Day-O!
Lord Burgess—songwriter, performer and civil rights activist—will be returning to the Berkshires once again, not to perform his signature calypso music, but to receive a 2007 Pioneer Award at the W.E.B. Du Bois Center. Lord Burgess is the professional name of singer-songwriter and political activist Irving Burgie, a native of Brooklyn, N.Y., whose mother was from Barbados, a country with which he has a unique connection.
“I honeymooned at Bruno Aron’s Festival House in Lenox in 1956,” Irving Burgie said in an interview from his bed at Jamaica Hospital last week. He had returned from his usual vacation in Barbados with a mysterious infection in his lower right leg and his doctors were paying close attention to his health.
“In fact, I spent a lot of time in Lenox over the years, singing and just enjoying all that the town has to offer. I’m a big fan of Tanglewood. I used to perform in clubs all over the region, including the Music Inn.”
Burgie, known in his heyday as Lord Burgess, is going to be the star attraction on Feb. 10 at the one-year anniversary of the W.E.B. Du Bois Center in Great Barrington. He will be talking about his life-long work in American civil rights, touching on his million-dollar career in music and signing copies of his autobiography, “Day-O!!!” recently published by Caribe Publishing. And the big clue to his identity is there, front and center, in the title of his book.
“Calypso,” he said, “it was the biggest thing going in the 1950s, and I was there at the start of it. Everybody remembers Harry Belafonte, well, he actually did 34 of my songs.”
Those songs truly defined both the genre of calypso and the star himself. They included “Jamaica Farewell,” “Island in the Sun,” “Dolly Dawn,” “I Do Adore Her,” “Hosanna,” “Come Back, Liza,” “Kingston Market,” “Angelina,” “Monkey,” and a slew of others. Even though Burgie had been enjoying a successful club career of his own as a performer, singing and playing the guitar on his own tunes and on traditional island music, he gave that up to write for Belafonte.
“I deferred most of my songs to Belafonte,” Burgie confessed. “He did three albums of my songs. I didn’t compete with him; it would have been competing with myself. He was very big, sexy and handsome, in fact, he was the best salesman in the world.”
Their first album together, “Harry Belafonte: Calypso” was the first LP to sell a million copies in the history of American music. Eight of the 11 songs on the disc were Burgie’s. The sales of records and sheet music, residuals from performance and sales, made him the most successful folk composer of his day.
In recent years the octogenarian has been recording on his own, putting his personal stamp on the now traditional tunes he introduced to the world. “I’m recording,” he said, “to establish some sort of a track record of my work and that’s how I’m keeping it alive.”
Among the tunes on his recent CDs are some he wrote for a Broadway musical, first produced in 1963, “Ballad for Bimshire.” The show starred Ossie Davis, Frederick O’Neal and Christine Spencer and featured performances by Miriam Burton, Alyce Webb, Jimmy Randolph and both the young Robert Hooks and Hilda Harris. Talley Beatty created the choreography. The show only ran 74 performances. Based on stories about his mother’s life in Barbados, affectionately called Bimshire in the plot, it opened just one month prior to the assassination of President John F. Kennedy and, like other shows on the boards at the time, business fell off drastically and it was forced to close.
Musically Burgie brought to the show all of his talent and capabilities. The score ranges from pure calypso-style tunes to songs that are nearly operatic in their range and scope. An in-season revival at the Negro Ensemble Company brought in new audience in the 1990s.
“Day-O!” was used as a wake-up call for the astronauts aboard the Atlantis Space Shuttle in 1997 and was also featured in the “We Are The World” telecast that year. It, and many of his other calypso hits, were featured in the 1988 cult film hit, “Beetlejuice.”
Burgie’s devotion to the West Indian heritage he espoused has also produced “The West Indian Songbook,” which has been adapted for school use in urban centers.
In addition to all his accomplishments in the music field, which include penning the words to the Barbados national anthem, he has been closely associated with many of the movers and shakers in the political arena in America, as well. His experiences in the armed forces during World War II focused his interests on civil rights, integration and equality. The “separate but equal” concepts didn’t sit well with him as early as 1942.
“I think that the meat of my life was in the younger days,” he said. “The early part, the growing up years which I spend a lot of time with in my book and the civil rights movement. I was there, in it, working for the protection of black people in the United States and the struggles, the highs and lows and the inbetweens.”
Burgie recalled working alongside Martin Luther King, Medgar Evers and others. He was part of the marches, the picketing and struggles for legislation to abolish segregation in the schools and the workplace. When he first got involved he was a part-time auto mechanic working for much less pay than his white counterparts in the same garages. When he began to accrue fame and the income that goes with it, he continued to work tirelessly in the fight.
These are issues he will talk about during his appearance at the W.E.B. Du Bois Center on Feb. 10 beginning at 4 p.m. Randy Weinstein , the founder of the center, will be presenting Burgie with a 2007 Pioneer Award, and also presenting one to Richard Chrisman, an adjunct professor at Berkshire Community College. “Both men have opened the way for others to follow,” Weinstein said.
“Everybody got involved in the fight back then,” Burgie added. “It was the thing. It was America.”
So says Lord Burgess. And he should know. He was America’s calypso voice.
If you go …
What: One-year anniversary at the W.E.B. Du Bois Center
Event: Includes a celebration of W.E.B. Du Bois’ birthday; presentation of the second annual Du Bois Pioneer Awards; book signing
Speaker: Irving Burgie, songwriter and civil rights activist
When: Saturday, Feb. 10, from 4 to 6 p.m.
Admission: The event is free and open to the public
Where: 684 South Main St., Great Barrington
For further information, call (413) 644-9595
