Little Eva: The accidental pop star who got her break as a babysitter

KYLIE Minogue’s first pop hit The Loco-Motion was originally recorded a quarter of a century earlier by Carole King’s babysitter Little Eva.

American singer Little Eva (front) with producers Don Kirshner and Al Nevins, and singer-songwriters Gerry Goffin and Carole King in 1962. Picture: Frank Driggs Collection/Getty Images

WHEN Australian actor Kylie Minogue launched her stellar pop career with number one hit The Loco-Motion in 1987, it went on to be a big hit in the UK the following year. But Minogue’s version was not the first time the song had enjoyed chart success. Grand Funk Railroad also sent it to number one in the US in 1974.

Yet the original version, and some say the best, was recorded by Eva Boyd, better known as Little Eva, 25 years before Kylie recorded hers. Eva later joked: “Kylie Minogue’s revival is all right, but mine is better.” She acknowledged that The Loco-Motion is a great song, “but it ain’t no Amazing Grace”.

The song was written for her by the famous songwriting team Gerry Goffin and Carole King, who had hired Eva as a babysitter. The story that they penned the tune when they heard Eva singing around the house, is probably apocryphal. King later said that they knew about their babysitter’s great voice before they hired her, but it was still the song that took Eva from obscurity to stardom.

1960s American pop singer Little Eva.

Eva Narcissus Boyd, was born 75 years ago today, on June 29, 1943, appropriately on Railroad St in Belhaven, North Carolina. The 10th of 13 children to David and Laura Boyd, Eva grew up listening to gospel, rhythm and blues and later rock’n’roll on the radio.

She also sang in church and for a time had a gospel group with her sisters called The Four Boyds.

Her future stage name came about when she was a child. She had an aunt named Eva, who was called “Big Eva” and she was dubbed “Little Eva.”

At 15 Eva was sent to school in New York, living with her oldest brother Jimmy, but when she went back to South Carolina she had already decided that New York was where she wanted to be.

She moved there permanently in 1960 taking work as a maid on Long Island.

Through a relative she got occasional work singing with a band named The Cookies, which led to other work doing backing vocals in a studio.

The Cookies worked with songwriters on Broadway in the Brill Building, although many of the songwriters at the time — among them Goffin and King — worked in other buildings nearby.

Goffin and King had both heard Eva sing in the studio and after offering her work as a babysitter, they began writing a song to suit her particular talents, but only as a demo.

To capitalise on the dance song craze, Goffin and King wanted to give the song, The Loco-Motion, to Dee Dee Sharp, who’d had a hit with Mashed Potato Time, which introduced the Mashed Potato dance. The Loco-Motion, which was about a dance that hadn’t been invented, seemed a natural follow up, but Sharp wasn’t interested and, instead, Little Eva’s version of the song was released in 1962.

American singer Little Eva (front) with producers Don Kirshner and Al Nevins, and singer-songwriters Gerry Goffin and Carole King in 1962. Picture: Frank Driggs Collection/Getty Images

The song soon hit number one on the R’n’B and popular music charts. Suddenly Eva was in demand for public appearances and concerts, which meant she had to create a dance to go with the song. The lyrics weren’t much help, only suggesting “swing your hips” or “jump up” and forming a chain doing a “chugga chugga motion like a railroad train”.

But the dance was never really the point. An album was rushed out, with The Cookies as her back-up band.

Eva also provided inspiration for other songs by Goffin and King. When she told them about her partner beating her, she explained it by saying that she knew he still loved her. Which spawned a controversial tune called “He hit me and it felt like a kiss”, which seemed to justify domestic violence and got little airplay because of the wave of complaints.

Her follow-up single was another Goffin-King song, Keep Your Hands Off My Baby, about a woman warning her best friend to leave her boyfriend alone, made it to the top 20. Her 1963 song, The Turkey Trot, was another attempt to capitalise on the dance song craze.

Eva gave up music for a time in 1971, after the death of her mother and splitting from husband James Harris (who she had married in 1962). She went home to North Carolina where she lived with her three children, keeping a low profile.

When Kylie Minogue had her hit with The Loco-Motion in the ’80s it generated interest in the original. Journalists tracked down Eva, who was working as a cook in a soul food restaurant. Inspired by the renewed interest she returned to recording and performing.

Diagnosed with cancer in 2001, Eva died in 2003.

Originally published as Little Eva: The accidental pop star who got her break as a babysitter