'When Harry came back, we got together and I played a few songs for him. In an interview with NPR earlier this year, Burgie said that Attaway called Belafonte and invited him to come to New York. He met Belafonte in 1950 several years later Burgie sang some of his songs for writer William Attaway, a friend of Belafonte's. When the chapel got a new organ, Burgie kept the old one in his tent and used it to learn to play chords.Īfter the war he began formal music studies at Juilliard under the GI Bill. Their unit also built a chapel, and Burgie sang in the choir. One of them taught Burgie the rudiments of music. Along with thousands of other black soldiers, he built a road in North Burma during World War II. 5 on the Billboard singles chart and helped Calypso become the first full-length album ever credited with selling 1 million copies in the United States.īurgie, whose mother was from Barbados, was born in 1924 in Brooklyn and grew up poor during the Great Depression before joining the Army. Belafonte's version of 'Day-O' went to No. But Burgie reworked the lyrics for the version Belafonte would sing on the 1956 album Calypso. 'Day-O,' or as it's sometimes known, 'The Banana Boat Song,' was based on a Jamaican folk song and first recorded in 1952 by the Trinidadian singer Edric Connor. His death was confirmed by his son Andrew Burgie.īurgie performed in nightclubs as Lord Burgess, but he was best-known as a songwriter who helped Harry Belafonte bring calypso to the mainstream. He was 95.īurgie died as a result of complications from heart failure. Irving Burgie, a songwriter whose adaptation of the traditional Jamaican folk song 'Day-O' became one of the definitive calypso songs of the 20th century, died on Friday. Susan Watts/NY Daily News via Getty Images Burgie, who rewrote the lyrics to the traditional Jamaican song 'Day-O,' died Friday at the age of 95. Irving Burgie at his home in Queens in 2017.

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