I’m not sure if there are any other performers from South Africa who have made it to number one on the American charts, but I’m pretty sure Hugh Masekela is the first. Hugh was born in 1939 in KwaGuqa Township, Witbank, South Africa. He started playing the piano as a young boy and early acquired a love of music. He was largely raised by his grandmother who ran an illegal bar for miners. When he was fourteen, he saw the movie Young Man With a Horn which starred Kirk Douglas. That movie is a biography of the famous trumpet player Bix Beiderbecke. He was immediately fascinated by the trumpet and soon after that, his first trumpet (which previously belonged to Louis Armstrong) was given him by his headmaster Archbishop Trevor Huddleston. Hugh picked up the trumpet quickly and was soon playing in local bands at local clubs.

Huddleston was interested in the youth of his church learning and playing instruments and this led to the formation of the Huddleston Jazz band, South Africa’s first youth band. Hugh Masekela was a part of that band. From there he went from band to band, and in 1959 he joined the Jazz Epistles, the first African jazz band to record an album.

Apartheid made it very difficult to play in South Africa, so Hugh left the country and went to London, where he had received a scholarship to attend the Royal Academy of Music. A year later, he received a four-year scholarship to attend the Manhattan School of music in New York City and so came to the United States.

It was in New York that he met Harry Belafonte who became his mentor and married one of his childhood idols, Miriam Makeba. They were married for two years, from 1964 to 1966.

Placing an instrumental at the top of the charts is quite an accomplishment, let alone a number from a jazz performer. “Grazin’ in the Grass” was written by Philemon Hou and Hugh recorded and released it in 1968. It was not a part of any album until 2001 when it was included on Grazin’ in the Grass: The Best of Hugh Masekela.

“Grazin’ in the Grass” entered the pop charts at number 83 on June 8, 1968 and a week later, he played it at Carnegie Hall to an enthusiastic crowd. Five weeks after that it was the number one song in American where it stayed for two weeks.

The next year, 1969, a group called The Friends of Distinction covered the song and put words to it. That version of “Grazin’ in the Grass” reached number three on the pop charts.

Hugh Masekela died in Johannesburg on the morning of January 23, 2018 of prostate cancer. He was 78 year old.