Boney M

Boney M. are a reggae, funk and disco music group founded in 1974 in West Germany. They achieved popularity during the disco era in the second half of the 1970s. The band were created by German record producer Frank Farian, who was the group's primary songwriter and one of its main vocalists. Originally based in West Germany, the four original members of the band's official line-up were Liz Mitchell and Marcia Barrett from Jamaica, Maizie Williams from Montserrat, and Bobby Farrell from Aruba. Since the 1980s, various line-ups of the band have performed with different members.The band sold over 100 million records during their commercial heyday, and are known for hits including "Daddy Cool", "Ma Baker", "Belfast", "Sunny", "Rasputin", "Rivers of Babylon", "Brown Girl in the Ring", "Hooray! Hooray! It's a Holi-Holiday", "Mary's Boy Child / Oh My Lord" and "Gotta Go Home". They achieved eight number one singles in their native Germany, and two in the United Kingdom, both of which are among that country's all-time bestsellers.German singer-songwriter Frank Farian recorded the dance track "Baby Do You Wanna Bump" in 1974. Farian sang the repeated line "Do you do you wanna bump?" in a deep voice and the falsetto chorus. When the record was released as a single in early 1975, it was credited to "Boney M.". Farian created this pseudonym for himself after watching the Australian television detective series Boney, whose main character was named Napoleon Bonaparte. Farian said:After a slow start, the song became a hit in the Netherlands and Belgium. Farian decided to hire performers to create a troupe for TV appearances.In 1975, model-turned-singer Maizie Williams (originally from Montserrat) and her friend Sheyla Bonnick were approached by an agent while at a restaurant in Hanover, Germany, and invited to join a new pop group. The job was to dance and mime to the studio recording of "Baby Do You Wanna Bump". Williams and Bonnick were joined by two other performers identified only as "Nathalie" and "Mike", and together the four embarked on a discothèque tour and made a few television appearances in the subsequent months. No footage of this early lineup of Boney M. has surfaced. Nathalie left the group and was replaced by Claudja Barry. Bonnick decided that lip-synching was not for her and departed with the aim of pursuing a solo career, and Mike also left. They were replaced by Marcia Barrett, a singer from Jamaica, and Bobby Farrell, a dancer from Aruba. When Barry also left, Barrett brought in Liz Mitchell, also from Jamaica and formerly a member of the Les Humphries Singers, and the group's classic lineup was complete.

Biography summary from English Wikipedia, photograph via Wikimedia Commons.