Harry Belafonte waves to Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr. during a civil rights march in Montgomery, Alabama on March 24, 1965. Getty Images.

There’s a great clip that’s been going around for a couple years of the USA for Africa gang on the night they recorded “We Are the World,” back in 1985.

Rendering: Adam Pardee/STAFF.

If you’re blissfully unaware of what USA for Africa means, congratulations. You want their big charity hit in your head as much as being locked in a rubber broom closet with Kid Rock telling you his name over and over and over for six months.

The clip shows a huge chunk of the country’s major recording artists of the day—and Dan Akroyd—between recording takes, when someone breaks into “Day-O,” AKA “The Banana Boat Song.”

As the camera pans to Harry Belafonte, the man who sang “Day-O” into worldwide cultural significance in 1956, the voices grow louder and more energetic.

What started as a playful tease erupted into a beautiful tribute, with everyone in the room yelling along and laughing.

To demonstrate just how much fun they were having—and perhaps how important Belafonte was to fellow artists—know Bob Dylan appeared to maybe, possibly almost even lift one tiny corner of his hairy upper lip into an event many historians and scientists now speculate may actually have been the closest he’s ever come to smiling on camera.

Belafonte, the singer, actor and civil rights activist, died last week at 96.

My generation may have known Belafonte best for “Day-O” appearing in 1988’s “Beetlejuice,” when the ghosts possess a room full of people and make them dance like they’re dodging falling coconuts.

I knew him best because my grandmother had the hots for him.

She did. She had his records and always warmed to him being on TV. My mom came and out said last week my grandmother always thought Belafonte was “sexy,” which was really weird because, you know … my grandma. It’s illegal to put my grandma and the word “sexy” in the same room, whatever the context.

But, you know … she was probably right, with Belafonte shaking his hips and doing all that tropical calypso music with his silky shirts unbuttoned, which I can assure you grandpas weren’t doing back in the day.

What Belfonte really was an impressive man, sexy or not.

Born in Harlem to a Jamaican mother and a father from Martinique, Belafonte’s mother was a cleaning lady who eventually took him back to Jamaica.

Despite being a favorite of white Americans trying to squeeze under limbo poles during the ’50s and ’60s, “Day-O” was a song about the working class, Belafonte told NPR in 2011. And it wasn’t as goofy-happy as we made it out to be.

“The song is a work song,” Belafonte said. “It’s about men who sweat all day long, and they are underpaid. They’re begging for the tallyman to come and give them an honest count: ‘Count the bananas that I’ve picked so I can be paid.’

“When people sing in delight and dance and love it, they don’t really understand unless they study the song — that they’re singing a work song that’s a song of rebellion.”

I love that. It reminds me of how often politicians appropriate songs because they sound pointed, not realizing that they’re part of the class at which it’s pointed.

Belafonte fought in World War II and studied acting with Sidney Poitier at the American Negro Theatre. He was a close friend of Martin Luther King, Jr. and helped him organize the Freedom March on Washington, D.C. in 1963.

In 1959, he had a one-hour variety show on CBS called “The Revlon Revue: Tonight with Belafonte,” featuring Black and white performers. It of course pissed off a bunch of the same kind of southerners who now get angrier about men dressing as women than assault rifles being easier to buy than a Slurpee. Southern network affiliates told Belafonte he needed to eliminate the integration. He responded by quitting. But the show won the first Emmy for an African American.

He was known as a critic of those in power, including people of his own race, like President Barack Obama, whom Belafonte said didn’t do enough for the poor. He said the same about Beyonce and Jay-Z, who fired back in a song. The two later mended fences, but the point was made.

He was an outspoken Black man who used his leverage as an entertainer as far back as the 1950s, before the Civil Rights Act was enacted, which took enormous courage. He made a difference, and the world is better for him.

And … yes, he probably made a lot of white grandmas swoon.

Follow music critic Tony Hicks at Twitter.com/TonyBaloney1967.