Chocolate Tea (pone was a type of corn bread), in this form it had nothing to do with Christmas and was a calypso song for a friend’s birthday party. Later, famous film composer Walter Schumann asked Hairston to write a Christmas tune for his choir. Remembering the birthday song, he simply rewrote the lyrics and made them festive-themed, similar to how Slade rewrote a psychedelic song and transformed it into Merry Xmas Everybody. (Incidentally, Mary’s Boy Child was the last explicitly festive Christmas number 1 until Slade in 1973). Harry Belafonte had heard the choir performing the new version and asked if he could cover it.

Belafonte, born Harold George Bellanfanti Jr, was born on 1 March 1927 in Harlem, New York, to parents of Jamaican and Dutch descent. He served in the navy during World War Two, and returned to New York afterwards to work as a janitor’s assistant. A tenant gave him two tickets to the American Negro Theatre, where he instantly fell in love with the stage, and also befriended Sidney Poitier. They were both so poor, they would buy a single ticket for local plays, then trade places between acts, so one could inform the other of what had taken place.

To help pay for his acting classes, Belafonte became a singer. At his very first show, he was backed by the Charlie Parker Band, which included Miles Davis as well as Parker. He began recording in 1949, and his breakthrough came in 1956 with the album Calypso, the first LP in the world to sell over a million copies in a year, and the first to sell that many ever in the UK. Introducing the wider world to calypso music, it featured the hits Banana Boat Song (‘Day-O’) and and Jump in the Line (both of which are great and I got to know them thanks to the 1988 film Beetlejuice).

Review

https://youtu.be/dHY7tRfASVg

This is the first Christmas number 1 to get to the same chart position later when covered by another act, namely Boney M in 1978. How does it compare? Well I don’t get the love for Boney M at all, and I particularly don’t like their cover of Mary’s Boy Child, so it’s no competition really.

Belafonte is in fine voice as always, though it’s a shame he didn’t opt for a livelier approach to the song. He’s singing in a calypso rhythm but the music doesn’t really match. Despite this, I’d easily take it over a naff disco-lite version with an extra bit tacked on the end for no reason.

After

Record-buyers in 1957 loved the religious imagery and cosy string backing, keeping it at number 1 for seven weeks from November, well into January 1958.

In 1959 Belafonte became the first African American to win an Emmy. A young Bob Dylan played harmonica on his 1962 album Midnight Special. As the 60s progressed he became dissatisfied with his film work and the music hits were drying up. By that point he was known as a prominent civil rights activist, and provided great financial help to Martin Luther King. He helped organise marches and bailed King and several other protestors out of jail. Much more personally rewarding than his other careers, I should guess.

The Outro

Later, Belafonte organised the 1985 charity single and number 1 We Are the World, became a UNICEF ambassador, and a staunch critic of apartheid and US foreign policy. He died of congestive heart failure on 25 April 2023, aged 96.

The Info

Written by

Jester Hairston

Producer

Rene Farron

Weeks at number 1

7 (22 November 1957-9 January 1958)

Trivia

Births

20 December: Singer Billy Bragg

Deaths

13 December: Writer Michael Sadleir
17 December: Writer Dorothy L. Sayers
21 December: Composer Eric Coates

Meanwhile..

4 December: At the Lewisham by-pass, in dense fog, an electric train stopped at a signal under a bridge. A steam train crashed into it, causing the bridge to collapse onto the latter. The rail crash left 90 dead.

Christmas Day: Queen Elizabeth II marked the 25th anniversary of the first Christmas broadcast on the radio with the start of a new tradition. For the first time, the speech also featured on television. The Queen made reference to this change, and put older viewers minds at ease by remarking that the age of change was sometimes bewildering, but everyone would be okay if we hung on to ageless ideals and values. However, during the speech some viewers experienced confusion when they overheard an American voice say ‘Joe, I’m gonna grab a quick coffee…’ Apparently, at this time, sunspots often caused freak radio conditions, resulting in US police radio transmissions interfering in UK television broadcasts. I’d imagine that was very bewildering.