By John Hood
RALEIGH — Even the most curmudgeonly of Scrooges can’t help but tap their toes when they hear the first few notes of the modern masterpiece “Mary’s Little Boy Child.” For that, we can all thank the North Carolinian who so memorably paired calypso and Christmas — though that was not his original intention.
The joyfully named Jester Hairston was born in 1901 in the community of Belews Creek, located at the point where Forsyth, Stokes, Guilford, and Rockingham counties meet. After a tragic accident claimed his father’s life, he spent much of his childhood in the company of his grandparents, former slaves whose compelling tales and memorable songs inspired young Hairston to find ways to preserve such a rich heritage.
After completing musical studies at Tufts University and the famous Julliard conservatory, Hairston joined Harlem’s Hall Johnson Choir in the late 1920s and performed in a number of Broadway shows. When a movie adaptation of one of the shows brought Hairston to Hollywood, he met a Russian émigré named Dimitri Tiomkin, then working as a film composer and pianist.
Tiomkin liked what he heard. The two began a longtime partnership, with Hairston collecting and arranging songs that Tiomkin used for film and stage scores. While Tiomkin went on to write scores for such classic films as Mr. Smith Goes to Washington, It’s a Wonderful Life, and High Noon, Hairston supplemented his earnings from music by acting in some 30 motion pictures of his own, ranging from Tarzan adventures to The Alamo, To Kill a Mockingbird, St. Louis Blues, and In the Heat of the Night.
Indeed, you may know Jester Hairston more as an actor than as a musician. Ever see the 1980s sitcom Amen? He played character of Rolly Forbes. As it happens, Hairston also helped to popularize the traditional gospel song “Amen” by arranging it for the Sidney Portier film Lilies of the Field.
But let’s get back to Hairston’s contribution to Christmas lore. Earlier in his career, he had a roommate who decided to throw a birthday party. The man asked Hairston to write a song for the occasion. Because most of the attendees would be from the West Indies, he chose a calypso beat for the tune, entitled “He Pone and Chocolate Tea.”
Later, another composer named Walter Schumann (he wrote the iconic Dragnet TV theme, for example) asked Hairston to write a Christmas song for his Hollywood choir. Hairston reworked his earlier calypso tune and added suitable lyrics. When Harry Belafonte heard the choir perform “Mary’s Little Boy Child,” he asked permission to record it, first in 1956 and then in longer form the following year.
Belafonte made the song a hit. Subsequent performances and cover versions by the likes of Mahalia Jackson, Andy Williams, the Bee Gees, and Harry Connick, Jr. have made “Mary’s Little Boy Child” a seasonal standard. It isn’t just the calypso syncopation that makes the song so memorable. Hairston’s use of dialect and idiom lent the lyrics a charming distinctiveness. The first verse goes like this:
Long time ago in Bethlehem,
So the Holy Bible say,
Mary’s boy child, Jesus Christ,
Was born on Christmas day.
Hark, now hear the angels sing,
A new King born today.
And man will live forevermore
Because of Christmas day.
Trumpets sound and angels sing,
Listen what they say:
That Man will live forevermore
Because of Christmas day.
Jester Hairston spent the next 40 years embodying the Christmas spirit: touring America and the world as a goodwill ambassador, collecting traditional folk songs and composing new spirituals, nurturing new generations of performers and arrangers, and acting in such films as Finian’s Rainbow, Lady Sings the Blues, and the 1999 picture Being John Malkovich, his last role.
Hairston died in Los Angeles the following year, at the age of 98. For his contributions to American song and entertainment, this self-styled “song catcher” from North Carolina deserves our praise. For his contribution to Christmastime, he deserves a hearty “amen.”
John Hood is a John Locke Foundation board member. His books Mountain Folk, Forest Folk, and Water Folk combine epic fantasy with American history (FolkloreCycle.com).
