Banana Boat[]
This article says Belafonte "gave his first TV performance of the Banana Boat Song" on the Muppet Show. But at the Muppets, Music & Magic event on Long Island last summer, Craig Shemin screened that episode, and revealed that the writers had him make that claim to Fozzie just to make the whole thing funnier, and that it was not, in fact, the first time Belafonte had done the song on TV. Which makes sense, as it had been a huge hit for him 20 years earlier. Is that a good enough source to remove that tidbit? I haven't wikied in months, so I don't want to overstep any bounds. -- Ryan (talk) 20:55, 11 April 2008 (UTC)
- This has been discussed before at Talk:Day-O and placed in stumping because nobody could find which of his earlier TV appearances (and there were many) featured the song. Shemin is a better source than the line of dialogue in the episode, and moreover, I just did a Google Book Search and dredged up a passage from the 1997 biography Harry Belafonte by Genia Fogelson. The song was in fact first heard on a 1955 broadcast of The Colgate Comedy Hour, a one-hour theme-show starring Belafonte (and for which he wrote or co-wrote much of the material) called "Holiday in Trinidad." Soon afterwards, Belafonte recorded a new album and included "Banana Boat Song." With the starting point, I checked, and this information is verifiable with other authoritative sources, even studies on Caribbean music in the US and so on. -- Andrew Leal (talk) 21:18, 11 April 2008 (UTC)
ABCs[]
Sesame Street Unpaved says he is among the celebs who have recited or sang the ABCs on the show. When? -- user:zanimum (Feb 9, 2006)
- I believe he was part of a montage of celebreties in an ABC song segment, probably around 1996 or 1997. The host of the segment was Ray Charles and others appearing were Patrick Stewart, Tony Bennett and Lamb Chop. Hope that helps! -- David Splurge 18:45, 9 May 2006 (UTC)