Little Millie Small

Mille, a/k/a Millie Small, born in Clarendon, Jamaica, is the 1960s ska, bluebeat, and rocksteady singer who is most famous for her 1964 smash hit “My Boy Lollipop.” Her fourth recording, “My Boy Lollipop,” was cut in London by a group of session musicians that included guitarist Ernest Ranglin (and, according to some accounts, Rod Stewart on harmonica) and featuring her childlike, extremely high-pitched vocals, was the first (and indeed, one of the few) international ska hits. It remains one of the biggest-selling reggae or ska discs of all time with more than seven million sales.

Sometimes called “Little Millie Small”, she began her career as a teenager in the early 1960s as a partner with Roy Panton (“Roy and Millie”). Millie is probably the original Rude Girl, and she recorded for Coxsone Dodd’s legendary and influential Studio One Record Label in Jamaica. “My Boy Lollipop” is a song written in the mid-1950s and is most usually credited to the doo-wop group The Cadillacs’s Robert Spence.

The Blue Beat Girl