Calypso King who broke down racial barriers in the US

Farewell to singer and Civil rights trailblazer

- CHRISTOPHER BUCKTIN

HE'LL be remembered for the music. But Harry Belafonte was so much more than a singer.

Belafonte, who died yesterday aged 96, was at the height of his powers as a recording artist when he received a call from a young activist named Dr Martin Luther King Jr in 1956.

That year, his album Calypso had become the first million-selling LP by a solo artist. But the phone call opened up a whole new world.

He and Dr King spoke for hours, and the singer would remember feeling he had been raised to the "higher plane of social protest".

Already a committed campaigner, inspired by the great Paul Robeson, Belafonte helped put on a benefit concert for the bus boycott in Montgomery,. Alabama, which saw Dr King become a household name.

By the early 1960s, he had decided to make civil rights his priority.

"I was having almost daily talks with Martin, Belafonte wrote in his memoir My Song, published in 2011.

"I realised that the movement was more important than anything else." When Dr King was assassinated in 1968, Belafonte helped pick out the suit he was buried in and sat next to widow Coretta at the funeral.

But his involvement in politics did not end with his friend's death.