Irving Burge was one of the greatest songwriters of our time and his songs will live forever. This interview was recorded and broadcast on the radio in 2008. Born July 28, 1924 in Brooklyn, New York, Burgie passed away on November 29, 2019 in Queens, New York.
Irving Burgie, or as he was sometimes known Lord Burgess, wrote many classic songs of the Caribbean such as Day-O, Jamaica Farewell. Burgie composed some 34 songs for the Legendary Harry Belafonte including 8 of the 11 songs on Belafonte’s classic Calypso album. From 1956 to 1957, “Calypso” was the first album of any kind to sell one Million copies. He also wrote songs for the Kingston Trio during the group’s heyday as well as lyrics of the National Anthem of Barbados. His songs have sold over 100 million copies worldwide. Everyone has heard Irving Burgie’s music…at concerts and sporting events all over the world, on the radio and in movies. His songs have been recorded by too many artists to even name.
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Hey, it’s me. Thank you. As always, for joining us here on The Paul Leslie Hour to support the show, you can go to patreon.com/thepaullesliehour. The interview I’m going to be presenting on this episode goes back to the year 2008. This was from the radio days and I was very elated to be interviewing this man Irving Burgie or as he was commonly called Lord Burgess. Others called him the Father of Modern Calypso. He wrote some very classic songs. Probably the most famous would be Day-O. He also wrote Jamaica Farewell and I’m going to tell you a little bit more about him. Sadly, Irving Burgie has passed away at 95 years old. He was born in 1924 Brooklyn, New York. He passed away November 29, 2019 in Queens, New York City. To tell you a little bit about his accomplishments, you could say that Irving Burgie was one of the most important figures in all of popular music. I know that sounds like an exaggeration, but allow me to explain. Irving Burgie was an inductee of the songwriters hall of fame. His songs sold over 100 million copies worldwide. His most successful song Day-O, as I was mentioning, was written for Harry Belafonte and was named a “Song of the Century” along with songs like Over the Rainbow. In fact, Burgie wrote eight of the 11 songs including Jamaica Farewell, and I Do Adore Her on Harry Belafonte’s classic album that was just entitled, Calypso. That album, Calypso was the first record in history to sell 1 million units. It was number one on the Billboard charts for 32 weeks. That was in 1956 Irving Burgie went on to write 34 songs for Harry Belafonte as well as a few for the Kingston Trio, and in this interview we talk about his life, his music, and his autobiography, which is called Day-O. Many people praised his book, the autobiography of Irving Burgie: including Maya Angelou, Sidney Poitier, Whoopi Goldberg, and others. I hope you enjoy this interview and I hope we can all agree Irving Burgie was one of the greatest songwriters in the world. Enjoy.
Today we are joined by the legendary composer, author and musician Irving Burgie. It’s my pleasure to welcome Mr. Irving Burgie, known to many as Lord Burgess. Thank you for taking the time to talk with us.
Oh, a pleasure. I pleasure to be here, really.
I can assure you the pleasure is all mine.
Thank you very much.
I think most stories are best from the beginning. For those listeners out there that are really entrenched by your story, which I’m sure many of them will be. There is an autobiography called Day-O: An Autobiography of Irving Burgie. Tell us about what your life was like growing up.
I grew up in Brooklyn, New York. My father is from Virginia and my mother is from Barbados in the West Indies. I grew up going to the public schools way back in the late twenties and thirties in Brooklyn. New Yor. Didn’t really have any idea what was really going on in the world. The first time I ever left New York was when the war broke out in 1941 and by that time I was just graduated from high school. They were drafting people in the Army and so forth. And so I joined the Army, I served two and a half years in China, Burma, India during that time that I came out at the age of 21 after the war was over in 1945 and I heard about the GI Bill of Rights, you know, so I decided to go to school. While I was in the Army, I had developed, developed a liking for music in particular. I hadn’t really pursued this before, but I did know all the song and everything on the radio. I knew them all by heart. There was a fellow in the outfit named Jimmy Houston who started giving me some lessons in music theory and I took to it. So by the time that the war was over, it I had been added for about a year and a half. And I, I had enough knowledge of theory to be accepted into the Julliard School of Music in New York. I studied there for two years and they ain’t all the rudiments of music, you know, the theory, harmony, sight singing, ear training, dictation and all that sort of stuff. So then I transfered to the University of Arizona and the University of Southern California the year after that and came out as a, as a folk singer, because the folk movement was becoming very popular, eh, during that time, the late forties. I picked up the guitar and I started learning the ropes, paying , paying dues, so to speak, you know, playing around at various functions and so forth and Hootenanies and things like that. Then I started, uh, putting a group of drug of my own. I specialized also in the Caribbean. I guess that’s because I mother was on the Caribbean. I had, I hadn’t had a lot of cousins and aunts and uncles and so forth around me tha t knew a lot about the Caribbean, and Id gon on different boat rides and picnics and so forth and church outings and things like that. Then you would find out what’s going on or you’d hear a lot of the customs and the rhythms and the styles of the, of the Caribbean. I landed a job in New York at the Village Vanguard, which was a famous little club, which many, many people have had their start at. There I met a folk singer who teamed up with my group, Louise Bennett from Jamaica. We made quite a hit there. That’s while there I started writing material for the group, A few months later after sort of knocking around the country as a folks singer, I got an assignment from a friend of a guy who was writing to Harry Belafonte and they heard my material and they wanted to make a recording of it, which they did and it became, believe it or not, became the first album in history to sell a million albums. It was in 1956, 57 and I had eight of the 11 songs on the album, including tin those songs were songs like Day-O, Jamaica Farewell. It became the first million album seller. I started off in a queer way: on top of the business, you know, rather than at the bottom. That’s a sort of a thumbnail sketch of how I broke into the business.
You mentioned earlier about how you had training in musical theory, and the songs that you wrote: They’re wonderful songs and they have stood the test of time.
Yeah. We had a big celebration in New York, one of the big hotels. The year before last, celebrating the 50th anniversary of Day-O, you know, you hear it everywhere now: in all the stadiums and so forth, arenas, football fields and basketball fields and so forth. All the fans sing, you know, together and uh, it’s very popular throughout the world actually. And its popularity hasn’t diminished any. It’s in his 51st year now.
Amazing.
Absolutely amazing.
How does it feel hearing your music everywhere?
It’s a good feeling. It’s a great feeling. I’ve been able to travel all over the world in the past 50 years and it’s been everywhere that I’ve been, you know, I hear there’s probably not anybody going around that’s never heard Day-O.
It’s probably true.
Laughs.
Do you think that your study of musical theory and the fact that you took kind of an intellectual look at music, do you think that that may be the reason that these songs are so good?
I think it certainly helped. Whenever you approach anything artistically, you have to have a certain amount of what they call talent or a feeling for what you’re doing. That is something that you’re born with. I don’t regret one minute, all time that I took to study theory, sight singing and ear training, so forth. It’s all helped because I never really started out to be a writer. I started out to be a singer, but I took all these courses to make me a better singer, but it also made me know how to write. I could write. I could think something and write it, you know, just take out a pencil and write it down in notes, which gave me a great advantage, particularly as as I went into writing. I could think of something I could be anywhere. I didn’t have to be near an instrument because of my training. I could think of something and write it down on a piece of paper. And that was a great advantage in being a songwriter.
You mentioned earlier the song Day-O, and it certainly is a song that is heard in so many places. For example, many of the listeners out there may know that at a Jimmy Buffett concert, when you hear Day-O, that means that the concert is about to begin. So I was hoping you could tell us about this song.
I first heard the strain of it. It goes back into folklore of Jamaica. It was used initially as a banana loaders song. Uh, like this because it said a theme of this “six hand, seven hand and eight hand bunch” was really, they’re talking about a bunch or bananas. The tally man is the one who counts the bunches of them as people walk by with them in loading the boat, you know, they do all night basically that’s where the idea and the theme originally came.
I was wondering, Mr. Burgie, were there any other Calypsonians that influenced your music?
Oh yes, there were lots. I don’t know how much they influenced my music as such. There was people like the Lord Invader that I knew quite well, who was the one who originally wrote the song “Rum and Coca-Cola.” There was King Lion who did, um, Matillda, even the young Sparrow, uh, who I first met back in the Sixties in Trinidad, Atilla the Hun. These are all early, early, um, Calypsonians of note and fame who really laid the ground basis of what they call it was at that time the Afro-Cubano rhythm and projected as Calypso originally in Trinidad. And of course it spread to the other islands and on recordings. Then you came up to the United States and spread from there.
So tell us about meeting Harry Belafonte.
I met Harry Belafonte through his writer Bill Attaway and when Harry did the music he was all for it. Uh, we, we were doing a program called the Colgate Comedy Hour. He was doing, he had gotten a spot on the Colgate Comedy Hour and they were trying to book the Ed Sullivan show at that time. And um, he was given a 20 minute segment, so he organized a little set and in which about five of my songs were used. That was, uh, in October as I recall of 1955. The show was a smash and uh, so Harry was engaged then at the Waldorf Astoria in New York, which was a big, big, big thing. And, uh, during that time we got together and we worked on the album. The album finished in, toward the end of October and actually it was produced on June 1st of the next year, and everybody had high hopes for it, but nobody thought, at that time people sold 200,000 records, 300,000 the thing was really a bang. So RCA had in addition to selling a quarter of a million albums, but when the thing went over the million market it just blew everybody’s mind. It was the first time that’s ever happened.
Wow. That is amazing. What did you think of Mr. Belafonte when you had met him?
Oh, he was, he was red hot at the time. I mean, he was regarded as the most handsome man in the world. He was having, he was young and athletic and the women just went crazy. When he walked out on the stage, you know, it was a whole new deal. It also had other aspects involved with it in the fact that it was during the time of the beginning stages of the Civil Rights movement and there was a lot of awakening to Civil Rights in America. Um, all over America. There were demonstrations and there were all kinds of things going on, which finally culminated of course, in the Civil Rights legislation of the 1960s.
He’s still keeping his name out there, that’s for sure.
Oh yeah. Oh yeah. It won’t go away anytime soon.
I wanted to talk about one of the songs that you wrote, and one of which became Harry Belafonte’s theme song and that’s Jamaica Farell. My partner in the radio show, Jeff Pike, is a musician and the very first song he ever sand, and it was recorded when he was just a little boy, you know, just like five or six years old was Jamaica Farewell. So tell us about that song. That is certainly a fantastic song.
Well, it’s a, I think it’s a fantastic song too, because it’s one of the simpler songs in the world. Y’know. Actually there are only three chords in the song, three different chords. That’s why it became so many people’s first song. So many musicians, so many guitar players and so forth. The first song that many of them ever learned was Jamaica Farewell. Well because there was only the one, four – five chord. There was only three chords in the whole song. So of course it didn’t hurt the song at all because it became Harry Belafonte’s theme song and he used it in all of his shows, you know, to open up all of his shows.
How did you become inspired to write it?
I don’t know. I I was just thinking of, it’s a part of the creative process. You take your image of something and you see, see what you can do with it. I guess there’s no two people that do the same thing, that will do the same thing alike. That’s just my brand, my interpretation, um, my interest, my projection. That’s the way life is.
Yeah. It’s a song that makes people happy and it tells a good story.
Yeah it does. It paints the picture.
A lot of the listeners out there may not know that in the Calypso world, it’s not unusual to use the title of Lord or Mighty. For example, Lord Melody, Lord Invader, the Mighty Sparrow, all those Calypsonians. How did you come upon the name Lord Burgess?
It was first given to me by Max Gordon who was the owner of the Vanguard restaurant in New York. Which was my first appearance in New York after I’d come from Chicago. He sort of bestowed that name on me and it just stuck
I guess as like a pun on “Burgie.”
I guess so. Yeah.
Not many people can say that they wrote the national Anthem of a country. It must be an extreme pleasure of yours and something that you’re very proud of. I know that your ancestry is from Barbados and in 1966 the national Anthem of Barbados: written by Irving Burgie.
Very proud of that. It’s quite an honor.
Do you go to Barbados ever?
Everybody in Barbados knows me. I go at least three times a year. I have a literary prize that I do in Barbados that I’ve been doing for 28 years and I’ve been involved with several different projects in Barbados, so I’m quite well known there, of course.
I hope to make it down there sometime.
It’s a wonderful country you need to go down. Laughs.
Maybe some day.
Very good. Beautiful.
So tell us about your autobiography. This autobiography its called Day-O: An Autobiography of Irving Burgie and it’s won a lot of praise from people like Sidney Poitier, Whoopi Goldberg and yours truly. I liked the book a lot. I read the book in about two days. I enjoyed it, you really made things interesting. So tell us about how you got inspired to tell your story.
Well, I started writing an autobiography of my life around 25 years ago and then I got to about the age 18 in my autobio and I stopped and I didn’t go back to it until about four years ago. Me and my, my wife assisted me as the editor and we were able to get the book out last year. It was great fun writing the book, the changes and adjustments and so forth. It was really a wonderful thing to be able to tackle, to tell your life story, especially when it was, it was a successful thing. It was an exciting work, which we all we all love doing.
And it’s such an inspiring story. When I was reading it, I remember feeling inspired. You gave me a lot of energy in and feelings about going out and, and keeping at my goals. So I was hoping you could tell us what is the secret to success?
Oh, (laughs). Well if I knew that I, I’d have to hide (laugh). They would… That that, is still an unknown factor, but I would suggest that preparation helps, you know, that’s the way I went. Preparation and determination are the two things that you have and that has to be supplied by you. Of course.
I think my favorite song that you wrote, and it was also covered by Harry Belafonte on the Calypso album is the song I Do Adore Her. Yeah.
Oh yes. It’s one of my real favorites, a lovely song.
Tell me about how you got the inspiration behind that song.
I was just fishing. I was just sort of fishing around one day for an idea. It just, it just sort of, uh, I really can’t explain it. I just, it’s a sort of a romantic kind of thing. I’m a romantic anyway. You know, the romantic is the guy who never gets the girl. You know, he loves deeply. That’s what romance is. Romance is seeing something or perceiving something and moving toward it. It’s just like having a girlfriend. You talk to her and you court her and you take her out and things like that andyou, but the first time that you kiss her, that’s the beginning of the end of the romance. You see, because then it becomes something else. You see, it becomes physical. You see, romances can only really be in your mind. You understand what I’m saying?
Yes.
Yeah. It’s an image that you have of something. For istance, If you were engaged, once you marry the person it’s no longer a romance.
And that’s, that may be a hard fact for so many of our listeners to accept.
(Laughs) No, no, it can become something else, but it’s not a romance any longer because you have achieved something. You have moved into another stage. A romance is basically spiritual. One of the great romantic figures in our history is Don Quixote. You know, he imagines all of this stuff.
Right
But a lot of people don’t really understand what romance really is. But I, I consider myself, uh rather romantic, you know. (Laughs)
Moving along from romance to another topic that interests everyone. Food. I noticed, uh this may sound like a curious thing to talk about, but I noticed you mention curry a lot in your songs and I happen to be a devotee of curry. For example, you have this song that is on your album, the Father of Modern Calypso.
Oh yeah. Well curry is a staple in the West Indies. It’s ery, very popular and it actually, it originally comes from India and of course the Indians came from India and settled in the West, all over the West Indies too. And one of the staples that they brought was, was curry. And it still persists until this day. It’s sort of an unusual flavor. But you can develop a nice taste for it. Nice curry. Curry rice or curry shrimp or curry whatever can be very nice. Curry Goat.
Like the song. Do you like curry so much that this inspired the song?
Well, I would think so. I would think so. I like curry. I, it’s a very good flavor and a very pleasing flavor in its own right. And I just wrote about it.
Right.
I, it goes in the song, I make it a sort of a comedy because this guy has a sort of a fanatical urge to eat this curry as much as he can. I’m sort of lauding curry. (Laugs)
Well I, I understand. So tell us one of the other groups that’s covered you in addition to Harry Belafonte is the Kingston Trio.
During my heyday, the Kingston Trio came out, I think when I came back from a trip, they contacted me and I, I had written some songs while I was traveling and over the next two or three years I did three songs for them. One of them was El Matador and one was a song called The Seine, which was after the Seine River in Paris. And another one was called The Wanderer. That was during the time when the Kingston Trio, when they come out with an album, it would sell a million albums before it even came out, you know, they were so hot at that time.
Out of curiosity, do you still write songs at all?
I’ve been really rewriting, not, not really writing. My catalog has held up pretty well and I’m not that strongly inspired to create at this particular time, but I guess if I had to I would, but I, at this point I’m not really driven to do this and I think that any really creative writing, sometimes you have to be sort of, at least halfway driven to it. You know?
Right.
It has to it requires a certain kind of drive and inspiration that makes you, makes you think.
To motive you.
Yeah. Right. Motivating factors.
Do you still keep in touch with Harry Belafonte?
Not really. We bump into each other. We never really sort of hung out with each other. Even when we were working together.
Right.
We see each other. We say hi, but we don’t really hang out.
No?
No, not at all.
I was wondering if you could tell us, given all these experiences in your life, what has been the best experience of your life?
I’ve had a lot of experiences, but I would think that the 1 million albums comes number one. (Laughs) You don’t do that every day.
That’s, that’s true.
But the odd thing about it was the very fact that it was the first big thing that I’d ever done in my life. Struck gold on the first shot, which is very, very unusual.
Like I said, everyone needs to read the book because it is a fascinating story. What is it that you hope people get out of your songs when they hear your music either performed or on a record?
I guess pleasant feelings. I hope that, some of it can be thoughtful. I think some of, some of the lyrics are very well done and are very interesting, and they tell a story. I guess that’s about it, what I can say about it.
Tell us about the song that you wrote, Island in the Sun.
After the success of the first album, I was asked by Harry to write songs for a upcoming film, which was called Island in the Sun. It was a film that was made from a book by the British writer, Alec Waugh called Island in the Sun. It was the fictitious Island of Santa Maria, but it was actually about the labor strife and race relations in Jamaica, or in West Indies. It was during the very early stages of the Civil Rights movement. And so Belafonte was very hot at that time because in this story Island in the Sun, Harry Belafonte was coupled with Joan Fontaine who was the leading white actress at the time, had been for years, it stirred up quite a controversy, but Belafonte, was a controversial kind of fellow and he said that he was going to make this film and then a lot of people said they were going to burn down the theaters all that sort of stuff. (Laughs) The picture was made. And um, it stirred up a bit of controversy. The color in the film was, was beautiful, it was beautifully done. Showing off the islands where there was also at the time went and they began marketing American films generally speaking in abroad. That’s what Belafonte said. He said there may be parts of the country that might rule this out. But um, but I’m going to send this picture abroad and that’s what he did. And he ended up, he did make money on the film and of course Island in the Sun was beautifully exposed and in fact he became an unofficial national anthem of many of the islands in the Caribbean.
Out of all of these songs that you wrote, you mentioned that you really like the song I Do Adore Her and I really like that song too, but what would you say is your favorite song? If you could pick one.
That would be very difficult, but I would think because of the reverence that it, that it holds, particularly in the Caribbean, among the people of the Caribbean, I would say Island in the Sun.
I could see that. That song is a song that when you hear it, you definitely feel something emotionally. It’s a meaningful song.
Yes.
Well, Mr. Burgie, I’ve enjoyed very much speaking to you. Before you go, I was hoping you could tell everyone out there, since this program is being listened to by people all over the world, what would you, Mr. Irving Burgie, known to the world as Lord Burgess, like to say to the world?
Irving Burgie: I hope you’re enjoying my songs. (Laughs) Keep listening.
And I think the fact that…
(Laughs) Thank you for listening up to now! (Laughs)
I think the fact that these songs have stuck around for this long, means that the answer to “keep listening” is yes, they are.
(Laughs)
So it’s been a great pleasure to speak with you. It’s been an honor.
Thank you very much. It’s been a pleasure.
