“Mary’s Boy Child” - Harry Belafonte (1956) #12 (1957 Pop Singles re-issue)

Julliard-trained songwriter and actor Jester Hairston wrote this song in 1956 for Belafonte, who took it to #1 on the UK chart for seven weeks (in the US, it only peaked at #12.) Belafonte first recorded it in 1956, for his album An Evening with Belafonte. He became the first black male to have a #1 in the UK. It was the first ever song to sell 1 million copies in the UK, and the first ever British #1 record to have a playing time of more than four minutes (4:19.) It’s the only song to drop from #1 straight out of top 10 the following week, because after Christmas, it fell from #1 to #12.

During the Christmas season of 1978, German pop and disco group Boney M. returned the song to the top of the British charts for four weeks with the melody “Mary’s Boy Child/Oh My Lord” (”Lord” was a new song written by Milli Vanilli mastermind Frank Farian.) It became the Christmas #1 single of 1978. (Having the UK Christmas #1 single of the year is very prestigious and leads to a lot of media coverage. Since people are buying gifts for the Christmas period, single sales are extremely high in the week before Christmas, and since the Christmas #1 is the single with the highest sales, record companies can make sizable profit from trying to get their single to #1. Many people place bets with bookmakers on who will be the Christmas #1.) At the end of 2007, it was the tenth top selling single of all time in the UK. In addition, their version of The Melodians’ “Rivers of Babylon” was at that date the fifth top selling single of all time in the UK, making them the only act to have two singles in the UK all-time Top 10 best sellers list. In the United States, the track reached #85 on the Billboard Hot 100…Boney M.’s last of four singles to chart. Despite its chart position, the medley is an airplay favorite in the United States during the Thanksgiving/Christmas holiday season on radio stations that change to temporary all-Christmas music formats.

Mahalia Jackson recorded the song in 1956, but titled as “Mary’s Little Boy Child.” It has also been recorded by The Brothers Four, Charlotte Church, Greg MacDonald, Nat King Cole, The Merrymen, Jim Reeves, Kiri Te Kanawa, Harry Connick Jr., Roger Whittaker, The Little River Band, The Three Degrees, The Pete King Chorale, Nina & Frederik, Carola, and more.

This entry was posted on Monday, November 17th, 2008 at 1:50 am and is filed under The Chart Guy, Billboard, Christmas. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.