millie small
Thoroughly Modern Millie
In 1964, in more or less about to be Swinging London, “My Boy Lollipop” made sense. It was a love song, it was a pop song, Shirley Bassey couldn’t have sung it, and that was pretty much the pop demarcation point then. It was bouncy, catchy, gloriously silly and earnest; everywhere you went you heard it because it was always on the radio and there was only one radio station that played pop music at the time, BBC radio, and one nascent, unlicensed pirate radio station, Radio Caroline, that started up the same year but wasn’t yet prevalent. For a nine-year-old boy totally uninterested in music in those days, on the grounds it wasn’t round and you couldn’t kick it, “My Boy Lollipop” was revelatory. First of all, it’s omnipresence can’t have been unique because all pop hits were as much a part ...
Millie Small, Jamaican Ska Singer and Songwriter, Dies at 72
Millie Small, who is known for bringing ska music to the masses with “My Boy Lollipop,” died in London yesterday (May 5) following a stroke, the BBC reported. She was 72. “Millie opened the door for Jamaican music to the world. It became a hit pretty much everywhere in the world,” Island Records founder Chris Blackwell, who produced Small’s 1964 single, said in a statement. “I went with her around the world because each of the territories wanted her to turn up and do TV shows and such, and it was just incredible how she handled it. She was such a really sweet person, very funny, great sense of humour. She was really special.” Small became known on the global stage when her song, “My Boy Lollipop” peaked at No. 2 on both the U.S. and UK charts. The song is still one of the “all-time biggest...
