Harry Belafonte

An activist, humanitarian, and performer long hailed as the “King of Calypso,” Harry Belafonte stood among the most influential figures to emerge after World War II. His starring turn in the 1954 musical Carmen Jones—an adaptation of Bizet’s opera—propelled the Harlem-born artist, whose parents traced their roots to Jamaica and Martinique, toward national prominence; his supple vocal style, shaped by folk, jazz, mainstream pop, and Caribbean rhythms, carried the albums Belafonte and Calypso to the summit of the Billboard chart in 1956. The signature “The Banana Boat Song (Day-O)” climbed to the Top Five on both sides of the Atlantic, while companion singles such as “Cocoanut Woman” and “Island in the Sun” sustained a two-year wave of calypso success. Renowned for his concert prowess, Belafonte placed both the 1959 live set Belafonte at Carnegie Hall and its 1960 sequel Belafonte Returns to Carnegie Hall inside the Billboard 200’s upper reaches. Throughout the 1960s he maintained chart visibility even as he became a trusted ally of Martin Luther King, Jr., personally securing the leader’s release from a Birmingham, Alabama jail in 1963 and raising money to free fellow demonstrators. Homeward Bound, released in 1970, marked his final solo album to register on U.S. charts, yet he sporadically returned to acting and sustained lifelong humanitarian efforts, most notably by helping assemble the 1985 USA for Africa charity single “We Are the World,” co-written by Michael Jackson and Lionel Richie. That summer he also appeared at the Live Aid concert. The 1988 Tim Burton film Beetlejuice revived interest in his catalog, spotlighting both “The Banana Boat Song (Day-O)” and the 1961 recording “Jump in the Line (Shake, Senora).” His final screen appearances—Bobby (2006) and Spike Lee’s BlacKkKlansman (2018)—again addressed civil-rights history, and in 2022 he received induction into the Rock & Roll Hall of Fame in the Early Influences category.

Born Harold George Belafonte, Jr., on March 1, 1927, in Harlem, the future entertainer spent five formative years in Jamaica after his mother returned there when he was eight. Back in the United States he left high school to join the Navy; following his discharge he settled once more in New York City, where he performed with the American Negro Theatre and studied drama at Erwin Piscator’s Dramatic Workshop alongside Marlon Brando and Tony Curtis. A singing part led to cabaret bookings and eventually his own nightclub. Early recordings for Jubilee in 1949 found him working as a pop vocalist, yet by the start of the 1950s he had immersed himself in folk material drawn from Library of Congress archives and in West Indian traditions. Accompanied by guitarist Millard Thomas, he debuted at the Village Vanguard; 1953 brought his first film role in Bright Road, and the next year he earned a Tony Award for John Murray Anderson’s Almanac. Starring opposite Dorothy Dandridge in Otto Preminger’s Carmen Jones, a Hammerstein-inflected retelling of the opera, vaulted him to stardom. Signed to RCA, he issued Mark Twain and Other Folk Favorites, which reached number three in early 1956; its successor, simply titled Belafonte, hit number one and ignited a national fascination with calypso. The follow-up album Calypso dominated the charts for thirty-one weeks, buoyed by “Jamaica Farewell” and “The Banana Boat Song (Day-O).”

After 1957’s An Evening with Belafonte, whose “Mary’s Boy Child” peaked at number twelve, and Belafonte Sings of the Caribbean, which yielded the Top Thirty entries “Cocoanut Woman” and “Island in the Sun,” Belafonte leveraged his fame to confront racial themes on screen in Island in the Sun (1957) and Odds Against Tomorrow (1959). The 1959 concert album Belafonte at Carnegie Hall, captured during a sold-out April engagement, remained on the charts for more than three years and reached number three; Belafonte Returns to Carnegie Hall, featuring Odetta, Miriam Makeba, and the Chad Mitchell Trio, matched that peak in 1960. At the decade’s turn he became the first Black producer of a television variety program; Tonight with Harry Belafonte earned him the 1960 Emmy for Outstanding Performance in a Variety or Musical Program or Series. Further releases included 1961’s Jump Up Calypso and 1962’s The Midnight Special, which introduced the first commercial recording of a teenage harmonica player named Bob Dylan. As British Invasion acts dominated airwaves, Belafonte’s pop-chart presence receded; 1964’s Belafonte at the Greek Theatre proved his last Top Forty album, while 1965’s An Evening with Belafonte/Makeba and 1966’s In My Quiet Room barely dented the Top One Hundred. Homeward Bound supplied his final Billboard 200 entry in 1970, though he continued recording after departing RCA in the mid-1970s. On screen he reappeared after a decade-long absence in The Angel Levine (1970), followed by Buck and the Preacher (1972) and Uptown Saturday Night (1974).

Humanitarian commitments intensified during the 1970s and 1980s; he played a pivotal role in organizing USA for Africa’s 1985 benefit single “We Are the World,” which enlisted Michael Jackson, Bob Dylan, Bruce Springsteen, Diana Ross, and dozens of others. In July he joined the same ensemble at Live Aid, and the following year he succeeded Danny Kaye as a UNICEF Goodwill Ambassador. Tim Burton’s Beetlejuice reintroduced his Caribbean hits to younger listeners, while the 1990s brought further film work, notably a series of Robert Altman projects—The Player, Prêt-à-Porter, and Kansas City—plus a leading role opposite John Travolta in White Man’s Burden. Occasional live albums appeared, among them 1997’s An Evening with Harry Belafonte & Friends, even as he ceased issuing new studio material. In the 2000s he remained outspoken, championing Venezuelan president Hugo Chavez and criticizing the George W. Bush administration. A prominent part in Emilio Estevez’s Bobby (2006) dramatized the Robert F. Kennedy assassination. In 2017 he assembled the anthology The Legacy of Harry Belafonte: When Colors Come Together, highlighted by a new children’s-choir version of “When Colors Come Together (Our Island in the Sun).” His last film credit arrived with Spike Lee’s BlacKkKlansman (2018). A Broadway musical adaptation of Beetlejuice, incorporating “Day-O,” opened in 2019. The 2020 documentary The Sit-In: Harry Belafonte Hosts The Tonight Show revisited the week in 1968 when Johnny Carson ceded hosting duties to Belafonte, making him the first Black late-night host for that duration. His musical legacy received formal recognition with the 2022 Rock & Roll Hall of Fame induction in the Early Influences category. Belafonte died in New York City on April 25, 2023, at the age of ninety-six.