Songwriter Irving Burgie, the prolific man behind "Day-O" and other calypso hits, dead at age 95
Brooklyn-born songwriter Irving Burgie, whose songs sold more than 100 million copies worldwide, found his greatest success with a calypso classic penned for Harry Belafonte — and resurrected by “Beetlejuice.”
Burgie, who died Friday at the age of 95, catapulted Belafonte to the top of the 1956 music charts with the irresistible single “Day-O” as the pair launched a collaboration that eventually included more than 30 songs over three best-selling albums.
Thirty-two years later, “Day-O" resurfaced during a memorable dinner party scene in the hit movie “Beetlejuice” before returning yet again this year in the Broadway production of the Tim Burton-directed classic. The popular hit single was also used to rouse snoozing U.S. astronauts orbiting in outer space in 1990 and 1997.
Burgie, known professionally as Lord Burgess, was inducted into the Songwriters Hall of Fame in 2007 and wrote the lyrics to the national anthem for his mother’s homeland of Barbados after the island nation achieved independence on Nov. 30, 1966.
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