Word: calypso
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Dates: during 1940-1949
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Stone Cold Dead is the biggest Calypso hit since Rum & Coca-Cola (TIME, Jan. 29, 1945). It is also the first big success of 45-year-old Wilmoth Houdini, a Brooklyn-born Trinidad Negro who lives in Manhattan's Harlem half the year, the other half in Trinidad. Houdini, who has recorded 800 Calypso songs, expects to make $40,000 from...
Wilmoth Houdini (real name: Edgar Leon St.-Clair) calls himself King of Calypso, a title sought after by rivals with such imposing titles as The Lord Executor, The Lord Invader (Rum & Coca-Cola), The Senior Inventor, King Radio, Attila the Hun, The Growler and The Caresser. All of them are old hands at dashing off musical comments on world affairs and local scandals, in Latin-African rhythms as insistent as radio commercials, and in the oddly distorted British accent of the British West Indies...
...Singers tried to best each other at songs whose tunes were simple, and whose lyrics were black & white (or sometimes red) versions of current events. The result was not always good singing or good logic, but it had some of the spontaneity and enthusiasm of the competitive chants of calypso singers in Trinidad (TIME...
Most spot commercials are either obnoxious or vapid. Chiquita Banana, sung to a catchy, Calypso-style tune, is so different that listeners actually like it. Last week, after more than eight months on the air, it had become the undisputed No. i on the jingle-jangle hit parade. Its composers, Garth Montgomery and Len Mackenzie (of Batten, Barton, Durstine & Osborn), not unmindful of the famed banana smash of the early 1920s, decided to doll up their lyrics, and give them a try as a popular song...
...watered-down, scrubbed-up version, tailored to Tin Pan Alley standards, Rum & Coca-Cola was plugged at Manhattan's Paramount Theater by a blond singer named Jeri Sullavan. It quickly became the biggest selling calypso song in history. Last week the Pepsi-Cola Co. was reportedly urging Rum & Coca-Cola's Manhattan publishers and Decca's Jack Kapp to make recordings with "coca" changed to "pepsi...