Barbie Gaye
| "My Boy Lollypop" | |
|---|---|
| Single by Barbie Gaye | |
| B-side | "Say You Understand" |
| Released | 1956 |
| Genre | Rhythm and blues, ska |
| Length | 2:18 |
| Label | Darl |
| Writer(s) | Robert Spencer, Barbie Gaye |
| Producer(s) | Leroy Kirkland, Barbie Gaye |
| "My Boy Lollipop" | ||||
|---|---|---|---|---|
| Single by Millie Small | ||||
| from the album My Boy Lollipop | ||||
| B-side | "Something's Gotta Be Done" | |||
| Released | 1964 | |||
| Genre | Pop, ska | |||
| Length | 2:01 | |||
| Label | Fontana, Island, Smash | |||
| Writer(s) | Robert Spencer, Johnny Roberts | |||
| Producer(s) | Chris Blackwell | |||
| Millie Small singles chronology | ||||
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"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 New York in 1956 by Barbie Gaye. A later version, recorded in 1964 by Jamaican teenager Millie Small, with very similar rhythm, became one of the top selling ska songs of all time.
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.
The song caught the attention of one of Levy's partners, alleged mobster and music mogul Gaetano Vastola, aka "Corky". Vastola had recently discovered 14-year-old singer Barbie Gaye 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 Barbie 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 songs subject and be ready to perform it by the following week. Barbie Gaye changed the song's title to "My Boy Lollypop" and rewrote the song accordingly. She added non-lyrical sounds, (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.
When it came time to record, Gaye cut school and took the subway 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. 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. Legendary Jamaican artists, Clement "Coxsone" Dodd and Arthur "Duke" Reid, introduced the R&B shuffle beat to Jamaica in the late 1950s. Over the next few years, the sound grew in popularity and evolved into "ska," Jamaica’s first indigenous popular music style. Ska has developed subgenres such as 2 Tone and Third Wave and has influenced several new Jamaican music genres most notably, rocksteady and reggae.
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