Ep. 31 - IRVING BURGIE ("Day-O")

After serving in World War II, Irving Burgie attended Juilliard where he studied classical voice. He eventually fell in love with folk music, and landed a steady gig as a Calypso singer at a Caribbean-themed Chicago nightclub in the early 1950s. Returning to New York, he became known as Lord Burgess on the Greenwich Village folk scene. He contributed eight songs to Harry Belafonte’s Calypso album in 1956, which became the first million selling LP in any genre, and spent an astounding 31 weeks at #1 on the Billboard pop chart. Burgie went on to write the majority of Belafonte’s hit albums Belafonte Sings of the Caribbean in 1957 and Jump Up Calypso in 1961. In total, he wrote more than thirty songs for Belafonte, including the hit singles “Jamaica Farewell,” “Day-O,” “Don’t Ever Love Me,” “Cocoanut Woman,” and “Island in the Sun.” Thanks to his strong reputation for popularizing island music, Burgie wrote the National Anthem of Barbados in 1966. In addition to Harry Belafonte, other artists who’ve tapped the Irving Burgie catalog include Sam Cooke, Julio Iglesias, Taj Mahal, The Kinks, Jimmy Buffett, Marty Robbins, Don Williams, Arlo Guthrie, The Righteous Brothers, Tom Rush, Carly Simon, Chubby Checker, and Patti Page. “Day-O” continues to live on, and, in more recent years, has been sampled by Jason Derulo in “I Don’t Wanna Go Home," and by Lil’ Wayne in “Six Foot, Seven Foot.” Burgie was inducted into the Songwriters Hall of Fame in 2007.