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Harry Belafonte: The Real Deal · Stuff You Should Know

• 0:01
  Speaker 1: Welcome to stuff you should know, a production of iHeartRadio.
• 0:11
  Speaker 2: Hey yo, and welcome to the podcast. I'm Josh, and
• 0:14
  Speaker 2: there's Chuck and Jerry's here too, which is appropriate because
• 0:17
  Speaker 2: this is a barn burner of an episode.
• 0:19
  Speaker 1: If you ask me, did you say, hey, oh, I
• 0:23
  Speaker 1: did very nice.
• 0:24
  Speaker 2: I gotta freshen it up here there sometimes starting to
• 0:27
  Speaker 2: get a little stale. No, you don't think so.
• 0:31
  Speaker 1: No, I mean you can freshen it up, but it's
• 0:34
  Speaker 1: not stale.
• 0:35
  Speaker 2: Okay, all right, okay, I like that. If you have
• 0:39
  Speaker 2: any ideas to freshen it up ever, you know, lamb
• 0:42
  Speaker 2: on me. All right, let's see, we're coming up on
• 0:47
  Speaker 2: your seventeen. Just want to point that out.
• 0:49
  Speaker 1: Yeah, what is it in April?
• 0:51
  Speaker 2: Yeah? Pretty cool? Yeah. And today also we are talking
• 0:57
  Speaker 2: about Harry Belafonte and part of the reason why, but
• 1:01
  Speaker 2: not the full reason why, because this is he was
• 1:03
  Speaker 2: a perennial man, a man of all seasons. Yeah, but
• 1:07
  Speaker 2: it's Black History Month, so we want to profile him,
• 1:10
  Speaker 2: at least in part for a Black History Month.
• 1:12
  Speaker 1: Yeah. And he's awesome. And you know I watched that
• 1:17
  Speaker 1: We Are the World documentary not too long ago. Oh
• 1:20
  Speaker 1: yeahs a good yeah, it's really good. I think you
• 1:24
  Speaker 1: would enjoy it.
• 1:25
  Speaker 2: Okay, I probably would, then, yeah, you think I would.
• 1:29
  Speaker 1: Yeah, it's actually really really good. And you walk away
• 1:32
  Speaker 1: from it thinking, well, thinking like, Harry Belafonte is awesome,
• 1:36
  Speaker 1: along with a lot of other people. But you walk
• 1:37
  Speaker 1: away thinking, man, I just want to be friends with
• 1:40
  Speaker 1: Lionel Richie.
• 1:41
  Speaker 2: Oh yeah, I can imagine.
• 1:43
  Speaker 1: He's just the coolest and he tells really great story
• 1:46
  Speaker 1: He's a great storyteller and funny. And like I was like, man,
• 1:49
  Speaker 1: Lionel Richie is awesome and fun.
• 1:51
  Speaker 2: That's pretty cool, man.
• 1:52
  Speaker 1: Yeah.
• 1:53
  Speaker 2: Yeah, there's a rumor that seems fairly substantiated that he's
• 1:56
  Speaker 2: Kylie Jenner's real father.
• 1:58
  Speaker 1: Oh really yeah, apparently there's.
• 1:59
  Speaker 2: A lot of a lot of swinging going on out
• 2:02
  Speaker 2: in that neighborhood back in the day.
• 2:05
  Speaker 1: I don't know what Kylie Jenner looks like. Does she
• 2:08
  Speaker 1: look like Is it sort of like Frank Sinatra's son
• 2:14
  Speaker 1: ronan Pharaoh?
• 2:16
  Speaker 2: Uh No, nothing like that. And actually I'm not sure
• 2:19
  Speaker 2: any living human knows exactly what Kylie Jenner looks like.
• 2:22
  Speaker 2: So I'll just say, well.
• 2:25
  Speaker 1: Let's talk about Harry be then the guy. I love
• 2:27
  Speaker 1: this guy.
• 2:28
  Speaker 2: Yeah, so Harry Beliefani. I was trying to figure out
• 2:30
  Speaker 2: how we can name this, and we might just say
• 2:32
  Speaker 2: Harry Belifani or something like that, but we could also
• 2:35
  Speaker 2: say the thinking person sink.
• 2:38
  Speaker 1: Yeah, that's good, the real deal, yeah.
• 2:42
  Speaker 2: Or a genuinely great.
• 2:44
  Speaker 1: Person yeah, entertainer slash activist, yeah.
• 2:48
  Speaker 2: Like he he did it all. He was just one
• 2:51
  Speaker 2: of these people who you know, when you approach an iconoclast,
• 2:56
  Speaker 2: especially one who's just revered universally, and you start picking
• 3:00
  Speaker 2: at the edges, you're like, oh my god, I hope
• 3:02
  Speaker 2: it's not.
• 3:03
  Speaker 1: Like garbage, right.
• 3:05
  Speaker 2: And you just don't get to that point like he
• 3:09
  Speaker 2: was through and through a genuinely good person. And one
• 3:11
  Speaker 2: of the reasons why you don't get to like pick
• 3:13
  Speaker 2: off the outer coating and find garbage underneath, because he
• 3:17
  Speaker 2: was just pretty much fully transparent his whole life, and
• 3:21
  Speaker 2: he just he was who he was, and he wasn't
• 3:24
  Speaker 2: apologetic for it, and he just put it all out
• 3:27
  Speaker 2: there based on his beliefs, and his beliefs tended to
• 3:33
  Speaker 2: coincide with the right side of history. Typically, he saw
• 3:36
  Speaker 2: people who were downtrodden being being taken advantage of, being
• 3:40
  Speaker 2: discriminated against, and he wanted to go help make that better.
• 3:44
  Speaker 1: Yeah. Yeah, And as you'll see, you know, throughout his
• 3:46
  Speaker 1: career he missed opportunities because he refused to cave lost opportunities,
• 3:53
  Speaker 1: had opportunities taken away from him, and he was just like,
• 3:57
  Speaker 1: you know, I'm going to be Harry Belafonte and no
• 4:00
  Speaker 1: one is going to change that. Yeah, career be damn, let's.
• 4:03
  Speaker 2: Kick the whole thing off, right, Because for those of
• 4:06
  Speaker 2: you who don't know, we should probably say Harry Belafine
• 4:08
  Speaker 2: is a legendary entertainer. That's what he's most widely known for,
• 4:13
  Speaker 2: and most widely known for the song Deyo, which is
• 4:16
  Speaker 2: why I said Heyo come full circle now in the
• 4:19
  Speaker 2: Banana boat song. Yeah. And if you don't know what
• 4:22
  Speaker 2: we're talking about still, just pause this, go onto YouTube,
• 4:26
  Speaker 2: type in doyoh, look for the original version and listen
• 4:29
  Speaker 2: to it and come back, and you will be pretty
• 4:31
  Speaker 2: much as versed as you need to be going into
• 4:33
  Speaker 2: this episode.
• 4:34
  Speaker 1: Yeah. You know, actor, stage performer, Broadway star, Egott winner. Yeah,
• 4:39
  Speaker 1: if you don't know an Egott, that's if you have
• 4:41
  Speaker 1: won the Emmy, Grammy, Oscar and Tony in your lifetime,
• 4:44
  Speaker 1: which mister Belafonte did, it's a rare feat indeed. But
• 4:48
  Speaker 1: he was born to, you know, a very humble upbringing.
• 4:52
  Speaker 1: In March of nineteen twenty seven, Harold George Bellefonte junior
• 4:58
  Speaker 1: in Harlem, New York City, to Caribbean parents. His father, Harold,
• 5:02
  Speaker 1: who was actually a cook on a banana boat, was
• 5:05
  Speaker 1: from Martinique and his mother, Melvin, was from Jamaica. And
• 5:10
  Speaker 1: he was raised in Harlem until he was eight, at
• 5:13
  Speaker 1: which time his mom said, you and your little brother
• 5:17
  Speaker 1: Dennis are going to live near in my hometown in Jamaica.
• 5:21
  Speaker 1: And so from the ages of eight to what like
• 5:25
  Speaker 1: twelve ish, he lived in Jamaica, and that's where he
• 5:28
  Speaker 1: really sort of saw the light as far as this,
• 5:32
  Speaker 1: you know, Caribbean folk music that would become his staple.
• 5:36
  Speaker 2: Yeah, And he was raised by his grandmother there. His
• 5:39
  Speaker 2: maternal grandmother, Melvin's mom, was a white woman, a Jamaican
• 5:43
  Speaker 2: white woman, and she really raised him to kind of
• 5:46
  Speaker 2: love all people, which is a big early influence. And
• 5:48
  Speaker 2: then another influence of living in Jamaica at the time
• 5:51
  Speaker 2: was he saw black professionals. He saw black doctors, black lawyers,
• 5:55
  Speaker 2: completely competent, completely normal. There wasn't anything wrong with them.
• 5:59
  Speaker 2: They were just black doctors and black lawyers and et cetera.
• 6:03
  Speaker 2: And it really kind of served as a foil to
• 6:05
  Speaker 2: him to how things were back in America, right, which
• 6:10
  Speaker 2: was very discriminatory at the time. Yeah, he was back
• 6:14
  Speaker 2: dab in the middle of the Jim Crow era in
• 6:16
  Speaker 2: the United States.
• 6:17
  Speaker 1: Yeah, so he hears this music down there, the sort
• 6:21
  Speaker 1: of call and response work songs that I mean, that's
• 6:25
  Speaker 1: where the song. Should we talk about, Dio real quick?
• 6:28
  Speaker 1: I mean, as we're getting going. Yeah, let's yeah, because
• 6:31
  Speaker 1: if you've heard the song, you might be thinking, and
• 6:33
  Speaker 1: you never did any research, you wondered, what the heck
• 6:35
  Speaker 1: is he singing about? Right, you know, come mister tally man,
• 6:39
  Speaker 1: tally me banana daylight comes and we want to go home. Yeah,
• 6:43
  Speaker 1: it was a work song and it was a colin
• 6:45
  Speaker 1: response song of these guys who worked on banana boats.
• 6:48
  Speaker 1: And you know, they would work through the night and
• 6:51
  Speaker 1: the morning is when they were allowed to leave if
• 6:53
  Speaker 1: the tally man, the person who counted the bananas tally
• 6:56
  Speaker 1: that they had enough bananas to you know, tally the
• 7:00
  Speaker 1: to their workday.
• 7:00
  Speaker 2: Yeah, and that's what they would get paid based on
• 7:02
  Speaker 2: how much they had loaded overnight, So you couldn't leave
• 7:05
  Speaker 2: until the guy came along and said, you loaded five
• 7:08
  Speaker 2: million tons of bananas, here's your fifty dollars or whatever,
• 7:12
  Speaker 2: then you could go home. I had no idea that's
• 7:15
  Speaker 2: what that song was about.
• 7:17
  Speaker 1: Yeah, I mean, I didn't know what a tally Man was,
• 7:19
  Speaker 1: but it makes perfect sense of someone him Tally's exactly.
• 7:22
  Speaker 2: And I love that song even more now, and I
• 7:24
  Speaker 2: just it just really kind of buttons some stuff up
• 7:27
  Speaker 2: because yeah, to that point, like I had never looked
• 7:30
  Speaker 2: up the lyrics, and I was just going by ear.
• 7:32
  Speaker 2: My ear's not super good at picking out lyrics. So
• 7:35
  Speaker 2: what singing, I don't even remember what I was. I
• 7:39
  Speaker 2: was just listening and it was all just kind of
• 7:41
  Speaker 2: like vocal sounds. It was like the cocktoo, twins or
• 7:44
  Speaker 2: something like that. He was just making sounds, not actually
• 7:48
  Speaker 2: saying anything or saying words. So now that I know
• 7:50
  Speaker 2: there's a story behind it, I love it.
• 7:52
  Speaker 1: Yeah. Pretty cool. So he ends up back in Harlem,
• 7:55
  Speaker 1: though supposedly had dyslexia, so he wasn't a great student,
• 8:01
  Speaker 1: so at seventeen years old he quit school. He joined
• 8:03
  Speaker 1: the Navy in nineteen forty four. And this was another
• 8:07
  Speaker 1: sort of eye opening experience because he served in World
• 8:10
  Speaker 1: War Two in an all black unit and at first
• 8:14
  Speaker 1: was like, you know, I don't like the segregation of
• 8:17
  Speaker 1: the army here. But he met a lot of guys
• 8:20
  Speaker 1: in that unit that turned him onto a lot of
• 8:23
  Speaker 1: stuff that kind of laid to groundwork for what would
• 8:25
  Speaker 1: be his social awareness and activism.
• 8:28
  Speaker 2: Yeah, they turned him onto books like The Soul of
• 8:30
  Speaker 2: Black Folk, The Souls of Black Folks by W. B.
• 8:33
  Speaker 2: Du Boyce and like that, combined with his early upbringing
• 8:36
  Speaker 2: where he was able to expose society in Jamaica and
• 8:39
  Speaker 2: society in America, like this really kind of got things started.
• 8:43
  Speaker 2: So by the time he met his wife, his first wife,
• 8:46
  Speaker 2: Marguerite Byrd, he was radicalized. At this point I saw
• 8:50
  Speaker 2: described as like he was full on, like civil rights
• 8:53
  Speaker 2: movement guy. And this is the forties, so this is
• 8:56
  Speaker 2: before the civil rights movement had really kind of started
• 9:00
  Speaker 2: in earnest the at least the version that we're you know,
• 9:03
  Speaker 2: we think of when we think of it historically, and
• 9:06
  Speaker 2: Marguerite was not that way at all. She was from
• 9:08
  Speaker 2: an upper middle class black family. She was a sorority
• 9:13
  Speaker 2: girl in Virginia. She was just raised in the type
• 9:17
  Speaker 2: of conservative household where it's like you just trust the system,
• 9:20
  Speaker 2: you trust society if the news tells you something that's true.
• 9:24
  Speaker 2: And she and Harry were almost like foils to an extent.
• 9:29
  Speaker 2: She saw her role as taking care of this misguided,
• 9:32
  Speaker 2: like angry man and trying to help him through life.
• 9:36
  Speaker 2: And I'm sure he saw his role in part as
• 9:39
  Speaker 2: like opening her eyes. But the big thing that came
• 9:42
  Speaker 2: out of their union, whether it was his first two kids.
• 9:45
  Speaker 1: Yeah, he had two daughters with Marguerite, Adrian and of
• 9:48
  Speaker 1: course Sherry, who went on to become a successful actor
• 9:51
  Speaker 1: herself and then served as time in the Navy. They
• 9:55
  Speaker 1: eventually lived in Harlem, you know, as a family, and
• 9:59
  Speaker 1: he as a janitor's assistant at an apartment building. And
• 10:03
  Speaker 1: that's when another sort of monumental moment in his life happened.
• 10:07
  Speaker 1: He fixed the blinds in someone's apartment, in attendant's apartment there,
• 10:12
  Speaker 1: and just as a thank you, they gave him, they
• 10:15
  Speaker 1: gifted them some tickets to the theater, to the American
• 10:18
  Speaker 1: Negro Theater, which he had never seen live theater before,
• 10:21
  Speaker 1: like that, never seen you know, black actors on stage.
• 10:24
  Speaker 1: Performing and to say he caught the bug as an understatement.
• 10:28
  Speaker 1: He immediately tried to get a job there, applied to
• 10:32
  Speaker 1: be a stage hand at that theater. And this is
• 10:35
  Speaker 1: one of those life things where you're just like, are
• 10:38
  Speaker 1: you kidding me? This really happened. He got that job
• 10:41
  Speaker 1: and another young janitor there, his name was Sidney Poitier,
• 10:47
  Speaker 1: And it's just incredible, like, what are the odds that
• 10:50
  Speaker 1: these two incredible talented performers you get jobs as like
• 10:55
  Speaker 1: stage hands and janitors at this theater when they were
• 10:58
  Speaker 1: just in their I guess early twenties.
• 11:00
  Speaker 2: Yeah, and they both did so because they wanted to
• 11:02
  Speaker 2: do whatever they could to get their foot in the
• 11:04
  Speaker 2: door into theater. The world of theater. I saw somewhere
• 11:08
  Speaker 2: mentioned that when they were just two broke stage hands,
• 11:12
  Speaker 2: they loved the theater so much that they would pull
• 11:14
  Speaker 2: their money together to buy a single ticket to Broadway
• 11:16
  Speaker 2: shows and then one would see one act and then
• 11:18
  Speaker 2: they would switch off and the other would see the
• 11:20
  Speaker 2: second act or whatever.
• 11:22
  Speaker 1: Amazing.
• 11:22
  Speaker 2: Yeah, I mean that's that you really love the theater.
• 11:24
  Speaker 2: Like you said, he caught the bug if you're doing
• 11:27
  Speaker 2: stuff like that. He also enrolled in a really that's
• 11:32
  Speaker 2: the measuring stick, by the way, for whether you love
• 11:34
  Speaker 2: theater or not.
• 11:35
  Speaker 1: Oh, I just go to one act and split it
• 11:38
  Speaker 1: with your friend, right, all right.
• 11:40
  Speaker 2: He also enrolled in a legendary acting workshop that was
• 11:45
  Speaker 2: held at the New School for years. Some of his
• 11:48
  Speaker 2: classmates were Walter Mathow have you seen did you see
• 11:52
  Speaker 2: the documentary sing your song about him? Not Walter Math
• 11:56
  Speaker 2: about Lafonte.
• 11:57
  Speaker 1: No, Math, I was a singer. No, I didn't see
• 12:01
  Speaker 1: that yet.
• 12:01
  Speaker 2: It's good.
• 12:02
  Speaker 1: I'm going to it's good.
• 12:03
  Speaker 2: But they show like some stills from that workshop, and
• 12:05
  Speaker 2: there's young Walter Math. Now he looks like some doofy
• 12:09
  Speaker 2: twenty year old Walter Math.
• 12:10
  Speaker 1: Now it's pretty great, except he looked fifty.
• 12:13
  Speaker 2: Yeah, pretty much already. Yeah, but he has like a
• 12:15
  Speaker 2: cowlic and he's wearing like a heavy flannel shirt like
• 12:18
  Speaker 2: he just walked out of the woods of Minnesota or something.
• 12:21
  Speaker 1: I love it.
• 12:22
  Speaker 2: He was also in class with Tony Curtis, Marlon Brando,
• 12:25
  Speaker 2: and then the future Dorothy Petrillos Bornak, also known as
• 12:29
  Speaker 2: b Arthur.
• 12:31
  Speaker 1: Oh, then there's Mallod.
• 12:33
  Speaker 2: Can you imagine you go to class and that's who
• 12:34
  Speaker 2: you're in class with. But they don't mean anything. Yet
• 12:37
  Speaker 2: they're all just acting students.
• 12:39
  Speaker 1: Yeah, and I'm sure Bellefonte was like this, Brando, guy's
• 12:41
  Speaker 1: got some promise.
• 12:42
  Speaker 2: Yeah. They actually became pretty good friends.
• 12:45
  Speaker 1: Yeah, Brando's He's worth an episode at some point, to
• 12:49
  Speaker 1: say the least.
• 12:50
  Speaker 2: I think we could do just one episode on Don
• 12:52
  Speaker 2: Juan de Marco.
• 12:54
  Speaker 1: Right, So, Harry Bellefonte's in the new school, you know,
• 13:00
  Speaker 1: doing what you do in theater school like that, You're
• 13:03
  Speaker 1: doing movement and voice and eventually like some singing. And
• 13:06
  Speaker 1: he was like, oh, wait a minute, I can sing
• 13:08
  Speaker 1: pretty good too, and everyone else said, yeah, you can
• 13:11
  Speaker 1: sing pretty good, and you're handsome to a fault, so
• 13:15
  Speaker 1: you've kind of got it all going on. There weren't
• 13:17
  Speaker 1: a ton of roles for black men in the theater
• 13:20
  Speaker 1: at the time, or at least, and this is something
• 13:22
  Speaker 1: that we'll see he did throughout his career, not the
• 13:25
  Speaker 1: kind of roles that he wanted to take that he
• 13:27
  Speaker 1: thought were you know, dignified, I guess is the right word.
• 13:32
  Speaker 1: So he's like, I'm not going to play the parts
• 13:34
  Speaker 1: that are available to me. I'm going to start singing.
• 13:36
  Speaker 1: So he went to jazz clubs like the you know,
• 13:39
  Speaker 1: the legendary Blue Note would sing jazz standards on stage,
• 13:43
  Speaker 1: and then in the nineteen forties, spurred by the interest
• 13:48
  Speaker 1: in it was like a renewed interest in square dancing
• 13:50
  Speaker 1: and folk dancing at the time that led to what
• 13:53
  Speaker 1: was called the folk music Revival. This was in the
• 13:56
  Speaker 1: early nineteen forties in Greenwich's Village, which you know would
• 14:01
  Speaker 1: eventually culminate in the sort of the peak of that
• 14:04
  Speaker 1: movement in the mid sixties with people like Pete Seeger
• 14:07
  Speaker 1: and Bob Dylan. It all started in the early nineteen
• 14:10
  Speaker 1: forties with people like Harry Belafonte going to the Village Vanguard,
• 14:15
  Speaker 1: this legendary folk music club and seeing Lead Belly perform
• 14:18
  Speaker 1: and was like, all right, well, now we're onto something here.
• 14:24
  Speaker 1: It's all happening, and I'm right in the epicenter of it.
• 14:26
  Speaker 2: Yeah, because, like you said, he wasn't happy with singing
• 14:29
  Speaker 2: jazz standards or pop music, despite the fact that I
• 14:32
  Speaker 2: saw that he was backed at some points by Charlie Parker,
• 14:35
  Speaker 2: the famous drummer, Max Roach and Miles Davis, all his
• 14:38
  Speaker 2: young musicians, and he was like, nah, let me go
• 14:41
  Speaker 2: on to folk music. And he got so heavy into
• 14:43
  Speaker 2: folk music that he spent his time researching folk songs
• 14:48
  Speaker 2: at the Library of Congress to expand his repertoire. That's
• 14:51
  Speaker 2: how into folk music he got. And he was so
• 14:54
  Speaker 2: broke that he would find somebody to split a ticket
• 14:57
  Speaker 2: into the Library of Congress's archives and search for an hour,
• 15:00
  Speaker 2: and then they trade off and do the next hour.
• 15:03
  Speaker 2: And that means you're really into folk music.
• 15:06
  Speaker 1: That's how we do our research, right, that's right, just
• 15:08
  Speaker 1: trade off. It was around this time that he met
• 15:12
  Speaker 1: a pretty monumental figure in his life. It was one
• 15:15
  Speaker 1: of his idols. It was an actor and singer named
• 15:17
  Speaker 1: Paul Robison, and he was most famous, probably at the
• 15:21
  Speaker 1: time at least for his version of Old Man River
• 15:26
  Speaker 1: from Showboat from the musical Showboat, and Harry was like, yeah,
• 15:30
  Speaker 1: nuts with this jazz stuff. I'm into the traditional music.
• 15:33
  Speaker 1: I'm into folk, I can you know. I'm trying to
• 15:35
  Speaker 1: find my own voice. And he found that in what
• 15:39
  Speaker 1: ended up being sort of like the Calypso folk music
• 15:44
  Speaker 1: of the Caribbean, you know, going back to his roots.
• 15:47
  Speaker 2: Right, And we'll get up into that a little more
• 15:51
  Speaker 2: in a minute, but just kind of progressing on with
• 15:53
  Speaker 2: his early career, he essentially not just his singing voice,
• 15:59
  Speaker 2: but his stage presence. His presence was monumental, but also
• 16:03
  Speaker 2: he used it his movements and sometimes props and stuff
• 16:07
  Speaker 2: on the stage to kind of tell the story that
• 16:10
  Speaker 2: this folk song was trying to tell. So his act
• 16:13
  Speaker 2: was just a sensation, like basically out of the gate,
• 16:16
  Speaker 2: and he very quickly got picked up and put on
• 16:17
  Speaker 2: a Broadway, this time from the stage. And the first
• 16:21
  Speaker 2: thing I think he was in was John Murray Anderson's Almanac,
• 16:24
  Speaker 2: which was a musical review in nineteen fifty three, and
• 16:27
  Speaker 2: he did such a good job that his first time
• 16:29
  Speaker 2: out he wins a Tony. Not only does he win
• 16:32
  Speaker 2: a Tony, he's the first black man to win a Tony.
• 16:36
  Speaker 1: Yeah, nineteen fifty four Best Featured Actor in a Musical.
• 16:40
  Speaker 1: And not only that, but around the same time in
• 16:42
  Speaker 1: fifty three, he made his first two movies with Dorothy Dandridge,
• 16:48
  Speaker 1: and the second of those Carmen Jones. Dorothy Dandridge became
• 16:52
  Speaker 1: the first African American woman nominated for a Best Actress Oscar.
• 16:57
  Speaker 1: So he's among this group of young African American entertainers
• 17:02
  Speaker 1: that are just knocking doors down left and right and
• 17:05
  Speaker 1: getting you know, real recognition kind of for the first time.
• 17:10
  Speaker 2: Yeah, and this is the early fifties.
• 17:12
  Speaker 1: That's right.
• 17:13
  Speaker 2: Let's take a little break and we'll come back and
• 17:14
  Speaker 2: talk a little more about his Calypso stuff.
• 17:17
  Speaker 1: Yeah, and we should mention before we break here that
• 17:20
  Speaker 1: his marriage to Marguerite was dissolving at the time, but
• 17:25
  Speaker 1: he would go on to marry again, as we'll see.
• 17:27
  Speaker 1: But maybe we should take that break. You want to
• 17:29
  Speaker 1: take a break, Yeah, let's take a break. We'll be
• 17:31
  Speaker 1: right back.
• 17:32
  Speaker 2: We will.
• 17:34
  Speaker 3: Stoffy jaws.
• 17:39
  Speaker 2: Soff you okay, Chuck. So we're talking calypso now, it's
• 18:03
  Speaker 2: really really difficult to understate, like how big of a
• 18:09
  Speaker 2: star Harry Belafonte became thanks to Calypso music. Calypso music
• 18:14
  Speaker 2: is like this traditional Caribbean music, typically folks work songs.
• 18:18
  Speaker 2: Call in response is a big one. So the people
• 18:21
  Speaker 2: in the chorus seeing like daylight come and we want
• 18:24
  Speaker 2: to go home. That's like the response where Harry Belafonte
• 18:28
  Speaker 2: is singing the call part right, it's just traditional work
• 18:31
  Speaker 2: song stuff. Come on. So he starts out this whole
• 18:36
  Speaker 2: jam where he is playing folk music at the village.
• 18:40
  Speaker 2: Vanguard goes on to Broadway start singing some of this
• 18:43
  Speaker 2: folk like Caribbean folk music, and within a couple of
• 18:45
  Speaker 2: years he's on an NBC show doing the same thing,
• 18:50
  Speaker 2: and Dave helped us out with us. And he makes
• 18:52
  Speaker 2: a point that had it not been for a guy,
• 18:54
  Speaker 2: an artist who went by Lord Burgess but his real
• 18:57
  Speaker 2: name was Irving Bergie, Irving Bergie, who was also a
• 19:01
  Speaker 2: Caribbean American who was raised in New York, also being
• 19:07
  Speaker 2: into Calypso at the same exact time, and then meeting
• 19:10
  Speaker 2: Harry Belafonte and them collaborating, it probably would not have
• 19:15
  Speaker 2: taken off. But thanks to Lord Burgess and then a
• 19:18
  Speaker 2: playwright friend of Harry Belafani's named William Adaway working together
• 19:22
  Speaker 2: rewriting some of these traditional songs, rearranging them to make
• 19:26
  Speaker 2: them peppier, a little poppier, like they made Calypso, like
• 19:31
  Speaker 2: they just they made it way more palatable to Americans,
• 19:35
  Speaker 2: way more dancing, and just way more infectious than other
• 19:38
  Speaker 2: people who'd recorded some of these same songs previously had.
• 19:42
  Speaker 1: Yeah, and you know, banana butt was a cover song.
• 19:44
  Speaker 1: It's an old school song that had been around since
• 19:46
  Speaker 1: the turn of the twentieth century. And like you said,
• 19:50
  Speaker 1: they had a more upbeat version and it was a huge,
• 19:54
  Speaker 1: huge hit. He got a little you know, as we'll see,
• 19:57
  Speaker 1: there are people within some of the communities even admired
• 20:02
  Speaker 1: and worked with it, often didn't love him back as much.
• 20:05
  Speaker 1: Calypso was one of them, some traditional Calypso purist, apparently,
• 20:11
  Speaker 1: especially like in Trinidad, where Calypso was born, where like, hey,
• 20:16
  Speaker 1: this guy's coming in. He's in New York. He's not
• 20:19
  Speaker 1: a real Calypsonian, and you know, he's kind of changing
• 20:23
  Speaker 1: it up, adding like American folk sort of interest to it.
• 20:28
  Speaker 1: And he was like, you know what I think. In
• 20:31
  Speaker 1: nineteen fifty nine, in a New York Times interview, he said,
• 20:33
  Speaker 1: purism is the best cover up for mediocrity. There's no change.
• 20:37
  Speaker 1: We might as well just go back to the first
• 20:39
  Speaker 1: oough which may have been the first song, or which
• 20:42
  Speaker 1: must have been the first song. And I think at
• 20:44
  Speaker 1: which time Tuk took a tear, rolled down his cheek. Yeah,
• 20:48
  Speaker 1: and he went back to the fire.
• 20:49
  Speaker 2: He said that was my number one song.
• 20:52
  Speaker 1: Yeah. But Harry was like, you know, I'm taking it,
• 20:54
  Speaker 1: I'm making it popular, I'm making it my own, I'm
• 20:56
  Speaker 1: finding my own voice and it's you know, it's my
• 20:59
  Speaker 1: version of lipso folk music.
• 21:01
  Speaker 2: Yeah. I think. Also he was criticized by Trinidadians for
• 21:05
  Speaker 2: being known as the King of Calypso. They're like, we
• 21:08
  Speaker 2: have our own King of Calypso competition every year and
• 21:11
  Speaker 2: you ain't it and he's like so, and they just
• 21:15
  Speaker 2: couldn't come back with anything after that, So the whole
• 21:18
  Speaker 2: beef ended right there.
• 21:20
  Speaker 1: His nineteen fifty six album Calypso came out after that
• 21:23
  Speaker 1: TV special. It was a huge, huge hit. It was
• 21:27
  Speaker 1: stayed number one for thirty eight weeks, knocked Elvis out
• 21:31
  Speaker 1: of the number one spot at the time, and became
• 21:33
  Speaker 1: the very first record in history to sell one million
• 21:37
  Speaker 1: copies in its first year out.
• 21:40
  Speaker 2: Yes, that was just in the US alone. It did
• 21:43
  Speaker 2: the same thing in the UK and Chuck. One of
• 21:46
  Speaker 2: the songs on this album was Dayo. Right yeah, Deyo
• 21:51
  Speaker 2: itself sold a million copies just to the forty five
• 21:56
  Speaker 2: just the single, right. I can see just the single
• 21:59
  Speaker 2: selling the million copies and then the album suffering because
• 22:02
  Speaker 2: of that. The album continued to sell as well. It's
• 22:05
  Speaker 2: crazy how nuts for Harry Belafonte. The United States and
• 22:11
  Speaker 2: a lot of other parts of the world too, were
• 22:13
  Speaker 2: at that time, like he just blew up, you said.
• 22:17
  Speaker 2: It was number one on the charts for thirty eight weeks,
• 22:19
  Speaker 2: not on the charts for thirty eight weeks, then number
• 22:22
  Speaker 2: one album in the United States for all like the
• 22:26
  Speaker 2: better half of a year. That's no one does that.
• 22:29
  Speaker 2: That's crazy.
• 22:31
  Speaker 1: Yeah, it was incredible. He was one of the biggest
• 22:33
  Speaker 1: performers in America all of a sudden, one of the
• 22:36
  Speaker 1: biggest singing stars, big crossover success obviously, and for all
• 22:45
  Speaker 1: of that. This is how he was treated on the road.
• 22:48
  Speaker 1: He would not be allowed to stay in the hotels
• 22:52
  Speaker 1: when he performed in Vegas because of segregation. When he
• 22:56
  Speaker 1: was touring the South with a Broadway show Almanac, state
• 22:59
  Speaker 1: troops threatened to shoot him in a whites only bathroom
• 23:04
  Speaker 1: in la He was stopped by the cops for just
• 23:07
  Speaker 1: taking a walk through Beverly Hills at night. So these
• 23:10
  Speaker 1: are the kinds of this. This was the world he
• 23:12
  Speaker 1: was living in. Even one of the biggest stars in
• 23:15
  Speaker 1: the world was not immune to the just blatant racism
• 23:19
  Speaker 1: that was going on.
• 23:20
  Speaker 2: Yes, absolutely that didn't stop him, though it didn't discourage
• 23:26
  Speaker 2: him like he found it personally discouraging, but he didn't behave,
• 23:32
  Speaker 2: he didn't acquiesce. Basically. Yeah, one of the things he
• 23:36
  Speaker 2: did was he took a role and this is very
• 23:39
  Speaker 2: much in line with his decision making as far as
• 23:42
  Speaker 2: his career went, which we'll talk about a little more
• 23:45
  Speaker 2: in a second. But he took a role called in
• 23:49
  Speaker 2: a movie called Island in Island of the Sun from
• 23:52
  Speaker 2: nineteen fifty seven, and in it he has an insinuated
• 24:00
  Speaker 2: romance with a white woman, Joan Fontaine, and they don't touch,
• 24:05
  Speaker 2: they don't kiss, there's nothing like that. The closest to
• 24:07
  Speaker 2: a kiss that happens is they share a sip from
• 24:11
  Speaker 2: a coconut, Like one of them takes a sip, hands
• 24:14
  Speaker 2: it to the other one, and then she takes a sip.
• 24:17
  Speaker 2: That's the closest thing to an on screen kiss that there.
• 24:19
  Speaker 1: Was not close to a kiss, no, but it was.
• 24:22
  Speaker 2: So groundbreaking that the South Carolina legislature introduced a bill.
• 24:28
  Speaker 2: I don't know if they passed it that would find
• 24:31
  Speaker 2: any theater in South Carolina that showed Island in the Sun.
• 24:34
  Speaker 2: That's how controversial that movie was. And it sounds so
• 24:40
  Speaker 2: tame that it's actually preposterous, and like embarrassing now, but
• 24:45
  Speaker 2: that was at the forefront of pushing the envelope as
• 24:49
  Speaker 2: far as race relations in America went. And that's why
• 24:52
  Speaker 2: Harry Belafonte was like, yes, give me that role. I
• 24:55
  Speaker 2: will totally take that role.
• 24:57
  Speaker 1: Yeah, for sure. In real life, he married his second
• 25:01
  Speaker 1: wife around the same time. Her name is Julie Robinson.
• 25:05
  Speaker 1: She was a dancer and she was white, and they
• 25:08
  Speaker 1: were probably, I would not even say one of the
• 25:11
  Speaker 1: most they were probably the most prominent interracial couple in
• 25:14
  Speaker 1: America at the time.
• 25:16
  Speaker 2: For sure. She was also Brando's girlfriend when they met.
• 25:22
  Speaker 1: Look out, Marlon, Harry Delafante pretty handsome guy.
• 25:26
  Speaker 2: Oh man, beyond handsome. Yeah, so, Chuck, when we were
• 25:30
  Speaker 2: just talking about Islands in the Sun, I was saying
• 25:32
  Speaker 2: that Harry Belafonte would totally choose a role that pushed
• 25:35
  Speaker 2: the envelope for race relations, not to stick it in
• 25:38
  Speaker 2: the eye of white America, but to push things forward
• 25:42
  Speaker 2: and just basically say black people are people too, Let's
• 25:45
  Speaker 2: portray them as such on the screen. Okay.
• 25:48
  Speaker 1: Yeah.
• 25:50
  Speaker 2: In doing that, he had to choose over and over
• 25:52
  Speaker 2: and over again between advancing his career and standing by
• 25:55
  Speaker 2: his values and without missing a single opportunity. He stood
• 26:00
  Speaker 2: by his values every time.
• 26:03
  Speaker 1: Yeah, I mean he was offered and that's just kind
• 26:05
  Speaker 1: of what I was alluding to earlier. He was offered roles.
• 26:07
  Speaker 1: He called them Uncle Tom roles, and he said that's
• 26:10
  Speaker 1: about all you could get at, you know, at one
• 26:13
  Speaker 1: point in Hollywood or on stage, and he just wouldn't
• 26:16
  Speaker 1: play those roles. He you know, it depends on who
• 26:19
  Speaker 1: you are and where you draw the line, and I
• 26:24
  Speaker 1: mean that's where he drew his line. His good friend
• 26:27
  Speaker 1: Sidney Poitier would take not necessarily those roles, but other
• 26:30
  Speaker 1: roles that Harry Belafonte didn't think had enough sort of
• 26:35
  Speaker 1: nuance for a black actor or spoke to his truth.
• 26:40
  Speaker 1: Sometimes his friend Sidney Poitier would take those roles, not
• 26:44
  Speaker 1: in any way like a sellout or anything like that.
• 26:46
  Speaker 1: He had his own ideas of how to you know,
• 26:49
  Speaker 1: advance the cause and advance his career and stay in
• 26:51
  Speaker 1: the limelight so he could do his good work as well.
• 26:54
  Speaker 1: But you know, they were rivals in a way, but
• 26:56
  Speaker 1: also best friends.
• 26:57
  Speaker 2: Yeah, exactly, but certainly professional rivals because as almost invariably
• 27:02
  Speaker 2: the roles that Bellefani passed on would go to Poitier because,
• 27:05
  Speaker 2: like you said, he would take these roles and he was.
• 27:09
  Speaker 2: He became, as a result, the ambassador of Black America
• 27:13
  Speaker 2: to white America because these roles he was taking in
• 27:16
  Speaker 2: the early sixties, these films were written to advance the
• 27:20
  Speaker 2: cause of black civil rights in the United States, and
• 27:23
  Speaker 2: Sydney Potier is like, yes, put me out there, tell
• 27:26
  Speaker 2: me what we need to do, and let's show these
• 27:29
  Speaker 2: Americans that black people are people too. And like you said,
• 27:32
  Speaker 2: Bellefani was like, there's just it's still missing some stuff.
• 27:36
  Speaker 2: And like Lily's of the Field is a good example.
• 27:38
  Speaker 2: It's from nineteen sixty three. It starred Sidney Potier. He
• 27:42
  Speaker 2: went on to win an Oscar for it, and he
• 27:45
  Speaker 2: plays a black man who is helping Nazi nuns hide
• 27:50
  Speaker 2: from the Communists. And the reason Bellefane passed on it
• 27:53
  Speaker 2: is because he said that this black man has like
• 27:56
  Speaker 2: no background, no history, not really a human. He said
• 28:00
  Speaker 2: to Henry Lewis Gates and Junior in nineteen ninety six
• 28:03
  Speaker 2: in The New Yorker, it's a really good article. He said,
• 28:06
  Speaker 2: he didn't kiss anybody, he didn't touch anybody. He had
• 28:09
  Speaker 2: no culture, he had no history. He had no family,
• 28:12
  Speaker 2: he had nothing, So he was like a not even
• 28:15
  Speaker 2: a caricature of a black person. He was like human
• 28:17
  Speaker 2: being happens to be black, go, you know, And that
• 28:21
  Speaker 2: just was not nearly enough for what Harry Bellafind was
• 28:23
  Speaker 2: willing to take on as an actor. So he would
• 28:26
  Speaker 2: just let these things come and go and pass on them,
• 28:30
  Speaker 2: or else he would try it, push the envelope, that
• 28:33
  Speaker 2: thing would get canceled and he'd just move on. He
• 28:35
  Speaker 2: never ever went to Hollywood, you know, on his knees
• 28:40
  Speaker 2: or asking, like they came to him and he would
• 28:42
  Speaker 2: either pass or not based on what kind of how
• 28:46
  Speaker 2: willing they were to portray black people in that film.
• 28:50
  Speaker 1: Yeah, highly principled decision making career wise, Yes, that's fair.
• 28:55
  Speaker 1: It is tough to do period, but very tough to
• 28:58
  Speaker 1: do trying to make it cut throat business like Hollywood,
• 29:01
  Speaker 1: you know.
• 29:02
  Speaker 2: For sure. Man.
• 29:03
  Speaker 1: So in fifty six, this was, you know, kind of
• 29:06
  Speaker 1: right around the time he had gotten married, and that
• 29:08
  Speaker 1: Islands in the Sun had come out just before that.
• 29:11
  Speaker 1: He got a phone call from Martin Luther King Junior
• 29:15
  Speaker 1: and they ended up meeting in person and having a
• 29:18
  Speaker 1: four hour meeting. On their first meeting, and this is
• 29:23
  Speaker 1: sort of what lit the fire for Bellefonte to really
• 29:26
  Speaker 1: really get into very public civil rights work. It was
• 29:31
  Speaker 1: his awakening in a lot of ways. And he wasn't
• 29:34
  Speaker 1: just like, yeah, you know, I'll show up and I'll
• 29:36
  Speaker 1: be a celebrity face here and there. He was bailing
• 29:39
  Speaker 1: civil rights leaders out of jail. He and Sidney Poitiers
• 29:43
  Speaker 1: were smuggling cash seventy grand into Mississippi during the Freedom Rides,
• 29:51
  Speaker 1: and you know with the Freedom Schools. I think we
• 29:54
  Speaker 1: did a whole episode in the Freedom Schools at one
• 29:55
  Speaker 1: point he helped. He didn't just show up at the
• 29:58
  Speaker 1: march on Washington. He was one of the organizers. So
• 30:02
  Speaker 1: he was he was in deep doing the hard work.
• 30:06
  Speaker 2: Yeah, he he looked out for mlk's family during mlk's life,
• 30:12
  Speaker 2: but also like he he funded his children's education. Yeah,
• 30:17
  Speaker 2: he took out a huge insurance life insurance policy against MLK.
• 30:22
  Speaker 2: And then he just was there for the family afterwards.
• 30:25
  Speaker 2: Like he kind of stepped in when MLK was assassinated.
• 30:30
  Speaker 2: So he certainly walked the walk. He was at all
• 30:33
  Speaker 2: these you know, sit ins and rallies and marches, and
• 30:38
  Speaker 2: he just was there. He was like you said, he
• 30:40
  Speaker 2: wasn't just a figurehead. He didn't just show up for
• 30:42
  Speaker 2: the press. He didn't just write checks behind the scenes.
• 30:45
  Speaker 2: He did it all. And again, it just goes right
• 30:48
  Speaker 2: back to the upbringing from his mom, who taught him like,
• 30:52
  Speaker 2: not only just wherever you see injustice in the world,
• 30:55
  Speaker 2: go go fight it and try to fix it, like
• 30:58
  Speaker 2: actively search every day for injustice that you can go help.
• 31:03
  Speaker 2: And you know, there was nothing more unjustin right in
• 31:06
  Speaker 2: your face for an American, a black American particular at
• 31:10
  Speaker 2: the time than the Civil rights movement.
• 31:13
  Speaker 1: Yeah. Absolutely, so his his you know, entertaining or entertainment
• 31:19
  Speaker 1: career kept blossoming as well, kind of in conjunction with this,
• 31:22
  Speaker 1: and he would use that to sort of, you know,
• 31:25
  Speaker 1: help subtly raise awareness just about his community and what
• 31:31
  Speaker 1: he's like and what his people are like. And the
• 31:33
  Speaker 1: Tonight Show is a big example. In nineteen sixty eight,
• 31:36
  Speaker 1: Johnny Carson invited him to host for a week, to
• 31:39
  Speaker 1: host the Tonight Show. You know, take Johnny Seed, first
• 31:43
  Speaker 1: black guest host in the history of the show. And
• 31:46
  Speaker 1: this is in nineteen sixty eight. You know, everything going
• 31:48
  Speaker 1: on in nineteen sixty eight seems fraud and race relations
• 31:52
  Speaker 1: certainly were a part of that, and he wasn't like,
• 31:55
  Speaker 1: all right, I'll go host the show and I'll get
• 31:57
  Speaker 1: in and just kind of tried out the usual guest
• 32:01
  Speaker 1: that Johnny might have. He said, no, I'm gonna have
• 32:03
  Speaker 1: Bobby Kennedy and Martin Luther King Junior and Aretha Franklin
• 32:08
  Speaker 1: and Dion Warwick and you know, Paul Newman and Nipsey
• 32:13
  Speaker 1: Russell and all these people who had these progressive causes
• 32:16
  Speaker 1: or were just famous black entertainers who didn't get that
• 32:19
  Speaker 1: kind of stage very often and open every night with
• 32:22
  Speaker 1: a song. Obviously Johnny didn't do anything like that, so
• 32:26
  Speaker 1: it was it was still fun and entertaining, but it
• 32:29
  Speaker 1: was also educating people and talking about serious issues in
• 32:33
  Speaker 1: these interviews.
• 32:34
  Speaker 2: Yes, so that was just huge. I mean also you
• 32:38
  Speaker 2: got a credit Johnny Carson too. He did that on purpose.
• 32:41
  Speaker 2: He wasn't like, I'm going on vacation for we just
• 32:43
  Speaker 2: call whoever like. He did that on purpose because he
• 32:46
  Speaker 2: was trying to advance race relations as well, So hats
• 32:49
  Speaker 2: off to him for that as well. They also had
• 32:52
  Speaker 2: really high ratings. That was another thing too. Harry bell
• 32:54
  Speaker 2: Fini when he did something on TV it drew viewers,
• 32:59
  Speaker 2: and even ill it didn't matter because there were so
• 33:02
  Speaker 2: many angry white racists in America that would call up
• 33:06
  Speaker 2: these sponsors and be like, you're sponsoring this this black
• 33:09
  Speaker 2: guy on this show, you better stop. They go to
• 33:11
  Speaker 2: the producers. The producers would come to Bellifani and be like, hey,
• 33:14
  Speaker 2: you know how you have white people and black people
• 33:16
  Speaker 2: dancing together. What if we just did white or just
• 33:18
  Speaker 2: did black. Bellifani wouldn't blink and it would get canceled
• 33:22
  Speaker 2: despite all of the crazy great reviews and viewership it had,
• 33:27
  Speaker 2: and you know, that would be that, and he would
• 33:29
  Speaker 2: just kind of move on. But of course he developed
• 33:31
  Speaker 2: like this distrust and distaste for the entertainment industry, and
• 33:37
  Speaker 2: I saw that he initially thought that he would be
• 33:40
  Speaker 2: able to help change America through Hollywood, and then he
• 33:43
  Speaker 2: quickly came to see like, no, Hollywood is just one
• 33:46
  Speaker 2: more facet of this machine that keeps things going exactly
• 33:49
  Speaker 2: as they are. So he got really disgusted by that.
• 33:53
  Speaker 2: Kind of fortunately for us, because he really kind of
• 33:58
  Speaker 2: started to throw more and more of his inner into
• 34:01
  Speaker 2: being an activist, not just in the United States but
• 34:03
  Speaker 2: around the world, and in particular Paul Robison, like you said,
• 34:07
  Speaker 2: was one of his idols, who was also just one
• 34:09
  Speaker 2: of the early civil rights crusaders around the world. And
• 34:13
  Speaker 2: then Eleanor Roosevelt FDR's wife first lady, introduced him to
• 34:17
  Speaker 2: to the plight of different countries in Africa, which was
• 34:20
  Speaker 2: decolonizing at the time, and he really kind of turned
• 34:23
  Speaker 2: his attention toward that continent for a while.
• 34:26
  Speaker 1: Yeah, for sure. I mean all of the major causes
• 34:29
  Speaker 1: that you've heard from, you know, basically starting then even
• 34:33
  Speaker 1: and especially through the eighties with apartheid in South Africa,
• 34:39
  Speaker 1: Kenyan independence, and you know I mentioned early on We
• 34:44
  Speaker 1: Are the World Ethiopia and the famines there was. He
• 34:48
  Speaker 1: was the guy that you know called up Quincy Jones
• 34:51
  Speaker 1: and was like, hey, we need to do something here,
• 34:54
  Speaker 1: and We Are the World was a huge, huge hit
• 34:57
  Speaker 1: that sold I think twenty million copies and raised sixty
• 35:02
  Speaker 1: five million bucks for famine relief. And if you were
• 35:06
  Speaker 1: a kid in nineteen eighty five, We Are the World
• 35:10
  Speaker 1: was like that and Live Aid We're two of the
• 35:13
  Speaker 1: biggest deals in music history. And you know, I was
• 35:17
  Speaker 1: fourteen years old at the time. It was just like
• 35:19
  Speaker 1: it was incredible to see all these people together, and like,
• 35:21
  Speaker 1: even as a kid, even as a like a little
• 35:23
  Speaker 1: snot nosed fourteen year old white kid from the South,
• 35:27
  Speaker 1: I knew that I was watching was important. I didn't
• 35:30
  Speaker 1: maybe fully understand it. I had seen stuff about the
• 35:33
  Speaker 1: famine on television, but it was it was raising awareness
• 35:36
  Speaker 1: for everybody, including little white suburban kids from Georgia.
• 35:40
  Speaker 2: Yeah, which is, you know, exactly part of the point,
• 35:43
  Speaker 2: in addition to raising money too.
• 35:45
  Speaker 1: Yeah.
• 35:45
  Speaker 2: One of the cool things I saw about it was
• 35:47
  Speaker 2: I'm not sure if it was his idea or if
• 35:49
  Speaker 2: he kind of headed up the push to do this
• 35:52
  Speaker 2: or both, but Harry Bella finally's credited with talking radio
• 35:56
  Speaker 2: stations around the world into playing We Are the World
• 35:59
  Speaker 2: at the same time on the same day. It was,
• 36:02
  Speaker 2: I think March twenty eighth, nineteen eighty six. I remember
• 36:07
  Speaker 2: there was something like do you remember that? Oh, yeah, cool.
• 36:11
  Speaker 2: There was like five thousand radio stations around the world
• 36:13
  Speaker 2: and they all played it at the same time I
• 36:15
  Speaker 2: think ten fifty am Eastern Standard time, and Musak actually
• 36:20
  Speaker 2: played it as well, and it was only the second
• 36:22
  Speaker 2: time in the history of music that they played voices
• 36:25
  Speaker 2: over their service, which, by the way, at the time
• 36:27
  Speaker 2: reached like eighty million Americans. So that's a lot of
• 36:31
  Speaker 2: people listening to We Are the World at that same moment,
• 36:34
  Speaker 2: which is neat, that's.
• 36:35
  Speaker 1: Right, and including just I accounted for one of those.
• 36:40
  Speaker 2: I don't remember listening to it on the radio, but
• 36:42
  Speaker 2: I do remember my family sitting around listening to the record.
• 36:45
  Speaker 1: Yeah it's so funny. All right, maybe we should take
• 36:48
  Speaker 1: our second break and come up and talk some more
• 36:51
  Speaker 1: about Harry Belafonte.
• 36:52
  Speaker 3: Okay, joh all right, So Harry's doing his activism.
• 37:24
  Speaker 1: He is still an entertainer. He never, you know, sort
• 37:27
  Speaker 1: of fully left that behind, and you know, he started
• 37:30
  Speaker 1: doing less and less of that as like through the
• 37:32
  Speaker 1: sort of eighties and nineties when his activism was I
• 37:36
  Speaker 1: think at its peak, but he was still doing his thing.
• 37:39
  Speaker 1: In nineteen sixty, he became the first black American to
• 37:44
  Speaker 1: win an Emmy for Tonight with Bellafonte, one of his
• 37:47
  Speaker 1: TV specials, again which they were all super big hits,
• 37:50
  Speaker 1: even though people loved them and the ratings were through
• 37:53
  Speaker 1: the roof, it was that silent majority complaining about petul
• 37:57
  Speaker 1: La Clark holding his arm, a white woman holding his
• 37:59
  Speaker 1: arm in a special. It drove away some advertisers, which
• 38:02
  Speaker 1: is just, you know, very sad to say the least,
• 38:06
  Speaker 1: but he was still serving up this sort of Caribbean
• 38:11
  Speaker 1: tinge folk music to people. CBS ordered five more episodes
• 38:16
  Speaker 1: after Tonight with Bellefonte was such a big success. But
• 38:19
  Speaker 1: of course that was one of the ones where sponsorship
• 38:22
  Speaker 1: was pulled because he had black people and white people
• 38:24
  Speaker 1: dancing and singing together and said, no, no, no, no,
• 38:27
  Speaker 1: you cannot do that.
• 38:28
  Speaker 2: Right, And so he would just leave show business for
• 38:32
  Speaker 2: you know, years at a time, or at least like
• 38:35
  Speaker 2: TV or movies or something like that. But he got
• 38:38
  Speaker 2: pulled back into it in the early seventies because his
• 38:40
  Speaker 2: buddy Sidney Poitier was like, Hey, I want to start
• 38:42
  Speaker 2: directing blackspolitation movies. Let's do this. And they made Buck
• 38:47
  Speaker 2: in the Preacher, which I have not seen. I think
• 38:49
  Speaker 2: it was from nineteen seventy two. Everything I've read about
• 38:52
  Speaker 2: it makes me want to see it. Basically immediately Sidney
• 38:56
  Speaker 2: Poidier directed it, but he also plays Buck, who's this
• 39:00
  Speaker 2: ex Civil War soldier who helps ensure safe passage for
• 39:04
  Speaker 2: African Americans moving out of Louisiana out west after the
• 39:09
  Speaker 2: Civil War, and the Preacher is Harry Belafonte, who's this
• 39:12
  Speaker 2: con artist dressed as a preacher. It just sounds awesome.
• 39:16
  Speaker 2: And then Uptown Saturday Night. Haven't seen that one either,
• 39:19
  Speaker 2: It sounds pretty great, except it's so hard now to
• 39:23
  Speaker 2: get past anything with Bill Cosby. Yeah, it's so hard,
• 39:29
  Speaker 2: not just because of the horrible stuff he did sexually
• 39:32
  Speaker 2: assaulting women, but also because he was so preachy leading
• 39:37
  Speaker 2: up to it. He was so holier than how and
• 39:40
  Speaker 2: it makes the whole thing so much worse if you ask.
• 39:42
  Speaker 1: Me, Yeah, I mean and this he was doing those
• 39:45
  Speaker 1: things back then, right too. The CNN documentary that camal
• 39:51
  Speaker 1: Bell did was very upsetting to see. But the way
• 39:56
  Speaker 1: they did it, I think I mentioned it before, was
• 39:58
  Speaker 1: it was they were just sort of tracking his career
• 40:00
  Speaker 1: and like, and he was the biggest star and on
• 40:03
  Speaker 1: TV at the time, and this was nineteen sixty something,
• 40:05
  Speaker 1: and then it was like in nineteen sixty whatever, he
• 40:08
  Speaker 1: sexually assaulted this woman, right, and it was happening the
• 40:11
  Speaker 1: whole time. So I'm with you, impossible to watch that stuff,
• 40:17
  Speaker 1: but you can watch Bucket the Preacher.
• 40:18
  Speaker 2: Though, right, he's not in that, that's right.
• 40:22
  Speaker 1: So hearing all this, you're like, wow, Harry Bellefonte was
• 40:26
  Speaker 1: a superman and he never got in bad mood, and
• 40:30
  Speaker 1: he never got tired, and he was never frustrated. And
• 40:34
  Speaker 1: it was just wine and roses all the time for
• 40:37
  Speaker 1: Harry Bellefonte. And that is not the case. It was
• 40:41
  Speaker 1: a serious fatigue on his life. To do what he
• 40:46
  Speaker 1: did was hard work, emotionally, hard work, physically demanding, going
• 40:51
  Speaker 1: all over the place doing his thing while also being
• 40:53
  Speaker 1: an entertainer. And you know, in nineteen sixty I think
• 40:58
  Speaker 1: this is a little bit after Martin Luther King Jr.
• 41:01
  Speaker 1: Was murdered, he was bellefont He was asked what it's
• 41:04
  Speaker 1: like being such a prominent civil rights leader, and he
• 41:08
  Speaker 1: was pretty testy. He said, you know, I'd like to
• 41:09
  Speaker 1: take my family and go live in Africa and be
• 41:11
  Speaker 1: able to stop answering questions though I were a spokesman
• 41:14
  Speaker 1: for my people. I hate marching and getting called at
• 41:17
  Speaker 1: three am to bail some cats out of jail. And
• 41:20
  Speaker 1: this is just the toll that that takes on anybody,
• 41:24
  Speaker 1: even like a superman like Harry Bellefonte. Yeah, also a human.
• 41:29
  Speaker 2: Yeah, but he had he had a really great inspiration
• 41:33
  Speaker 2: in the form of Paul Robison, who kind of guided
• 41:36
  Speaker 2: things you mentioned in before. He was an idol of
• 41:39
  Speaker 2: his and a real inspiration. He was the guy who's
• 41:41
  Speaker 2: saying old Man River among other things. But he was
• 41:44
  Speaker 2: this He was a model for Harry Belafonte. Paul Robison
• 41:49
  Speaker 2: was running around the world. He took his fame and
• 41:51
  Speaker 2: he used it to highlight, you know, plights around the
• 41:54
  Speaker 2: around the world. But he was also like a huge
• 41:59
  Speaker 2: He protested for peace and he ran around the world
• 42:02
  Speaker 2: trying to make peace, I mean between the US and
• 42:05
  Speaker 2: the USSR at the beginning of the Cold War. This
• 42:08
  Speaker 2: guy was going back and forth trying to create friendships
• 42:12
  Speaker 2: where there was nothing but animosity. He did the same
• 42:16
  Speaker 2: thing with communist China. And he was also not afraid
• 42:20
  Speaker 2: to criticize the United States and like its racist policies
• 42:23
  Speaker 2: too at the time. So you put all that together.
• 42:25
  Speaker 2: This guy was prime meet for the McCarthy trials and
• 42:29
  Speaker 2: he got blacklisted, but he refused to be cout. He
• 42:32
  Speaker 2: would not name names, he would not renounce his work,
• 42:36
  Speaker 2: he would not take back anything that they demanded the
• 42:39
  Speaker 2: take back. And he really served as this model for
• 42:43
  Speaker 2: Harry Belafonte. Despite I mean, Robison had it hard he
• 42:47
  Speaker 2: fell hard the State Department. He was doing all this
• 42:50
  Speaker 2: traveling to promote peace. The State Department suspended his passport
• 42:54
  Speaker 2: from nineteen fifty to nineteen fifty eight. Kind of hard
• 42:57
  Speaker 2: to run around the world pre internet ones are still
• 43:00
  Speaker 2: relatively expensive to use trying to organize peace when you
• 43:05
  Speaker 2: can't travel outside of the US. But he was a
• 43:09
  Speaker 2: really like he deserves it, I think, an episode himself.
• 43:11
  Speaker 2: But he stood as this inspiration and model for Harry Belafonte.
• 43:15
  Speaker 2: So even when he would get down trodden and defeated,
• 43:18
  Speaker 2: he had Paul Robison to look to him, be like
• 43:20
  Speaker 2: this guy, this guy went through even even worse than me.
• 43:24
  Speaker 1: Yeah, for sure. And it wasn't always a love affair
• 43:28
  Speaker 1: within the black community with Harry Belafonte. He was criticized
• 43:34
  Speaker 1: at various times for marrying white women. He married two
• 43:37
  Speaker 1: white women after splitting up with Julie Robinson in two
• 43:40
  Speaker 1: thousand and four. He married Pamela Frank in two thousand
• 43:43
  Speaker 1: and eight. He don't he doesn't think, you know, he
• 43:48
  Speaker 1: was of mixed race himself, so he didn't feel like
• 43:51
  Speaker 1: at times he was always fully accepted by the black community,
• 43:55
  Speaker 1: and he would, you know, be critical of that in
• 43:57
  Speaker 1: nineteen ninety six in The New Yorker. He said, and
• 44:00
  Speaker 1: again that's a great, great read. He said, let me
• 44:03
  Speaker 1: tell you something, I don't know of any artist at
• 44:04
  Speaker 1: my level who has ever been as much on the
• 44:07
  Speaker 1: line for black liberation as I have, and has as
• 44:10
  Speaker 1: few black people in attendance at anything he does as
• 44:13
  Speaker 1: I do. And he described one of his typical concerts,
• 44:17
  Speaker 1: I never saw so many white people in my life.
• 44:19
  Speaker 1: So he never felt like he got the support from
• 44:23
  Speaker 1: the black community that he thought he deserved and he
• 44:26
  Speaker 1: thought he earned. And when it came to who he married,
• 44:29
  Speaker 1: he said, you know, I didn't marry anyone to further
• 44:32
  Speaker 1: and integration, cause like I married who I fell in
• 44:35
  Speaker 1: love with, and they married me because they fell in
• 44:37
  Speaker 1: love with me.
• 44:37
  Speaker 2: Yeah, for sure.
• 44:38
  Speaker 1: Yeah.
• 44:39
  Speaker 2: So we've kind of talked about some of the stuff,
• 44:41
  Speaker 2: some of the causes he took up that he's best
• 44:44
  Speaker 2: known for, like civil rights. Did you mention anti apartheid? Yeah.
• 44:50
  Speaker 2: He performed at a rally and no New rally. In
• 44:53
  Speaker 2: the early eighties in Germany, he sought a broker peace
• 44:58
  Speaker 2: between the Crips and the Bloods, and back in the
• 45:01
  Speaker 2: late eighties he protested the Iraq War in the early
• 45:04
  Speaker 2: two thousands, and then the cause that he he kind
• 45:09
  Speaker 2: of got behind towards the very end of his life
• 45:13
  Speaker 2: was incarceration in general. He was I think the first
• 45:16
  Speaker 2: performer to play Riker's Island. James Brown famously did in
• 45:19
  Speaker 2: nineteen seventy two. Harry Belafinal did it a couple of
• 45:22
  Speaker 2: months before James Brown, and then throughout the rest of
• 45:26
  Speaker 2: his career he would visit prisons and hang out with
• 45:29
  Speaker 2: the inmates. But he also really focused on child incarceration
• 45:34
  Speaker 2: and just found that totally amoral and immoral and inexcusable.
• 45:40
  Speaker 2: So he really started a whole generation of like activists
• 45:44
  Speaker 2: in that right before he died. Just one more thing
• 45:46
  Speaker 2: he did, you know.
• 45:47
  Speaker 1: Yeah, he passed away just a couple of years ago,
• 45:50
  Speaker 1: in April April twenty fifth of twenty twenty three, at
• 45:53
  Speaker 1: ninety six. So just a very full long life and
• 45:58
  Speaker 1: received lots of accolae during that lifetime. I mentioned the Egot.
• 46:01
  Speaker 1: Part of that included the OSCAR, was the gene Herschelt
• 46:06
  Speaker 1: Humanitarian Award in twenty fourteen and a Lifetime Achievement Grammy
• 46:10
  Speaker 1: in two thousand. You can add the Kennedy Center honor
• 46:14
  Speaker 1: in nineteen eighty nine to that list, and the National
• 46:17
  Speaker 1: Medal of the Arts. Old Billy Clinton gave him that
• 46:21
  Speaker 1: one in nineteen ninety four. And what else? In Harlem
• 46:26
  Speaker 1: he had a library named after him in twenty seventeen
• 46:29
  Speaker 1: near his childhood home. It was renamed the Harry Bellefonte
• 46:34
  Speaker 1: one hundred and fifteenth Street Library.
• 46:36
  Speaker 2: Yeah. I also saw he was inducted into the Rock
• 46:39
  Speaker 2: and Roll Hall of Fame in twenty twenty two, and
• 46:42
  Speaker 2: the bio almost defiantly dares you to be like, he's
• 46:45
  Speaker 2: not rock and roll. They said that basically every artist
• 46:48
  Speaker 2: who's mixed politics with their music, from Bob Dylan and
• 46:53
  Speaker 2: Bono to Redge Against the Machine and Public Enemy, they
• 46:57
  Speaker 2: quote stand on his broad shoulders, which I mean, that's
• 47:01
  Speaker 2: absolutely true.
• 47:03
  Speaker 1: Yeah, and there are plenty of non quote unquote rock
• 47:05
  Speaker 1: and roll bands in that Hall of Fame.
• 47:07
  Speaker 2: Sure, but they were like, say something and then yeah,
• 47:10
  Speaker 2: you k back off, you did, and then you felt
• 47:12
  Speaker 2: like a jackass.
• 47:13
  Speaker 1: Yeah, Like, is anyone going to really protest that?
• 47:16
  Speaker 2: I don't know. I could see Gene Simmons saying something
• 47:18
  Speaker 2: about it. Right. There's also a really great appearance on
• 47:23
  Speaker 2: The Muppet show where he sings Deo with some of
• 47:26
  Speaker 2: the muppets, and it's just sweet and wholesome and just great.
• 47:31
  Speaker 1: Yeah, good stuff.
• 47:33
  Speaker 2: One more thing we cannot not mention Beetlejuice. Dune.
• 47:37
  Speaker 1: Oh was he did he have something to do with beetlejuice? Yeah,
• 47:41
  Speaker 1: obviously people were already typing their emails. Beetlejuice featured not
• 47:46
  Speaker 1: only the Banana Boat song, but Jumping the Line, which
• 47:50
  Speaker 1: I like more than the banana bats. I did hold
• 47:51
  Speaker 1: that song to great effect. I think Tim Burton apparently
• 47:56
  Speaker 1: wasn't super keen. He didn't think it was funny enough,
• 47:59
  Speaker 1: and I'm like, dude, it's not funny. It's fun you
• 48:02
  Speaker 1: added two extra letters. It's not supposed to be like
• 48:05
  Speaker 1: slap your knee funny, but it is certainly fun. And
• 48:09
  Speaker 1: the little dance routines, they're almost like apart from the
• 48:14
  Speaker 1: movie itself, like additional like an additional music video or
• 48:17
  Speaker 1: something like in the movie. But they are part one
• 48:21
  Speaker 1: small part, or I guess a large part really of
• 48:24
  Speaker 1: what makes that movie so great were those two numbers.
• 48:26
  Speaker 2: Yeah, and the whole I mean, the whole thing's just amazing.
• 48:28
  Speaker 2: But for some reason, Catherine O'Hara is just you just
• 48:31
  Speaker 2: see she's so cool when she's doing this, like it's
• 48:35
  Speaker 2: just perfect. And she's supposedly the one who suggested Calypso
• 48:38
  Speaker 2: for the music that they use.
• 48:40
  Speaker 1: Oh that's funny, Harry Bells not funny.
• 48:42
  Speaker 2: No, it's not funny at all, Chuck, You're absolutely right,
• 48:45
  Speaker 2: it's fun. But apparently Harry bell Fani said that about
• 48:48
  Speaker 2: a year after Beetle Juicy, he became popular with kids.
• 48:52
  Speaker 2: Apparently do and jump the line, but jump in the line. Sorry.
• 48:57
  Speaker 2: They both ended up on the Billboard two hundred after
• 48:59
  Speaker 2: be Juice for a little while, and he said that
• 49:03
  Speaker 2: all sorts of kids would come up to him after
• 49:05
  Speaker 2: they saw Beetlejuice, and he said that they would wipe
• 49:08
  Speaker 2: their hands full of tomato, ketchup and mustard on my clothes.
• 49:12
  Speaker 2: And I enjoyed the whole excursion.
• 49:15
  Speaker 1: Yeah, go listen to some of his stuff. I've been
• 49:17
  Speaker 1: listening to it for two days, Harry Bellefonte and the
• 49:19
  Speaker 1: Bellefonte Folk Singers, and it's some of it's maybe unusual
• 49:25
  Speaker 1: to modern ears, but it's like really good stuff.
• 49:27
  Speaker 2: Yeah, and it's even better if you watch like footage
• 49:30
  Speaker 2: of him singing it too, like you really his stage
• 49:32
  Speaker 2: presence really comes across even on video years later.
• 49:36
  Speaker 1: That's right. Did we mention he was handsome? He was
• 49:39
  Speaker 1: easy on the eyes, the hard to look at it.
• 49:41
  Speaker 2: Yeah, for sure. He could really wear a shirt unbuttoned
• 49:43
  Speaker 2: down to his navel too.
• 49:44
  Speaker 1: Man, Oh boy, I never could get away.
• 49:47
  Speaker 2: I can't either. All right, Well that's Harry Belafana. Everybody
• 49:53
  Speaker 2: rip Harry R I P. And if you want to
• 49:57
  Speaker 2: know more about Harry Belafani, like Chuck Segg, go look
• 49:59
  Speaker 2: him on up and start listening to them and watching
• 50:01
  Speaker 2: some videos. And in the meantime, I think that means
• 50:04
  Speaker 2: it's time for listener mail.
• 50:08
  Speaker 1: This is just a little quickie. Hey, guys, are heard
• 50:11
  Speaker 1: on a recent Christmas episode that you're desperate for new
• 50:13
  Speaker 1: Christmas material. A few months ago, I sent in a
• 50:15
  Speaker 1: show idea about the Halifax explosion. Did you know that
• 50:20
  Speaker 1: this has a Christmas connection? Halifax was so thankful for
• 50:24
  Speaker 1: the help from the city of Boston that we continue
• 50:26
  Speaker 1: to send Halifax their city's Christmas tree to this very day.
• 50:32
  Speaker 2: Pretty cool Boston does or Halifax.
• 50:34
  Speaker 1: Does Boston sends I don't know Halifax sends Boston the
• 50:40
  Speaker 1: tree yeah.
• 50:41
  Speaker 2: Now the story is delightful.
• 50:43
  Speaker 1: Yeah, yeah, it is all the best from your neighbors
• 50:45
  Speaker 1: in Canada. That is the Matthias Dernford.
• 50:49
  Speaker 2: That's a great one. We should have done that as
• 50:51
  Speaker 2: like a segment, but now we can't because everybody knows it.
• 50:54
  Speaker 1: Yeah, I mean we did a whole episode on it.
• 50:56
  Speaker 1: But this is a nice identity.
• 50:57
  Speaker 2: Did you say Matthias or Matthias?
• 51:00
  Speaker 1: Well, I mean there's an hre in there. I don't
• 51:01
  Speaker 1: know if it's pronounced.
• 51:02
  Speaker 2: Though, Matthias.
• 51:03
  Speaker 1: I said Matthiah.
• 51:04
  Speaker 2: Good. Well, if you want to be like Matthias and
• 51:07
  Speaker 2: have us debate how to say your name, love that
• 51:09
  Speaker 2: kind of thing. You can send us an email too
• 51:12
  Speaker 2: to stuff podcasts at iHeartRadio dot com.
• 51:17
  Speaker 1: Stuff you Should Know is a production of iHeartRadio. For
• 51:20
  Speaker 1: more podcasts my heart Radio, visit the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts,
• 51:25
  Speaker 1: or wherever you listen to your favorite shows.