Here’s the answer to a trivia question you may have never thought of. “Belafonte is the second studio album by American recording artist Harry Belafonte, released by RCA Victor in late 1955. The album was the first number one on the Billboard Top Pop Albums chart, topping it for six weeks before being knocked from the top spot by Elvis Presley’s self-titled debut album, also issued by RCA Victor.”
Here’s a playlist, not in song order, and a Spotify roster, which IS in order, plus a bonus track of La Bamba.
- “Waterboy” (Avery Robinson) – 3:42
- “Troubles” (Harry Belafonte) – 3:38
- “Suzanne” (Belafonte, Millard Thomas) – 3:19
- “Matilda” (Norman Span) – 3:11
- “Take My Mother Home” (Hall Johnson) – 6:00
- “Noah” (Belafonte, William Attaway) – 4:53
- “Scarlet Ribbons” (Jack Segal, Evelyn Danzig) – 3:13
- “In That Great Gettin’ Up Mornin'” (Norman Luboff, Belafonte) – 3:15
- “Unchained Melody” (Hy Zaret, Alex North) – 3:18
- “Jump Down, Spin Around” (Luboff, Belafonte, Attaway) – 1:54
- “Sylvie” (Huddie Ledbetter, Paul Campbell) – 5:21
First? Really?
This confused me. There were albums before 1956, weren’t there? From Joel Whitburn’s The Billboard Albums: Billboard magazine began publishing a top five popular albums chart in 1945. This chart was published on a sporadic basis until the week of March 24th, 1956, when the chart first appeared weekly on a consistent basis.”
My father was a big Belafonte fan when I was growing up, so I became one too for a time.
Back in the early days of this blog, i.e., 2005, a bunch of bloggers – Fred Hembeck, Lefty Brown, Greg Burgas, Johnny Bacardi, Thom Wade, Eddie Mitchell, Gordon Dymowski, Tom Collins, and several others across the country- created a series of mixed CD exchanges. We’d burn collections of music and mail them to each other. Kind of quaint, eh? This was one of the earliest I created, if not the first. It’s an American album of sorts.