Mary's boy child (Oh my Lord) / Dancing in the streets - Boney M

'Mary's boy child' is a Christmas song, originally written by Jester Hairston. The song was written when Hairston was sharing a room with a friend. The friend asked him to write a song for a birthday party. Hairston wrote the song with a calypso rhythm because the people at the party would be mainly West Indians. The song's original title was "He Pone and Chocolate Tea", pone being a type of corn bread. It was never recorded in this form. Some time later Walter Schumann, at the time conducting Schumann's Hollywood Choir, asked Hairston to write a new Christmas song for his choir. Hairston remembered the calypso rhythm from his old song and wrote new lyrics for it.

Harry Belafonte heard the song being performed by the choir and sought permission to record it. It was recorded in 1956 for his album 'An Evening with Belafonte'. It was also released as a single. It reached number 1 on the UK Singles Chart in November 1957, and has since sold over 1.19 million copies there.

When Boney M recorded 'Mary's boy child' in 1978, they coupled it with a new song, 'Oh my Lord', written by Frank Farian and Fred Jay. This version also reached number 1 in the UK, and topped the chart for four weeks. When Hairston - who was 78 years old at the time - found out how well the Boney M version had done, he said: "God bless my soul. That's tremendous for an old fogey like me".

After Christmas, Hansa Record flipped the single and released it with 'Dancing in the streets' as the A-side. As you can see from the pictures here, the sleeve was different. On the labels the 'A' and 'B' were indeed changed. The tracks, however, remained the same.

I was lucky enough to find three versions of this single in the same store: the Dutch pressing with the black and white sleeve and two versions of the German pressing. This Boney M single remains one of the best selling Christmas singles of all time.

My collection: 7" single no. 6073
Found: Velvet Vinyl Outlet, Leiden, May 18, 2019
Cost: 3x1 euro
Tracks: 'Mary's boy child (Oh my Lord)' / 'Dancing in the streets'