Millie Small

by Richie Unterberger & Bruce Eder
Jamaican teenager Millie Small stunned the music business by reaching number two in the U.S. and number one in the U.K. with My Boy Lollipop in 1964. Born Millicent Small in Clarendon, she was the daughter of an overseer on a sugar plantation (her reported date of birth varies from 1942 to 1948), and she was one of the very few female singers in the early Ska era in Clarendon. She was already recording in her teens for Sir Coxone Dodds Studio One label with Roy Panton (as Roy & Millie), with a hit behind her in that capacity (Well Meet), when Chris Blackwell discovered her and brought her to England in late 1963. Her fourth recording, My Boy Lollipop, cut in London by a group of session musicians that included guitarist Ernest Ranglin (and, according to some accounts, Rod Stewart on harmonica) and featuring her childlike, extremely high-pitched vocals, was the first (and indeed, one of the few) international ska hits. It remains one of the biggest-selling reggae or ska discs of all time with more than seven million sales.
Millie, who was known as the Blue Beat Girl on her album, was perceived as a one-shot novelty artist from the start because of her unusual, almost screeching vocals (which actually owed a lot to Shirley Goodman of the 50s New Orleans R&B duo Shirley & Lee), and she only made the Top 40 one more time, with the My Boy Lollipop soundalike Sweet William. She did cut an entire album around the two hits (and video clips exist of Millie miming to My Boy Lollipop and another single, Henry), which also includes the first of several of her covers of Fats Domino material (Im in Love Again) with whom she later recorded an entire album.