HARRY BELAFONTE - SCARLETT RIBBONS

SCARLETT RIBBONS

HARRY BELAFONTE

SONGWRITERS: SEGAL, JACK & DANZIG, EVELYN

COUNTRY: U. S. A.

ALBUM: VERY BEST OF HARRY BELAFONTE

LABEL: SONY MUSIC

GENRE: POP

YEAR: 1991.

 

     Harry Belafonte(born Harold George Bellanfanti Jr.; March 1, 1927) is an American singer, songwriter, activist, and actor. As arguably the most successful Jamaican-American pop star, he popularized the Trinbagonian Caribbean musical style with an international audience in the 1950s. His breakthrough album Calypso(1956) was the first million-selling LP by a single artist.

      Belafonte is best known for his recordings of "The Banana Boat Song", with its signature "Day-O" lyric, and "Jamaica Farewell". He has recorded and performed in many genres, including blues, folk, gospel, show tunes, and American standards. He has also starred in several films, including Carmen Jones(1954), Island in the Sun(1957), and Odds Against Tomorrow(1959).

    Belafonte considered the actor, singer and activist Paul Robeson a mentor, and was a close confidant of Martin Luther King Jr. in the Civil Rights Movement in the 1950s and 1960s. As he later recalled, "Paul Robeson had been my first great formative influence; you might say he gave me my backbone. Martin King was the second; he nourished my soul." Throughout his career, Belafonte has been an advocate for political and humanitarian causes, such as the Anti-Apartheid Movement and USA for Africa. Since 1987, he has been a UNICEF Goodwill Ambassador. He was a vocal critic of the policies of the George W. Bush presidential administrations. Belafonte acts as the American Civil Liberties Union celebrity ambassador for juvenile justice issues.

   Belafonte has won three Grammy Awards(including a Grammy Lifetime Achievement Award), an Emmy Award, and a Tony Award. In 1989, he received the Kennedy Center Honors. He was awarded the National Medal of Arts in 1994. In 2014, he received the Jean Hersholt Humanitarian Award at the Academy's 6th Annual Governors Awards and in 2022 was inducted into the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame in the Early Influence category and is the oldest living person to have received the honor.

       In 1952 Harry Belafonte, at his third session for RCA Records, covered the song with an arrangement using his guitarist Millard Thomas and male vocal group. The four-year-old recording finally became a success in 1956 after it appeared on his second album, which reached Nº 1 on Billboard's album chart for six weeks and stayed on the chart for over a year. The song reached Nº 18 on the UK's New Musical Express chart in late 1957

        "Scarlet Ribbons (For Her Hair)" is a popular song. The music was written by Evelyn Danzig and the lyrics by Jack Segal. The song has become a standard with many recorded versions and has appeared on several Christmas albums.

         "Scarlet Ribbons" was written in only 15 minutes in 1949 at Danzig's home in Port Washington, New York after she invited lyricist Segal to hear her music. The song tells a miraculous tale: a father hears his small daughter pray before she goes to bed for "scarlet ribbons for her hair". It is late, no stores are open in their town, nor is there anywhere the dad can obtain the ribbons so he is distraught throughout the night. At dawn he again peeps in and is amazed to see beautiful "scarlet ribbons" in "gay profusion lying there." He says that if he lives to be two hundred, he will never know from where the ribbons came.

I peeked in to say good-night

When I heard my child in prayer

"And for me, some scarlet ribbons

Scarlet ribbons for my hair"

All our stores were closed and shuttered

All the streets were dark and bare

In our town, no scarlet ribbons

Scarlet ribbons for her hair

Through the night my heart was aching

Just before the dawn was breaking

In our town, no scarlet ribbons

Scarlet ribbons for her hair

I peeked in and on her bed

In gay profusion lying there

Lovely ribbons, scarlet ribbons

Scarlet ribbons for her hair

If I live to be a hundred

I will never know from where

Came those lovely scarlet ribbons

Scarlet ribbons for her hair.