#millicent small

It's black week!

Millie Small, photographed by David Wedgbury, 1969.

Millie Small (full name Millicent Small) is evidently in the party mood before leaving Heathrow Airport, today to spend 10 days as guest of the Ghana government. London, Sep 1967🌸

Jamaican teenager Millie Small who stunned the music business by reaching number two in both the United States and the UK with her version of the song "My Boy Lollipop" in May 1964. Photo by Derek Preston, London 1964🌸

Millie singing her famous cover of "My Boy Lollipop" in 1964.

Her 1964 cover of "My Boy Lollipop" was doubly significant in British pop music history. It was the first major hit for Island Records (although it was actually released on the Fontana label because Chris Blackwell, Island's owner, did not want to overextend its then-meagre resources; in the U.S. the record appeared on the Smash Records subsidiary of Mercury Records), and Small was the first artist to have a hit that was recorded in the bluebeat style (she was billed as "The Blue Beat Girl" on the single's label in the U.S.). This was a music genre that had recently emerged from Jamaica, and was a direct ancestor of reggae. [X]