Shirley Bassey - Yellow Bird "Choucoune" (1979 Shirley Bassey Show)

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Description

Shirley performs a Haitian originated song titled, "Yellow Bird" while in the Forests of Jamaica. She then chats with Lisa Salmon who opened the Rockland's Bird Sanctuary in the 1950s.

ABOUT Lisa Salmon:
Lisa Salmon was considered the First Lady of Jamaican Ornithology. Rocklands Bird Sanctuary is located about 30 minutes from Montego Bay in the little town called Anchovy. The sanctuary is located down a narrow, rough road but a great haven for birds. The Rocklands property was purchased back in 1954 by Lisa Salmon also known as “the bird lady”. She loved to write, pain and feed birds. After awhile the property started to attract many wide varieties. Then in 1962 Miss Salmon opened the Rocklands Bird Sanctuary to the public.

During her lifetime, Lisa's passion for birds made her a national figure, and her independent style, spunk and humor in everything she said and did were a hallmark of The Lisa Experience. Miss Salmon died in 2000 at the age of 96 but her legacy lives on. Rocklands is now run by Lisa’s nephew and managed by Fritz. Fritz has been working at Rocklands for over 15 years and has a gift for spotting and beckoning the birds which dwell in the surrounding trees.

ABOUT the song, Yellowbird:
Choucoune" (Haitian Creole: Choukoun) is a 19th century Haitian song composed by Michel Mauleart Monton with lyrics from a poem by Oswald Durand. It was rewritten with English lyrics in the 20th century as "Yellow Bird." The English rendering of "Choucoune": "Yellow Bird", first appeared on the album Calypso Holiday, a 1957 release by the Norman Luboff Choir, Norman Luboff having arranged the song in the calypso style which had become popular in the English speaking world in the mid-1950s. The lyrics for "Yellow Bird" by Alan and Marilyn Bergman have no connection with the narrative of the Durand poem other than that poem featuring the words "ti zwazo" (little birds) in its refrain on which account the original Haitian song is sometimes called "Ti Zwazo" or "Ti Zwezo".

The song became a minor hit at #70 on the Billboard Hot 100 for the Mills Brothers in 1959; its most successful incarnation came in the summer of 1961 when the Arthur Lyman Group reached #4 with their Hawaiian flavored instrumental version which bested a rival instrumental single release by Lawrence Welk (#61). "Yellow Bird" has also been recorded by Keely Smith, Roger Whitaker, Roger Williams, and Paul Clayton. The song continues to be popularly associated with calypso and the Caribbean and is often performed by steelpan bands but some versions, such as Chris Isaak's from Baja Sessions, evidence a Hawaiian flavor.

"Yellow Bird" was sung by Vivian Vance on a two-part Here's Lucy episode, "Lucy Goes Hawaiian," which aired February 15 and Feb. 22, 1971. Vance sang it in a high falsetto, with a calypso beat, dressed in yellow and sprouting feathers like a canary (including a long tail feather) perched on a swing decorated as a nest, that lowered her in the beginning of the song and lifted her at the end. A long spoken-word mid-section features Vance riffing on the types of male birds she'd like to hook up with. A clip of this version is on YouTube.

LYRICS:
Yellow bird, up high in banana tree.
Yellow bird, you sit all alone like me.

Did you lady friend leave the nest again?
That is very sad, makes me feel so bad.
You can fly away, in the sky away.
Your more lucky than me.

I also had a pretty girl, she's not with me today.
They're all the same those pretty girls.
Take tenderness, then they fly away.
Yellow Bird, yellow bird.

Did you lady friend leave the nest again?
That is very sad, makes me feel so bad.
You can fly away, in the sky away.
Your more lucky than me.

Wish that I were a yellow bird, I'd fly away with you.
But I am not a yellow bird, So here I sit.
Nothing I can do.
Yellow bird, yellow bird.