The Mighty Sparrow: Calypso King of the World

The Mighty Sparrow - Going Home Tonight
The Mighty Sparrow - Honesty
From 45 rpm single - National NSP 078 A/B

In the mid 60s my dad spent a year as a contract engineer in Trinidad and Tobago building an oil pipeline for Shell. One of the lasting legacies of his time in the Carribean was a modest collection of calypso and ska/rocksteady on 45. Among my parents' collection of vinyl dominated by Mozart and Dave Brubeck, I was always fascinated by these dwarf records in stained brown paper sleeves. Through the miracle of digitisation, I'll be posting some of the selections over the next few weeks.

Slinger Francisco, better known as "The Mighty Sparrow", was born in Grenada in the 1930s but moved to Trinidad as a young child. He had his first hit in 1956 at the age of 20, and continues to perform and record to this day, becoming the dominant voice in calypso and "soca" (soulful calypso) in the 1960s. His career is described in more detail on his website.

The two songs here are from a 1966 45rpm single recorded for the National label in Trinidad, accompanied by the National Recording Calypso Band under the leadership of Bertram Inniss. Calypso is particularly noted for its pull-no-punches social commentary, and the flipside of the straightfoward Carnival narrative Going Home Tonight is Honesty, a pretty direct complaint about the inequalities between the working class and the rich elite.

Anyway, more mid-60s singles from the Carribean next week !