Mary's Boy Child - by Jester Hairston, Arr by Philip Sparke - Perf by the MCSB

Performed by the Mississippi Community Symphonic Band on 12/17/2017 at Christ United Methodist Church in Jackson, MS. Conducted by David P. Miller. It’s probably a good bet that not many people can name a tune that features … the BASS CLARINET. Not only do we have that instrument featured for you in this video, the music is a delightful Caribbean-styled calypso version of the favorite “Mary’s Boy Child.” The tune was composed by Julliard-trained songwriter Jester Hairston in 1956, in response to a request for a song for a birthday party. Since most of the people expected at the party were from the West Indies, Hairston wrote the tune to a calypso beat, later replacing the birthday lyrics with Christmas lyrics to be sung by a choir. What this means is the calypso-style rendition by Philip Sparke is much closer to the original than other arrangements you may have heard. Harry Belafonte recorded the song the year it was written, and when his recording was released as a single, it became the first tune to sell over one million copies in Great Britain. We hope you enjoy this tune as much as we do ================================ NOTES ON THE VIDEO - This recording - both audio and video - was made on a soup-can-sized Sony Handycam, from the balcony of the performance venue. I extracted the audio and ran it through Audacity to bring up some of the too-quiet sections, and to replace one wrong note (I bet you can't tell where!). I then used Camtasia to reassemble audio and video, and to provide the simulated pans and zooms. The graphics were all created in Xara Designer Pro. Looking at the low resolution of the digital zooms, it is obvious why it would be great to have a better camera (lens), and one with 4K resolution. All in all, I think this is not bad for a fixed and unattended hobby-grade video recording. Please leave comments below about the quality of the video recording, and how you record performances. I'm always eager to learn new ways of doing things.