Little Eva to join N.C. Music Hall of Fame
Published 5:22 pm Monday, March 3, 2014
FILE PHOTO | DAILY NEWS
SHE’S REMEMBERED: This monument in a Belhaven cemetery marks the grave of Little Eva.
Eva Narcissus Boyd Harris — who?
But say Little Eva and many people, especially Baby Boomers, know exactly whom you are talking about.
Little Eva will be inducted into the North Carolina Music Hall of Fame on Oct. 16 in the Gem Theater in Kannapolis. Eva Narcissus Boyd, born in Belhaven on June 29, 1943, is best known for her No. 1 pop hit “The Loco-Motion” in September 1962. She died in Kinston from complications related to cervical cancer on April 10, 2003.
She is buried in a cemetery in Belhaven.
At an early age, she moved to the Brighton Beach area of New York at an early age. She was a babysitter for hit songwriters Carole King and Gerry Goffin. They had a role in her recording “The Loco-Motion.”
The song has appeared in the American Top Five pop-hits chart three times, in 1963 by Little Eva, in 1974 by Grand Funk Railroad (No. 1) and in 1988 by Kylie Minogue (No. 3). The song is part of the dance-song genre, in which a song provides directions to do a dance specific to the song. Little Eva had some moderate success after “The Loco-Motion,” most notably with “Let’s Turkey Trot.”
In a 1987 interview with the Washington Daily News for an article concerning the 25th anniversary of “The Loco-Motion” rising to No. 1 on the pop charts, the Belhaven native said she did not “locomote anymore.” She was referring to her career decision to put aside pop music and focus on gospel music after her popularity waned.
After national publicity about her plight in the late 1980s — she was holding down a minimum-wage job as a waitress in Kinston and had received welfare while living in South Carolina before she moved to Kinston — she returned to performing for a brief time with some of her music peers on the oldies circuit. In her latter years, she was involved with a ministry.
On Nov. 8, 2008, Belhaven unveiled the new headstone marking her grave in Black Bottom Cemetery to kick off the effort to restore the historically black cemetery. Before then, her grave was marked with rusty tin marker. Quincy Edgerton made the new grave marker.
About Mike Voss
Mike Voss is the contributing editor at the Washington Daily News. He has a daughter and four grandchildren. Except for nearly six years he worked at the Free Lance-Star in Fredericksburg, Va., in the early to mid-1990s, he has been at the Daily News since April 1986.
Journalism awards:
• Pulitzer Prize for Meritorious Public Service, 1990.
• Society of Professional Journalists: Sigma Delta Chi Award, Bronze Medallion.
• Associated Press Managing Editors’ Public Service Award.
• Investigative Reporters & Editors’ Award.
• North Carolina Press Association, First Place, Public Service Award, 1989.
• North Carolina Press Association, Second Place, Investigative Reporting, 1990.
All those were for the articles he and Betty Gray wrote about the city’s contaminated water system in 1989-1990.
• North Carolina Press Association, First Place, Investigative Reporting, 1991.
• North Carolina Press Association, Third Place, General News Reporting, 2005.
• North Carolina Press Association, Second Place, Lighter Columns, 2006.
Recently learned he will receive another award.
• North Carolina Press Association, First Place, Lighter Columns, 2010.
4. Lectured at or served on seminar panels at journalism schools at UNC-Chapel Hill, University of Maryland, Columbia University, Mary Washington University and Francis Marion University.
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