Big Earl Sellar wrote this review which originally ran on Roots & Branches.
Alan Lomax, famed music archivist, also did stints as a concert promoter and radio host in the Forties. These recently uncovered recordings are from a series of shows held at New York’s Town Hall, in this case on December 21, 1946. They are the only (so-far) known recordings of the At Midnight concerts from 1946-48.
Calypso was reaching its zenith of popularity in the United States at this time, although often from watered-down versions of the original songs, performed by white artists. Lomax, seizing upon the times, invited Lord Invader (Rupert Grant), a very popular Calypso singer, up from his native Trinidad to record and perform the actual island music for American audiences. Here, he is teamed with two fine American Calypso singers, MacBeth the Great and the Duke of Iron. They are backed by Gerald Clark and his Invaders, a pick-up group used for many American recordings of this music.
This sounds like the most fun that $3 could have bought at that time in New York! The singers and band are clearly playing off the cuff (and by the seat of their pants) and loving every minute of it. There’s a lot of laughing and joking during this set. Although the recording itself is fairly tinny, and could have used some editing (there’s a burst of feedback at one point), the vibe transcends any audio problems.
Oh and the music! This is raw Calypso, before it was influenced by American pop music or Jamaican Reggae. The melody to these tunes are primarily played on clarinet, which cuts through the din nicely. And most of the band, although under-recorded, locks into rhythmatic grooves, ranging in style from tango to veracruzano to traditional African percussive call and response. This is dance music at its finest.
The songs range from historical commentary, to opinion songs, to many tales of Americans GI’s in Trinidad, and to the usual party anthems. Whether it is the night or the era, most of the songs are humourous; some are out-right hilarious. “Man Smart, Woman Smarter” (later popularized by Harry Belafonte) is a smartly written proto-feminist song, with put-downs of men as the final line of each stanza. Lord Invader’s “That Game Named Poker” is a biographical tale of gambling woe that leaves the singer over $1000 in debt by song’s end. The three-way “Calypso War” is a challenge song, forcing the singers to use put-downs to prove that they are the better singer. And these insults are great. Here’s one sample from MacBeth the Great:
The city council should have you fumigated,
From the company of man, you should be isolated.
Ladies and gents, please look at his face
And tell me that belong to the human race!
The song ends in fits of laughter, obviously.
Some traditional island songs are included, such as the work song “Do Lai Do,” and the fight song “Té Way,” but this was mostly a night for popular music. Invader sings his “Rum and Coca-Cola” with gusto; a great three-way “Yankee Dollar” gets the whole audience singing along in the background. The “After” disc, and the set, ends with a moving version of “God Made Us All,” a song that later joined the American folk lexicon (n.f. Leadbelly’s “Nobody In This World Is Better Than Us”).
The spoken introductions are included before each song. Although the performers get in some great jokes (including MacBeth’s great description of how to make a “Trinidadian harp,” i.e. an empty liquor bottle hit with a stick), Lomax is unnecessarily formal through most of the dialogue; in a few points he seems to be ordering the performers around. And although it is nice to have the entire concert, a little judicious editing would definitely smooth these discs out. Perhaps my biggest complaint would be that this set has been issued as two separate discs, the “At Midnight” first hour and “After Midnight” second hour. This seems to be a serious misjudgment on Rounder’s behalf, as the two discs are so intertwined with running jokes and announcements that it should have been issued as a double CD set. The discs even share the same foreword and some of the same great liner notes, written by Donald Hill and John Cowley.
It’s hard to narrow this down to a one disc or another selection. I prefer the After Midnight disc, as the performers are warmed up and stretching a bit more. But by all means, if you are interested in the music of the Caribbean, buy both of these discs: just be prepared not to sit still.
(Rounder, 1999)
(Rounder, 1999)
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