At the age of 12 she won the 30-shilling second prize at the Vere Johns talent show, a route to stardom for many Jamaican acts, by singing and dancing a routine she used to amuse her family.Īfter the talent show she moved to Love Lane in Kingston to live with an aunt and early in 1962 she auditioned for Clement “Coxsone” Dodd, the sound system operator whose Studio One label had become an influential force in Jamaica. Millicent Dolly May Small – known professionally as Millie – was born in Clarendon in south central Jamaica, where her father was a poorly paid sugar plantation overseer, and she had seven brothers and five sisters. Morris Levy, a New York record boss, contacted the bet-winner and took over the rights to My Boy Lollipop, thereby owning the publishing income from this future multimillion-seller.Īlthough Blackwell had added Millie to a roster of what he considered to be the best of Jamaican talent for his fledgling Island Records label, he licensed My Boy Lollipop to the established Fontana label, appreciating that he needed larger resources to push what he was certain was going to be a hit. The tune’s songwriter, however, was a card player who had swapped his rights to it for a $100 bet that he lost. Originally released in 1956 in the US by Barbie Gaye as a shuffle blues, it had been a small hit.
Many archetypal releases have suitably exotic back stories and My Boy Lollipop is no exception. Ranglin was amused that what was considered a definitive Jamaican ska record had been played by sheet music-reading British musicians who previously had never heard such a sound. What was at first considered a novelty record helped shift the parameters by which British listeners understood music, adjusting their ears to the offbeat but addictive ska rhythm, to which Ranglin had added such twists as a harmonica part often this was claimed, even by Millie, to have been played by a young Rod Stewart – though this was not true. “She was such a sweet person: very funny, great sense of humour. “It was just incredible how she handled it,” said Blackwell. In America Millie rode the slipstream of the British Invasion started by the Beatles six months earlier in New York she stepped off a plane – dubbed the Lollipop Special by a clever publicist – from the UK to a 30-strong police guard fans screamed as she was presented with what was said to be the world’s largest lollipop.īy then a four-year veteran of the Jamaican music business, and trained to be an utter professional, Millie rose to her sudden brief superstardom with graceful aplomb. In both the UK and the US, My Boy Lollipop was a No 2 hit, kept off the top slot respectively by the Searchers and the Beach Boys. In May 1964, two months after the release of My Boy Lollipop, Millie was given a guest appearance on the ITV special Around the Beatles. Millie’s shrill, joyful vocals, married to a galloping ska rhythm in Olympic Studios in London in an arrangement by the Jamaican master guitarist Ernest Ranglin, were beamed out all that summer from the new pirate radio stations, such as Caroline, that were instrumental in helping promote the record. He had flown the 16-year-old Millie Small from Kingston to London to manage her career. With international sales of 5m copies in 1964, the year of its release, the hit single My Boy Lollipop, sung by Millie, who has died aged 72, “opened the door for Jamaican music to the world,” said the producer Chris Blackwell.