“Little Eva” Boyd
June 29, 1943 – April 10, 2003
Little Eva got her big break by accident when she began working as a maid and babysitter to earn money as a teenager. As luck would have it, one of her first jobs was babysitting for songwriters Carole King and Gerry Goffin. Taken by Boyd’s upbeat personality and lively dance moves, they wrote a song called “The Loco-Motion,” which they had her record the demo to send over to its originally intended singer, Dee Dee Sharp. The demo landed on the desk of music impresario Don Kirshner, who liked it just as it was and released it. It shot immediately to the top of the charts in 1962. Boyd was also the inspiration for another Goffin-King penned hit, “He Hit Me (And It Felt Like A Kiss).” The song came about after Boyd revealed to them that her boyfriend regularly beat her. When asked why she put up with it, she claimed that him hitting her proved that he really loved her. Boyd’s career fizzled out at around the same time the British Invasion kicked in. She would make a few comebacks over the years, but mostly performing on the Oldies circuit. She passed away in 2003 at the age of 59 from cervical cancer.
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