Promotor Cultural: Harry Belafonte

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vineri, 10 ianuarie 2014

Video hit Nana Mouskouri

Nana Mouskouri & Harry Belafonte - Try To Remember (live)

Try to Remember is a song from the musical comedy The Fantasticks.

It is the first song sung in the show, to get the audience to imagine what the sparse set suggests. Its lyrics, written by Tom Jones, famously rhyme "remember" with "September", "so tender", and "December", and repeat the sequence -llow throughout the song: verse 1 contains "mellow", "yellow", and "callow fellow"; verse 2 contains "willow", "pillow", "billow"; verse 3 contains "follow", "hollow", "mellow"; and all verses end with "follow".

Harvey Schmidt composed the music.

Pop charts and Early Recordings

"Try to Remember" was originally sung by Jerry Orbach in the Original Off-Broadway production of The Fantasticks.

"Try To Remember" made the Billboard Hot 100 pop chart three times in 1965 in versions by Ed Ames, Roger Williams, Barry McGuire, The Kingston Trio, The Sandpipers, and The Brothers Four.

Patti Page released a version in 1965 on her album Hush, Hush, Sweet Charlotte.

Andy Williams released a version in 1966 on his album The Shadow of Your Smile.

Perry Como released a version in 1968 on his album Look to Your Heart.

The song was the first Australian hit for the then-Brisbane based trio New World, billed at the time as The New World Trio. Their version peaked at 11 in late 1968.

In 1971 Netherlandish singing duo Saskia & Serge had a national smash hit with their signature song 'Zomer in Zeeland', based on the music of 'Try to Remember'.

In 1975 Gladys Knight & the Pips had a huge international hit with their version of "Try to Remember", combining it into a medley with a cover of Barbra Streisand's "The Way We Were". It reached #11 on the Hot 100 chart. In Knight's version, she recited some of the lyrics from "Try To Remember" in spoken-word fashion before beginning to sing "The Way We Were".

Harry Belafonte has recorded the song multiple times.

The Greek singer Nana Mouskouri also recorded it in three languages: German, French, and Italian.

Romanian singer Aura Urziceanu recorded a Romanian language version in duet with Aurelian Andreescu in 1975, Septembrie.

The lyrics:

Try to remember the kind of September

When life was slow and so mellow

Try to remember the kind of September

When grass was green and the grain was yellow

Try to remember the kind of September

When you were a young and callow fellow

Try to remember and if you remember

Then follow, follow

Try to remember when life was so tender

When no one wept except the willow

Try to remember when life was so tender

When dreams were kept beside your pillow

Try to remember when life was so tender

When love was an ember about to billow

Try to remember and if you remember

Then follow, follow

Deep in December, it' s nice to remember

Although you know the snow will follow

Deep in December, it' s nice to remember

Without the hurt the heart will follow

Deep in December it's nice to remember

The fire of September that made you mellow

Deep in December our hearts should remember

Then follow, follow

joi, 11 iulie 2013

Video hit Harry Belafonte

Harry Belafonte - Banana Boat Song (live, 1997)

A fantastic performance of the Banana Boat Song. This concert was recorded in 1997 (State University Of New York at Purchase). The audience is great!

Day-O (The Banana Boat Song) is a traditional Jamaican mento folk song, the best-known version of which was sung by Harry Belafonte and an alternate version interspersed with another Jamaican folksong, Hill and Gully Rider, by Dame Shirley Bassey.

Despite the song's mento influences, "Day-O (The Banana Boat Song)" is widely known as an example of calypso music. It is a work song, from the point of view of dock workers working the night shift loading bananas onto ships. Daylight has come, the shift is over and they want their work to be counted up so that they can go home.

The song was originally a Jamaican folk song. Its popular version was adapted by Barbadian Irving Burgie. It was thought to be sung by Jamaican banana workers, with a repeated melody and refrain (call and response); with each set lyric there would be a response from the workers but using many different sets of lyrics, some possibly improvised on the spot. The first recorded version was done by Trinidadian singer Edric Connor and his band "Edric Connor and the Caribbeans" in 1952, on the album Songs From Jamaica; the song was called "Day Dah Light".

Belafonte based his version on Edric Connor's 1952 and Louise Bennett's 1954 recordings.

In 1955, singer/songwriters Irving Burgie and William Attaway wrote a version of the lyrics for the Colgate Comedy Hour in which the song was performed by Harry Belafonte. This is the version that is by far the best known to listeners today, as it reached number five on the Billboard charts in 1957 and later became Belafonte's signature song. Side two of Belafonte's 1956 Calypso album opens with "Star O", a song referring to the day shift ending with the first star seen in the sky.

Also in 1956, folk singer Bob Gibson, who had travelled to Jamaica and heard the song, taught his version of it to the folk band The Tarriers. They recorded a version of that song that mixed in the chorus of another Jamaican folk song, "Hill and Gully Rider", and released it, spawning what became their biggest hit. It outdid Belafonte's original on the pop charts, reaching number four. This version was re-recorded by Shirley Bassey in 1957, and became a hit in the United Kingdom.

The Tarriers, or some subset of the three members of the group (Erik Darling, Bob Carey and Alan Arkin) are sometimes credited as the writers of the song, perhaps because their version of the song, which mixed in another song, was an original creation.

The lyrics:

Day-o, Day-ay-ay-o