My Boy Lollipop

The song that made Millie Small famous started life in New York in the 1950s as "My Girl Lollypop", written by Robert Spencer of the doo-wop group The Cadillacs. A 14-year-old Brooklyn singer, Barbie Gaye, flipped the gender, reshaped the melody and recorded it in one take in 1956. Chris Blackwell, later the founder of Island Records, bought a copy in 1959 and sold records like it to Jamaica's sound systems, where Gaye's version became popular. Blackwell had kept a reel-to-reel copy of the tape. When he brought the teenage Millie Small to England and was searching for a song for her, he found it in his archive in 1963 and decided that was the one, which he later called a lucky find. Guitarist Ernest Ranglin arranged the remake, aiming to turn it into a ska tune around Small's Jamaican-style voice, and a harmonica replaced the original saxophone solo. For years rumour credited Rod Stewart with that harmonica part; he has denied it. Released in 1964, the record reached number two in both the UK and the United States, held off the top only by the Four Pennies in Britain and the Beach Boys in America, and went to number one in Ireland. It is considered the first commercially successful international ska song, sold more than seven million copies, made Small a star at 16 and helped launch Island Records into the mainstream. Reggae broadcaster David Rodigan has said that seeing her sing it on television as a schoolboy started his lifelong love of Jamaican music.