You can see it on YouTube and it's quite a fun scene. Many people will associate the song with that memorable scene in Michael Keaton's bizarre film Beetlejuice when the cast suddenly start dancing around the table singing "Day- O". Apparently American baseball fans who get impatient when a game drags on into extra innings remind the players with the song's refrain "daylight come and me wanna go home". It is definitely an iconic song and I wouldn't mind betting most readers have tried to sing bits of it, possibly after a few drinks. I admit to not fully understanding the lyrics at the time and had no idea what a "tally man" was. I vaguely recall seeing Belafonte on black and white television singing the song with people in the studio dancing around rather sad-looking fake banana palms. It's scary to think that was more than 60 years ago. It was 1957 and I recall on the bus to school along with other children trying to sing the tricky but very catchy "Day-O" bits from the song and totally wrecking it in the process. The store in my hometown is now a Macy's.The recent death of the gifted Jamaican-American singer Harry Belafonte at the age of 96 inevitably sparked memories of when his biggest hit "Day-O (The Banana Boat Song)" swept the globe, including Britain. "The Bon" was very prominent in the Pacific Northwest, which is where I live and was taken over by Macy's some years ago.
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