Among the perennial Christmas hits to be heard in supermarkets and elsewhere is the pop-disco version of the carol Mary's Boy Child by the 1970s vocal group Boney M. The phenomenally successful quartet was manufactured by the German record producer Frank Farian. Its male singer and dancer was Bobby Farrell, who has been found dead aged 61 in a hotel in St Petersburg the day after giving a performance of Boney M hits with his own group.
Farrell was born in Aruba, in the Caribbean. As a teenager he became a sailor for two years before settling in northern Europe. After travelling in Norway and the Netherlands, he based himself in Germany, where he worked sporadically as a disc jockey and a dancer.
In 1975, Farian concocted the song Baby Do You Wanna Bump? and decided to find a team of singers and dancers to perform it in clubs. Four young African-Caribbean performers resident in Germany – Farrell, Maizie Williams, Liz Mitchell and Marcia Barrett – became Boney M. The foursome had a constant stream of hits across Europe (including the Soviet bloc), Latin America and Asia between 1976 and 1982.
Estimates of the group's record sales vary between 100m and 150m. In Britain alone, Boney M made the Top 10 singles chart 10 times, beginning in 1976 with Daddy Cool, followed by Sunny and Ma Baker (both 1977). The 1978 releases Rivers of Babylon/Brown Girl in the Ring and Mary's Boy Child/Oh My Lord each sold almost 2m copies. There were also three No 1 albums, Nightflight to Venus (1978), Oceans of Fantasy (1979) and a hits collection issued in 1980. Only the US remained impervious to the group's catchy sound, despite Boney M's evident affinity with the then-fashionable disco scene.
The three women in the group wore exotic, glittery costumes that mixed kitsch and erotica, while Farrell sported a large Afro and frequently appeared bare-chested. Although all four members sang when Boney M appeared on stage or on live television broadcasts, only two were permitted by Farian to take part in the studio recordings. He decided that Williams's voice was unsuitable for disco, and Farrell was also barred from the studio after singing Bob Marley's No Woman, No Cry as an audition piece. Instead, using electronic effects, Farian provided the male vocals himself .
By 1982 Farrell left the group and was replaced by Reggie Tsiboe. Farrell returned two years later but by the middle of the decade the appeal of Boney M had waned and Farian was immersed in the launch of his next creation, Milli Vanilli. The original Boney M disbanded in 1986 and Farrell embarked on a brief career as a solo performer.
During the early 1990s, various remixes and re-releases brought Boney M to the fore again in Europe, and Farrell decided to capitalise on the revival of interest. He found three new female singers and dancers and began to tour internationally as Bobby Farrell and Boney M, also making new versions of the group's hits. At various times in the past two decades, his former colleagues have also led ensembles trading as Boney M.
From his base in Amsterdam, Farrell continued to tour the world. In the past few months, his Boney M troupe had appeared in Lebanon, Turkey, the US, Colombia and Finland.
Farrell, who was divorced from Yasmina Ayad-Saban, is survived by his daughter, Zanillya.