The Platters

07
Aug
2023

First MONDAY in August

Today is Kadooment Day in Barbados. It marks the finale of the six-week Crop Over festival and is one of the most colorful and energetic of the Caribbean carnivals.

The Crop Over Festival is the traditional end of the Sugar cane season and has been celebrated for over 200 years. Sugar cane was first introduced to Barbados at the end of the seventeenth century. It made Barbados home to one of the world’s biggest sugar industries. This meant a large workforce was needed and slaves and indentured servants were brought from Africa. It was these workers who also brought the traditional harvest festival of Crop Over from Africa.

On Grand Kadooment, a parade of Masquerade Bands with about 1,500 revelers takes place on the streets cheered on by the throngs of onlookers trying to make themselves heard over beat of the the calypso music. At the end of the parade the bands are judged and while there is a keenly contested Designer of the Year prize, for most the focus is on having fun.

Today is the birthday, in 1928, of Herb Reed, bass singer from American vocal group The Platters who had the 1959 UK & US No.1 single ‘Smoke Gets In Your Eyes’. The Platters were one of the first African-American groups to be accepted as a major chart group and were, for a period of time, the most successful vocal group in the world. Reed died aged 83 on June 4th 2012. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=rAUJSc6unAg

Posted by Tom in doo-wop, Humor, Music
05
May
2023

It is indeed FRIDAY

Today is Great Prayer Day in Denmark, Greenland and the Faroe Islands. Store Bededag, also known as Great Prayer Day or General Prayer Day, is a special Danish festival celebrated on the fourth Friday after Easter Sunday. People in Denmark will no longer get a public holiday for “Great Prayer Day” from 2024 after lawmakers passed a bill on scrapping it as a public holiday.

Unusually for a holiday, the source for Great Prayer can be traced to one man, Hans Bagger, who was a bishop in Roskilde in the late seventeenth century. Bagger had introduced some new praying and fasting days, but given the number of holy days in the calendar already, it became clear that all the days of praying and fasting were having an impact on daily life, so it was decided that several of the lesser holy days should be combined into one of Bagger’s days, which became Great Prayer Day.

The Great Prayer Day was put on the Statute book by King Christian V in 1686.

Under the law, all trade, work, etc were forbidden from 6pm on the day before Great Prayer Day, to ensure that nobody would be late or drunk when they had to attend the next day’s obligatory church service.

The bakers came up with the idea of baking some extra ‘hvede’ – cardamom-infused wheat buns with a generous spreading of butter on the Thursday which could then be heated up and eaten the following day. It gradually became common throughout the country to eat the hot buns, but nowadays on the evening before Great Prayer Day.

Today is the birthday, in 1942, of American soul singer and actress Barbara Randolph who recorded for Motown Records in the 1960s. In 1964, she joined The Platters. She died on 15 July 2002 age 60. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=IEzfhclKO8Q

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Posted by Tom in doo-wop, Humor, Music
20
Aug
2021

It’s FRIDAY

I can tell by the signs

Today is the birthday, in 1941, of Paul Robi, one of the original Platters. They were a very successful group. This song is their first number one hit.

Posted by Tom in Humor, Music, sixties and seventies