Boney-M’s Mary’s Boy Child/Oh My Lord has been a favourite at Christmas time. The song, which topped the British pop chart during Christmas in 1978, has sold in excess of five million copies globally, two million alone in the United Kingdom.
Jamaican Liz Mitchell, who was the lead singer for Boney M, recalled during an interview with the Jamaica Observer on Tuesday that the group had no inclination that the song would have been a hit.
“The hit we got with it; I don’t think anybody anticipated. When Frank Farian (producer) suggested that I do Mary’s Boy Child acapella, he said he got goose bumps. And so, we went into the studio in Germany and recorded the song. No one knew it would be a hit. We just wanted a Christmas song,” said Mitchell, who now resides in the United Kingdom.
Liz Mitchell of Boney M
Mary’s Boy Child is a 1956 Christmas song written by Jester Hairston. The song had its genesis when Hairston was sharing a room with a friend. The friend asked him to write a song for a birthday party. Hairston wrote the song with a calypso rhythm because the people at the party would be mainly West Indians. The song’s original title was “He Pone and Chocolate Tea”, pone being a type of corn bread. It was never recorded in this form.
Sometime later, Walter Schumann, at the time conducting Schumann’s Hollywood Choir, asked Hairston to write a new Christmas song for his choir. Hairston remembered the calypso rhythm from his old song and wrote new lyrics for it.
Harry Belafonte heard the song being performed by the choir and sought permission to record it. It was recorded in 1956 and released as a single that year. Belafonte released it again the following year in 1957 on his album An Evening with Belafonte, using a different, longer take. This longer version was also released in the UK as a single where it became the first UK number one to have a playing time of over four minutes. It reached No. 1 on the UK Singles Chart in November 1957.
The Boney M version of Mary’s Boy Child was incorporated into a medley with the new song Oh My Lord.
Said Mitchell, “We recorded the song in late November, and you know usually, record labels record Christmas songs in August or September. We did the original music video outside of Red Square in Moscow in 32 degrees below zero cold. By the second week of December the song was released, and the pressing plants could not cope with the huge demand of the vinyl 45.”
Mary’s Boy Child/Oh My Lord was a huge hit in Europe but only peaked at #85 in America on the Billboard Hot 100. It made the top 10 in Austria, Belgium, Finland, New Zealand, Norway and Netherlands. It also went to #1 in Switzerland and Sweden.
The song has been re-released over the years, and it has been visible on music charts each year since 2015.
Commercially, the song has sold gold in Australia, Netherlands and New Zealand, platinum in Denmark and 1.8 million in the United Kingdom.
Mitchell is grateful that the song has continued to be successful each year and has found an audience with a new generation of music lovers.
“I think at the end of the day, the interpretation of the music is what makes the difference. I think the interpretation is very important,” said Mitchell, who shared that the financial returns from the song haven’t been favourable.
“We can’t even talk about financial fortunes, it’s a disaster. But what the song has done for me is put me on the map. There was a lot of criticisms and malicious talk about my singing. It made me shy and insecure, so I stayed away from the in-crowd, I just didn’t think I added up,” said Mitchell.
Mitchell, who is now born-again Christian, recently completed a series of performances. She has taken a break for Christmas.
“I’ve toured and worked every Christmas period for the last eight years. I’ve said I wouldn’t tour this year, but I ended up going very far to do a Christmas special. What is important is for me to stay healthy right now. This morning, I was praying and giving God thanks. He has placed me in this unique position where for the last forty-odd years, because of Mary’s Boy Child and Rivers of Babylon, two of the biggest hits of all-time and they’re both celebrating God in his glory. Every year there is a celebration of these songs with my voice on it,” Mitchell confided.
Mitchell is from Clarendon. She moved to the United Kingdom at the age of 11. She was appointed Member of the Order of the British Empire (MBE) in the 2024 Birthday Honours for services to music and to charity.
The other members of Boney M were Marcia Barrett of Jamaica, Maizie Williams from Montserrat and Bobby Farrell from Aruba. Farrell, who was mainly a dancer with the group, died in 2010.