Favorite Calypsos

This is a great little album with LOTS of new songs that I’d never heard before, along with some old favorites (which have been offered here before, but I’m trying to keep the albums complete).
Most of the new stuff is from Lloyd Thomas, and his topics are pretty odd indeed, even for 1950s calypso standards–sex change operations (with a reference to “Christine” –as in Jorgensen–look it up), riding a donkey to Berlin and selling codfish to Hitler, and reincarnation as a bedbug so he can bite pretty young girls. And, there’s even a new song (for me) by Lord Kitchener. That adds up to money well spent, in my book.

Favorite Calypso Songs–Paragon Tropicana 608
Side 1
Man Smart, Woman Smarter–Duke of Iron
Lost Watch–Duke of Iron
Bed Bug–Lloyd Thomas
Mambo Walk (though it sounds like he is singing Mango Walk)–uncredited, does anyone know who it is?
Mary Had No Little Lamb–Lloyd Thomas
Social Party–Lord Invader

Side 2
Brown Skin Gal–The Charmer
Sex Changin’–Lloyd Thomas
Mary Anne–The Charmer
Lady Want Rent–Lord Kitchener
German Calypso–Lloyd Thomas
Take Me–The Charmer

Melody 1962

Note: The strange volume fluctuations are on the album and aren’t my fault.
Honest.
There are 2 version of “Melody Twist” included….I couldn’t seem to get rid of the skip at the end of the song so I included a version I did a year ago which is skip free.

Lord Melody Calypso 1962

Happy Harry and 10 other horrible hullabaloos Cook records 931, Stamford Connecticut

Melody Twist
New York
Wau, Wau
Bong Bong Bong
Blackbird
The Seagull and the Mule
Georgie Porgie
Yours Sincerely
Nylon
Donkey Race
Happy Harry (instrumental)

Top Calypsonians

From the original liner notes by one Brunell Jones of the Trinidad Guardian and “Sport and Show Cavalcade”:

“Melody, whose world-girdling ‘Mama Look a Boo Boo’ is being played and sung in more languages that one can count on one’s hands and toes, sings singularly like Melody; Superior, a now mature ‘boy wonder’, brought a new and interesting trend to the art-form; Nap, with his high-pitched voice and a natural style of underscoring the vital passages of his tunes, is a versatile entertainer; Fighter, a Guianese who abandoned the fishing profession to become one of the fastest rising Calypso humorists, always succeeds in getting his message through to the listener, while wide-eyed poker faced Bomber and barrel chested Power, whose ‘Wus Dan Dat’ and ‘I’m a Worried Man’ respectively, swept them to the top as contemporary expressionist singers, will certainly enhance the success of this album, particularly in the United States the United Kingdom, and Europe…”

I don’t think the odd drivel written in the official liner notes is considerably less drivelly than what I usually write. Certainly it’s equally world-girdling, I should say.

The song “Drink Again” by King Fighter is available on a great compilation on the Ice label called “Saucy Calypsos Vol. 1”—if you can find it, be sure to pick it up as it’s one of the few calypso CDs with the 1950s-early 60s stuff that I love the best.

As usual, there was one song on the album with a skip on it I couldn’t fix—it’s “Second Life” by Lord Superior, and for that I apologize.

Top Calypsonians (Featuring the West Indies Greatest Names in Calypso)
Kaiso by the pros
RCA records LPB-3018

Side 1
Conrad – Lord Melody
Drink Again – King Fighter
Second Life – Lord Superior
Come Good – Mighty Power
Jackie – Nap Hepburn
Cinderella – Mighty Bomber

Side 2
Calypso Love – Lord Superior
Jagabat Women – Mighty Bomber
Loretta – Mighty Power
Undertakers – Nap Hepburn
The Injection – Lord Fighter
Melo in Love – Lord Melody

Mighty Sparrow

This Mighty Sparrow album contains two of my favorite Sparrow numbers, “Castro Eating a Banana” and “Calypso Twist”. However….it also contains some of the most heinously bad Sparrow music, such as the painfully self-conscious “Death of Kennedy”, the inexcusably dull “Martin Luther King”, and the insufferable “The Slave”. You have been forewarned!

The Mighty Sparrow Sings True Life Stories of Passion, People, Politics

The Village Ram
Old Man and Donkey
You Don’t Love Me
Harry, Elaine, and Mama
Calypso Twist
Kennedy & Khruschev
Martin Luther King
Castro Eating a Banana
The Slave

Caribbean Carnival

Today’s 3 record set is a collection of various music from the Monogram, Request, and Ritmo labels, re-relased on the el cheapo Murray Hill label. It features a lot of my all-time favorite music from the Duke of Iron, Lord Kitchener, The Terror, Macbeth, The Lion, and a whole lot more that the liner notes don’t identify (and neither could I). There are many classic songs here–Chinese Children Call Me Daddy, Mama Look at Booboo, and Wash Your hands are just a few. It’s not only calypso, but some mambo and cha cha as well.

Record 1 Side A

Gumbo Calypso
Federation – Lord Kitchener
Mary Anne 1
Mayaguez
Creole Girl– Duke of Iron
Antigua Steel Band

Record 2 Side B

Mambo de Plantation
Linstead Market
Music Lesson– Duke of Iron
Mama Me Belly a Hurt Me – Lord Beginner
Mereguinando
Danzon

C

St. Thomas Mambo
I Do Adore Her – George Brown
Cha Cha Cha International
Big Bamboo– Duke of Iron
Women Will Rule the World – Macbeth
Grandma’s Calypso

D

Carneval en Cuba
Chinese Children Call Me Daddy – The Terror
Mama Look at Booboo – Lord Melody
Last Train– Duke of Iron
Cotorrita
La Paloma

Record 2 Side E

Cojele Bien el Compas
Louise – Lloyd Thomas
Por Ahi
Pan Bush Mary
Bamboo Dance
Malidie

Record 1 Side F

Baile de Hombre Voo Doo
Man Centipede – Duke of Iron
If You’re Brown – Lord Kitchener
Wash Your Hands – The Lion
Minerva
Mary Anne 2

Caribbean Carnival
Murray Hill Records S-5364 X

Calypso Jazz

This album is a sampler from the Cook records Caribbean series featuring Lord Melody, The Mighty Sparrow, the Brute Force Steel Band (great name!), as well as some other odds and ends of various quality (and interest to me). The live version of Lord Melody’s “Mama Looka Booboo” is a complete musical mess, but is still an interesting peek into how Calypsonians performed live for one another, rather than in the more polished studio recordings made for the European and US markets. I didn’t have a copy of Lord Melody’s “Creature From the Black Lagoon” before this album, and it’s a welcome addition to my calypso library.

Calypso Jazz   

Winter’s Tale

 

Songs designed to make you thimk is what it says on the cover, and with song references to Schopenhauer, Trotsky, and Faubus, it’s definitely music for smart people. I imagine this was the sort of act that you’d see in a Village coffeehouse circa 1959. The group would perform more tame numbers such as “Fallout” (your standard “my girlfriend has two heads from the atomic bomb” fodder) and “Tired Blood” (an anti-advertising calypso number) when the gawking tourists stop in to see the beatniks– and when the squares split, it’s time for the desegregation song “Ballad of Orval Faubus”, and “When Stalin Met Trotsky in Hell”. Interesting historically, but not something I’m going to listen to much.

I wonder, is this the same guy who does the consort thing? Somehow I think not, though Charlie B y r d appears on this record and  both P. Winters would be about the same age.

I truly apologize for the really bad quality of some of these songs. Side one was ripped a month ago when all seemed well with the turntable–then suddenly you put the needle on the record to digitize, and the audio level peak almost before the music starts. If anyone smart has any thoughts about what might be wrong and how to fix, you can email me at baikinange at hotmail. This sucks, I haven’t bought new  records in a month  because I don’t know if I’m ever going to be able to figure this out. There’s no way I can keep doing this blog unless I find an easy fix–I have no money to buy anything new or pay for tech help. Any assistance would be pretty swell.

winter

The Man’s in One of His Moods (or at least half of one)

Of course you know Sam the Man from the quintessential raunch & B sax solo he did in Screamin Jay’s I Put a Spell on You. Then he had to go and spoil it all by doing a series of yawnable “Mood” albums with suitably insipid backup vocals. This one is Misty Mood, because, well, it includes the song Misty. The backup vocals aren’t quite smarmy enough to be funny, and Sam himself keeps reminding me of Johnny Hodges and  that little coy slide he liked to do all the time.

Worst of all, there is something seriously wrong with the input on my turntable, so when I try to digitize the levels are off the chart and there’s distortion. It happened sometime last week, after I had done part of the album. So you only get part, the part that was done before this mysteriously happened. and until I get someone (i.e. my already overbooked hubby) to look at it, there’ll be no more music.  Unless some lovely person wants to throw a weird or even semi-weird album my way that I can put up in a week or so to keep this damn blog alive.

Anyway, here’s the album.

And here’s the back cover so you can see what you’re missing. (this turntable thing is making me very cranky)

And here’s a really good Sam the Man cut.

Cha Cha Cha con la Orquesta Melodias del 40

Let us reflect for a moment upon the joys of the record store that offers not just the dollar bin, but box after box of three-for-a-dollar albums; 33 1/3 cents each, very appropriate indeed. This album cover alone was worth the price, but seeing that it included a collection of cha chas recorded in Cuba on the Puchito label made it more alluring still.

Despite the kitschy album cover, this music is like good home cooking–nothing slick or over produced or pretentious here.

Orquesta Melodias del 40 was formed at a Havana youth club in the 1940s. The band latched on to the cha cha craze of the early 50s; this album was one of the band’s earliest recordings, dating from around 1956-8. Their popularity peaked during the 1960s, and by the mid 70s they had disbanded.

 

Cha Cha Cha con la Orquesta Melodias Del 40

 

Lado 1

 

Seis Lindas Cubanas

Caprichito de Verdad

Tinas Bayamo

El Niño Prodigio

Montuno Favorito

Se Va Conmigo

 

Lado 2

 

Me Voy pa Morón

Cruel Tormento

Igualita que La Habana

El Cachin Cachumba

Estás Equivocada

Prisionero

 

Music for the Birds

 

The “Dark Angel of the Violin”, Eddie South, joins forces with reedman Mike Simpson in a charming and jazzy collection of tunes about our feathered friends. A little charmer of an album.

Music for the Birds – Eddie South (violin) and Mike Simpson (reeds & flute)

When the Red Red Robin Comes Bob Bob Bobbin’ Along

Skylark

The Hot Canary

A Nightingale Sang in Berkeley Square

Blues for the Birds

 

Flamingo

Listen to the Mockingbird

Let’s All Sing Like the Birdies Sing

Robins and Roses

Bird Bath