I came into music at a time when comedy was a big ingredient in the popular music of the Caribbean. It was a salient feature in calypso, particularly in the array of comical songs featuring every year in Trinidad’s carnival, continuing that history of clever humour that came from the artistry of Atilla, Beginner, Spoiler, Roaring Lion, etc. In the ʼ70s that tradition continued with the likes of Sparrow, Blakie, Kitchener, Lord Funny, Dougla and Chalkdust, but with the emergence of soca, originally propelled by Lord Shorty, the music changed with the emphasis on party music, or “getting on bad” as the Trinis say, so that our popular music today in the Caribbean is almost totally bereft of that humourous strain that was once a key ingredient in the songs. In light of the change, to look back it strikes me that many of the ʼ70s calypsos were actually stand-up comedy set to music. Some of the songs were actually jokes, and indeed calypsonians were generally known as a comical lot whose conversations often ended up as joke-telling sessions. Lord Nelson’s calypso about the man with washroom problems on an aeroplane trip was based on a joke, and many calypsonians took a humourous line and produced a comical story creating a hit in the process; Spoiler (‘Himself told Himself’) was a master at this, almost a genius, and Lord Funny also was known for his hilarious interpretations, but the style was rampant. I recall being backstage in a calypso tent in my first visit to Trinidad carnival in 1967 and, newcomer that I was, being bowled over by this constant back-and-forth of joke telling, sometimes going on while someone was performing on stage.
Indeed, while I didn’t recognize it at the time, my first recording with Tradewinds, ‘Honeymooning Couple’, released for that first Carnival, and later a hit all over the Caribbean, was almost word for word a joke my late brother-in-law, Joe Gonsalves, had told me a few years before I migrated from Guyana. Calypso tents were known for this outpouring of comedy, even the emcees were involved with it, that often had the tent rocking with laughter. I remember laughing so hard at a Chinese comedian named Rex West that I actually fell off my chair in the Kitchener calypso tent on Wrightson Road in downtown Port-of-Spain… onto the floor.
With my songs for Tradewinds, starting in 1966, I had gone full bore into the tradition. I was writing specifically about Caribbean culture, and so there was a variety of subjects, but I would often take the humourous slant, which I was apparently born with, to song