Day-O

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"Day-O (The Banana Boat Song)" is a traditional calypso folk song,^[1] the best-known version of which was sung by Harry Belafonte. The song is the best-known example of calypso music. It is a song from the point of view of dock workers working the night shift loading bananas onto ships. Daylight has come, the shift is over and they want their work to be counted up so that they can go home.

Origins

The song was originally a Jamaican folk song. Its popular version was adapted by Irving Burgie. It was thought to be sung by Jamaican banana workers, with a repeated melody and refrain, but with many different sets of lyrics, some possibly improvised on the spot.

The first recorded version was done by Trinidadian singer Edric Connor and his band "Edric Connor and the Caribbeans" in 1952, on the album Songs From Jamaica; the song was called "Day De Light".^[2] It was also recorded by Louise Bennett in 1954. In 1956, singer/songwriters Irving Burgie and William Attaway wrote a version of the lyrics that was recorded that same year by Harry Belafonte; this is the version that is by far the best known to listeners today, as it reached number five on the Billboard charts in 1957 and later became Belafonte's signature song. Also in 1956, folk singer Bob Gibson, who had travelled to Jamaica and heard the song, taught his version of it to the folk band The Tarriers. They recorded a version of that song that mixed in the chorus of another Jamaican folk song, "Hill and Gully Rider", and released it, spawning what became their biggest hit. It outdid Belafonte's original on the pop charts, reaching number four. This version was re-recorded by Shirley Bassey in 1957, and became a hit in the United Kingdom.^[3]

The Tarriers, or some subset of the three members of the group (Erik Darling, Bob Carey and Alan Arkin) are sometimes credited as the writers of the song, perhaps because their version of the song, which mixed in another song, was an original creation.

Parodies and other uses

The cry "Day-O!" by itself has become a frequently-used bit at baseball parks in late innings and in NBA arenas when the home team needs a rally, as spectators want to "go home".

There have been a number of parodies of this iconic song over the years:

• "Banana Boat (Day-o)" by Stan Freberg, produced in the 1950s by Capitol Records, features ongoing disagreement between an enthusiastic lead singer and a bongo-playing beatnik (Peter Leeds) who "don't dig loud noises" and had the catchphrase "You're too loud, man". When he hears the lyric about the "deadly black taranch-la" [actually the highly venomous Brazilian wandering spider], the beatnik protests, "Don't sing about spiders, man! Like, I don't dig spiders". Stan Freberg's version was the basis for the TV advert for the UK chocolate bar Trio in the mid-1980s.
• In 1972, the Dutch artist & comic André van Duin used the melody for a song "Bananenlied" (Banana Song) exploring the question of why bananas are bent.
• German band Trio performed a parody where "Bommerlunder" (a German schnapps) substituted the words "daylight come" in the 1980s. In one rare coincidence, Trio and Harry Belafonte appeared in the same TV show with the latter watching Trio's act in disbelief.
• In the TV series In Living Color, Jim Carrey, who portrays Canadian rapper Snow (while parodying the song "Informer"), sings the chorus inside a subway train.
• The Flash animation "Osama Bin Laden Has Nowhere To Run, Nowhere To Hide", produced shortly after the September 11, 2001 attacks, features a parody version of the song apparently performed by Colin Powell (with George W. Bush on bongos). The main refrain is "Come Mr. Taliban, turn over bin Laden! (Payback come then we drop the bomb)" [1]
• Parodied as "Gay-O" in The Simpsons episode about gay marriage entitled "There's Something About Marrying," season 16.
• Musical comedy group Da Yoopers parodied the song as "It Was Eino" on their 1996 album We're Still Rockin'. Their version tells a story of deer hunting.
• Country music artist Neal McCoy includes snippets of the Banana Boat Song in his "Hillbilly Rap", which can be found on his That's Life album.
• The Firesign Theatre parodied the Banana Boat Song on their 1985 album "Eat Or Be Eaten" as an ad for "Rastafarian Motors" auto repair shop ("You should be smoking, not your car!").
• There have been songs on various radio stations around the U.S. that in spring of 2007 have played a parody of this song which is saying about American Idol's Sanjaya Malakar, "America please send Sanjaya home".
• The song was The Totally Rad Show - Episode 21 - Beetlejuice Parody
• It is parodied in the PC game Discworld II as a part of the Rite of Ask Ente.
• The Banana Throat Song (also known as The Banana Song) by Judge Dread
• The Crypto Song, a parody about Cryptography, Crooks, and Mr. Businessman^[4]
• The Capital Steps released a 1993 cover entitled Day Care ('Day care call and the mom go home').^[5]
• ESPN's Chris Berman calls Jake Delhomme of the Carolina Pathers, "Jake 'daylight come and you gotta' Delhomme", a play on words of the Banana Boat Song by Harry Belafonte.
• The 7-11 chain of provision shops in Singapore used the song as their advertisement jingle in the mid- and late 1990s: "Hey-O, hey-O / Seven-eleven it's a store and more".
• Serbian parody band "Kuguars" made song "Dejo, majstore, pa ti si Bog" in name of known footballer Dejan Savićević, nickname Dejo.
• During the early years of The Rush Limbaugh Show, a parody of the song with lyrics skewering Sen. Ted Kennedy's philadering would be used periodically.

Cultural references

• In the 1985 film Girls Just Want to Have Fun, the character of Lynne, played by Helen Hunt, breaks out into song during choir rehearsal to distract the teacher while Janie, played by Sarah Jessica Parker, escapes to meet up with her dance partner.
• The song was used in the dinner scene in Tim Burton's Beetlejuice, when the hosts and dinner guests become possessed and begin to sing and dance to the song. It is also played faintly during the Geffen Enterprises logo. On the soundtrack it can be heard in the very beginning of Danny Elfman's theme composition for the film.
• The song was used in a banana collecting scene of the documentary Life & Debt by Stephanie Black.
• The fictional character Marve Fleksnes, in the Norwegian series "Fleksnes", played by Norwegian actor Rolv Wesenlund, uses the quote "Day-O" frequently. He yells it in the intro of the series as he hammers his fist into a TV with flickering signals to make them stable and clear, thus zooming into the TV, and a frame of the current episode shows.
• In an episode the TV series Fresh Prince Of Bel-Air Will, Carlton and Aunt Helen sang this song to get Aunt Vivian and Uncle Phil to stop arguing.
• In BBC Radio 4 comedy series Giles Wemmbley-Hogg Goes Off, Giles travels to New Zealand to stop his ex-girlfriend Arabella marrying a Mr Fonty, as then she would be Arabella Fonty, and everyone she was introduced to would sing this song at her.
• In more than one episode of Futurama, character Hermes Conrad (a Jamaican bureaucrat) has made references to the Banana Boat song. Most notably, in 'The Cyber House Rules', the show's protagonist, Fry, refers to Hermes as being a 'rastafarian accountant'. To which Hermes replies, 'Tally me banana'.
• On the July 2, 2009 airing of The Rush Limbaugh Show, the song was played as "the new national anthem of the banana republic of the United States."[2]
• In the British sitcom Peep Show, Jeremy asks Mark to "Come Mr Taliban, tally my bananas"

References

External links

• Who wrote the Banana Boat Song?
• The Originals: "Banana Loader's Song"
• "The Banana Boat Song: 'Daylight come and me wan' go home ...'", November 27, 2005, By Mark Roth, Pittsburgh Post-Gazette.