As well as its transatlantic success, it also topped the Australian charts. The “shuffle” style of US R&B used by Gaye had become popular in the Caribbean and mutated into ska Small’s sweet, charming and high-pitched vocal, combined with the novelty of the unfamiliar new style, made My Boy Lollipop a huge hit. She recorded My Boy Lollipop shortly after moving to London, a song originally recorded by New York singer Barbie Gaye in 1956. “It felt like I was coming home, that this was where I was meant to be,” she remembered in 2016, having never returned to Jamaica. Blackwell discovered her after her duet with Roy Panton, We’ll Meet, topped Jamaican charts and, with her parents’ permission, became her manager and moved her to the UK. Small was born in 1946 in Jamaica’s Clarendon parish, and began her recording career in her mid-teens, cutting singles for the island’s legendary Studio One label.
She was really special.” In a separate statement, Island Records heralded her as “a true original, a wonderful human being”. Recorded under the name Millie, My Boy Lollipop reached No 2 in the UK and US, with Blackwell remembering: “It became a hit pretty much everywhere in the world … and it was just incredible how she handled it. Island Records founder Chris Blackwell, who originally produced that song, told the Jamaican Observer that she died from a stroke. Millie Small, the Jamaican singer known for her global 1964 hit My Boy Lollipop, has died aged 73.
0 kommentar(er)
