[HN Gopher] Harry Belafonte has died
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Harry Belafonte has died
Author : thunderbong
Score : 201 points
Date : 2023-04-25 15:13 UTC (7 hours ago)
(HTM) web link (www.theguardian.com)
(TXT) w3m dump (www.theguardian.com)
| sitkack wrote:
| My mom taught his daughter (probably Gina) art in NYC in the 70s.
| I wonder what he thought of the Beatlejuice scene? :)
| cwkoss wrote:
| Belafonte's music is so wonderful. Happy sounding songs that fill
| your subconscious with joy while you sink into the melancholy
| meaning.
|
| I'm making a playlist of songs I want my baby to listen to during
| the critical period to give the lil bean rhythm and culture.
| Belafonte was an early addition and its always a pleasure when
| his songs get shuffled on.
|
| Thank you Harry for all the joy you've brought into the world!
| racl101 wrote:
| Oh that's where that Day-O song came from. I thought it was a
| bespoke commercial jingle this whole time.
|
| One Day Sale.
| krunck wrote:
| RIP. All together now: Day-o!
| tanseydavid wrote:
| "It's still too loud, man!"
|
| https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=4-9h1pjTP74
| trollerator23 wrote:
| Hide the deadly black tarantula
| wdfx wrote:
| I think it was highly deadly ?
| gwd wrote:
| Which makes more sense?
|
| _A beautiful bunch of ripe bananas / Highly deadly black
| tarantula_
|
| _A beautiful bunch of ripe bananas / Hide the deadly black
| tarantula_
|
| I'd say the second one.
| hinkley wrote:
| Daylight come an' me wan go home.
| St_Alfonzo wrote:
| For everyone who is tired of Day-o, I recommend the song
| Star-o!
|
| https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=_hPL9f9es9Q
| jejones3141 wrote:
| Whoa, man, that's too sharp, too piercing...
| costanzaDynasty wrote:
| Odds Against Tomorrow is a really good movie.
| LiquidPolymer wrote:
| I just watched this a few weeks ago. It is fantastic. Belafonte
| was a producer as well as the star. He's playing a man trying
| balance being a father and musician with a giant gambling
| problem. His character is only good at being a musician and
| failing at everything else. He pairs up with a racist criminal
| to try and relieve a debt. The movie is firing on all
| cylinders.
|
| I bought a bunch of his vintage albums afterwards and really
| enjoy them.
| toomuchtodo wrote:
| https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Harry_Belafonte
| ericskiff wrote:
| I grew up listening to Harry Belafonte at Carnegie Hall on my
| parent's old record player. He was my first favorite singer and
| my earliest exposure to folk music's ability to educate and
| enlighten. From a young age I understood some of what
| discrimination must feel like from the characters in his songs,
| and still know every word to "Darlin' Cora". It built a basis of
| empathy for me to grow from and I'll forever be thankful.
|
| What an incredible 96 years of art and leadership in the pursuit
| of civil rights and equality.
| earthboundkid wrote:
| He is personally responsible for saving MLK's Birmingham campaign
| when it was at risk of failure and collapse. RIP. Turn the world
| around.
| trollerator23 wrote:
| He was still alive?? Damn.
|
| Great singer.
| hinkley wrote:
| His daughter is 68.
| niffydroid wrote:
| Goodbye Sidney Potter
|
| (Only die hard fans from the UK will get this)
| doodlebugging wrote:
| We've lost another music creator from the soundtrack of my life.
|
| Thanks Harry. I could never sing that Banana Boat song like you
| have but it will never stop me trying as I fly down the highway
| alone, cycling through all the songs of the soundtrack inventing
| lyrics for all those I have forgotten.
|
| I've never quite been able to get any of them close to the
| originals but I've always done well enough to serve as a reminder
| to myself that I should be glad I never tried to make it a
| career.
| williamDafoe wrote:
| I am very sad. In kindergarten in 1968 I learned to sing "Jamaica
| Farewell" which is one of Harry Belafonte's signature hit songs.
| It was one of the first things I ever learned at school. My
| kindergarten teacher (who was french) played guitar and sang it
| to us.
|
| https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Zh1ow6zKapQ&ab_channel=TheEd...
| hackernj wrote:
| Less than a year after the landmark Loving v. Virginia decision
| by the US Supreme Court, Harry Belafonte and Petula Clark made
| history when Clark touched Belafonte's arm on US primetime TV:
| https://www.vanityfair.com/hollywood/2018/04/harry-belafonte...
| Larrikin wrote:
| It's not crazy that such blatant racism occurred in the late
| sixties, it's crazy that people pretend all the racists and the
| way they thought just suddenly disappeared. Lots of those
| people are still alive. My grandma and mom both grew up in a
| segregated south. Even as an elementary school kid, the way the
| civil rights movement was taught made it unbelievable that my
| mom was a kid watching MLK on TV.
|
| it's probably not a coincidence that some of those people are
| voting in the oldest median age congress we have ever had.
| giraffe_lady wrote:
| I'm older than median around here but still firmly working
| age. A black man was lynched in my hometown during my
| lifetime. There was no trial.
|
| One of the things most consistently infuriating about
| discussions of american policy on HN is how firmly committed
| we are overall to not reckoning with this. This is very
| recent history, they didn't just admit defeat or become
| wholesome ex-segregationists for the most part. The policies
| continue to have effects, and the intergenerational nature of
| wealth imbalance means even if they didn't we'd still expect
| to see consequences into the present.
|
| I jokingly refer to the way the civil rights era is taught to
| elementary school children as "and then the last racist
| killed MLK." I don't think that's necessarily even an
| inappropriate way to first bring it up with young children.
| But I wish people here expected more of themselves.
| cycomanic wrote:
| It is not only that people even here on HN believe that
| discrimination of black people doesn't happen anymore, but
| worse there is a vocal group that thinks that white men are
| now the major victims. They quite literally state that
| white men (mainly if they receive pushback for
| racist/mysoginist statements) have it as bad as black
| people in the 60s.
| cgio wrote:
| As an external observer of American news, I don't find it
| surprising when race is increasingly stressed,
| occasionally in not directly relevant context. E.g. there
| was a cnn headline recently along the lines of "Black and
| Latino man got in the car of White policeman and
| disappeared" with the races capitalised from source. No
| matter if the intention is against racism, the
| capitalisation and emphasis on races does not help from
| my vantage (and admittedly remote) viewpoint. Now if the
| story was definitely a racist one it would make sense but
| I did not get that in the context of the article itself.
|
| I think we all tend to victimise ourselves. The people in
| advantage will do so even more.
| steve76 wrote:
| [dead]
| rodgerd wrote:
| A couple of them got together to make three US Supreme Court
| appointments recently.
| mgkimsal wrote:
| > Lots of those people are still alive.
|
| At least one of my still-alive parents (vaguely) remember
| "colored" water fountains in some areas. They were just young
| children, but witnessed a bit of that. Their parents
| _certainly_ witnessed it. People in my immediate family, in
| their lifetime. Not history book stuff. They were there. It
| 's crazy.
| mkmk wrote:
| https://archive.is/JS8zn
| brobdingnagians wrote:
| "It has erroneously been described as the first instance on
| American television of physical contact between a black man and
| a white woman,[26] forgetting many previous instances,
| including Frankie Lymon dancing with a white girl on Alan
| Freed's live ABC T.V. show "The Big Beat" on July 19,
| 1957,[citation needed] Nancy Sinatra kissing Sammy Davis, Jr.,
| on her 1967 Movin' with Nancy TV special,[27] and Louis
| Armstrong shaking hands with "What's My Line?" panelists
| Dorothy Kilgallen and Arlene Francis in 1953."
|
| https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Petula_Clark
| hackernj wrote:
| Thanks for the link. The first half of that paragraph is also
| interesting: "In 1968 NBC-TV invited Clark to host her own
| special in the US, and in doing so, she inadvertently made
| television history. While singing a duet of "On the Path of
| Glory", an antiwar song that she had composed, with guest
| Harry Belafonte, she took hold of his arm, to the dismay of a
| representative from the Chrysler Corporation (the show's
| sponsor), who feared that the moment would incur racial
| backlash from Southern viewers.[22] When he insisted that
| they substitute a different take, with Clark and Belafonte
| standing well away from each other, Clark and the executive
| producer of the show--her husband, Wolff--refused, destroyed
| all other takes of the song, and delivered the finished
| programme to NBC with the touch intact.[23][24] The Chrysler
| representative was terminated, and the programme aired on 8
| April 1968, four days after the assassination of Martin
| Luther King Jr., with high ratings, critical acclaim,[25] and
| a Primetime Emmy nomination."
| pupppet wrote:
| She touched his arm, seven months later Shatner kissed Nichelle
| Nichols.
| tamaharbor wrote:
| Despite the racism, I have always wondered why a majority of US
| 'Top 40 Hits' were by black artists in the 1960s. Soul, R&B,
| and Motown were continually at the top of the charts.
| wintogreen74 wrote:
| and the rest of the hits by white performers were either
| "heavily inspired" or literal re-performed versions of black
| songs that wouldn't be played or broadcast by white-only
| radio stations and TV shows.
| paul7986 wrote:
| When I briefly worked at RCA/Victor on 1540 Broadway NYC ..one
| evening leaving the office I bumped into a tall gentleman walking
| out of the elevator into office I worked at. I looked up and it
| was Mr. Belafonte. Rip.
| harveywi wrote:
| Ok - I bereave you!
| rglover wrote:
| RIP. First time I heard Harry as a kid was in Beetlejuice:
| https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=nbkybaDR_Co
| flanbiscuit wrote:
| Same for me. Such a bold and genius move to use calypso music
| in a goth comedy movie, I would love to know what inspired
| Burton (or maybe it was Danny Elfman's idea?) to use those
| songs.
| shadowgovt wrote:
| He's apparently in a rare category of performer to have one
| song break into the top 40 chart in two separate decades.
|
| Banana Boat showed up in the charts in 1956 and 1988.
| kenjackson wrote:
| I've never seen Beetlejuice, but this video makes me want to.
| gramie wrote:
| You do want to see it, you maybe just don't know it yet!
| vr46 wrote:
| Lovely man, he came all the way to London to promote his biopic,
| Sing Your Song and sign his book. A complete and utter legend,
| maybe one of the very last people heavily involved with the
| movement. Xernona Clayton is still with us, as is Claudette
| Colvin, hopefully others. The fight isn't over. RIP.
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(page generated 2023-04-25 23:01 UTC)