Day-O (The Banana Boat Song)

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"Day-O (The Banana Boat Song)"
Single by Harry Belafonte
from the album Calypso
Released 1956
Format Vinyl record (7", 10")
Genre Mento
Length 3:02
Label RCA





The song was first recorded by Trinidadian singer Edric Connor and his band "Edric Connor and the Caribbeans" on the 1952 album Songs From Jamaica; the song was called "Day Dah Light".[1] Belafonte based his version on Connor's 1952 and Louise Bennett's 1954 recordings.[2]



Covers and other uses[edit]

  • "Banana Boat (Day-O)" by Stan Freberg, released in 1957 by Capitol Records, features ongoing disagreement between an enthusiastic Jamaican lead singer and a bongo-playing beatnik (Peter Leeds) who "don't dig loud noises" and has the catchphrase "You're too loud, man". When he hears the lyric about the "deadly black taranch-la" (actually the highly venomous Brazilian wandering spider, commonly dubbed "banana spider"), the beatnik protests, "No, man! Don't sing about spiders, I mean, oooo! like I don't dig spiders".[5] Stan Freberg's version was the basis for the TV advert for the UK chocolate bar Trio in the mid-1980s.
  • Sarah Vaughan recorded the song for Mercury Records in 1956.
  • Barry Frank released a version for Bell in 1957[6]
  • Dutch comedian André van Duin released his version in 1972 called Het bananenlied: the banana song. This songs ask repetitively why bananas are bent. It reaches the conclusion that if the bananas weren't bent they wouldn't fit into their peels.
  • The Belafonte version was used in 1988 film Beetlejuice.
  • Hasil Adkins recorded a previously unreleased rockabilly version of this song that was included on the 1990 Norton Records album, Peanut Butter Rock and Roll.
  • The Swedish humor show Rally, which aired between 1995 and 2002 in Sveriges Radio P3 made a version called "Hey Mr. Taliban", which speaks about Osama Bin Laden with the lyrics "Hey Mister Tallyman, tally me banana/Daylight come and me wan' go home" replaced by "Hey Mister Taliban, In Afghanistan/US Come and you wanna go home" or "Hey Mister Taliban! Osama Bin Laden" and "Day-O! Daaaaay-O! Daylight come and me wan' go home" is replaced by "Day-O! Daaaay-O! Missile come and you wanna go home".
  • Belafonte sang the song in an episode of The Muppet Show
  • In Ava DuVernay's film Selma, Rev. Hosea Williams (played by Wendell Pierce) starts a chorus of the song at a meeting where it is announced that Harry Belafonte will join the final and successful third of the Selma to Montgomery marches. Belafonte appears among the marchers in newsreel footage shown during the end credits of the film.
  • In Thomas & Friends: Sodor's Legend of the Lost Treasure, Skiff the Railboat starts a chorus of the song after he sees the sun comes up, whilst calling Sailor John out that it is time to go home.
  • In their 1994 album, the comedy music group Grup Vitamin included a Turkish cover of the song parodying the macho culture in the country.


  1. ^ Mento Music. Edric Connor, Louise Bennett & Jamaican Folk Music
  4. ^ Bassey on

External links[edit]