The Grammy, Emmy and Tony winning star died of congestive heart failure at his New York home on Tuesday, with his wife by his side, according to a spokesperson.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
Reluctantly nicknamed “The King of Calypso”, he was largely responsible for bringing Caribbean music to an international audience in the 1950s, and the first singer – in any genre -to sell a million records in a year.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
His song Jump In The Line (Shake, Senora) had a recent resurgence, going viral on TikTok in 2020, and featuring in the 1988 film Beetlejuice, as did his signature song Banana Boat (Day-O).<\/p>\n\n\n\n
One of the first black performers to gain a wide following on film, he starred in movies including Carmen Jones, Island in the Sun and Odds Against Tomorrow.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
Just last year, he was inducted into the Rock & Roll Hall Of Fame, becoming the oldest person ever to receive the honor.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
Alongside his sparkling Hollywood career, he was a committed activist, working closely with Martin Luther King Jr during the Civil Rights Movement of the 1950s and 1960s.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
The Grammy, Emmy and Tony winning star died of congestive heart failure at his New York home on Tuesday, with his wife by his side, according to a spokesperson. Reluctantly nicknamed “The King of Calypso”, he was largely responsible for bringing Caribbean music to an international audience in the 1950s, and the first singer – […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":6493,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[220],"tags":[2394,540,2393,193,506],"class_list":["post-6492","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-news","tag-activist","tag-actor","tag-harry-belafonte","tag-news","tag-singer"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/miaminewsnetwork.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/6492","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/miaminewsnetwork.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/miaminewsnetwork.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/miaminewsnetwork.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/miaminewsnetwork.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=6492"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/miaminewsnetwork.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/6492\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":6494,"href":"https:\/\/miaminewsnetwork.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/6492\/revisions\/6494"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/miaminewsnetwork.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/media\/6493"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/miaminewsnetwork.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=6492"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/miaminewsnetwork.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=6492"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/miaminewsnetwork.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=6492"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}