Word: calypsos
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Dates: during 1950-1959
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ROBERT MITCHUM, who croaks a hoked-up calypso for Capitol (Mama Look-a Booboo) and manages to sound as if he had half-swallowed a maraca...
...Manhattan's august music house, G. Schirmer Inc., do-it-yourself Calypso Kits (including bongo drums, a gourd and a pair of maracas) were selling briskly last week for $24.50 and up. Columbia Records has announced an album of calypso songs especially styled for children. Obscure pop singers are desperately shaking their hips and broadening their A's in the rush to learn calypso. And Hollywood is considering a dozen calypso films, including Calypso Grips So, and (taking advantage of the best of two possible worlds) Bop Girl Goes Calypso...
...Clearly calypso is the biggest thing in the pop-music business since rock 'n' roll started rolling, but why is something of a mystery. Few people can "dance calypso" (there is no formal style) or sing it in the shower. In Trinidad, its place of origin, it was sung extemporaneously, first by plantation workers and later by semiprofessionals with such exotic names as the Growler, Attila the Hun and the Lord Executor. The lyrics might relate some back-fence gossip, reflect on the paternity of a neighbor or comment on political news. In Trinidad some of the semipros...
Financially, American imitators are doing better than such authentic calypso singers as the Duke of Iron, or Lord Flea and His Calypsonians (Lord Fish Ray, Count Spoon, et a/.), whose cleaned-up version of the nocturnal wanderings of a flea (The Naughty Little Flea; Capitol) is also a nightclub favorite. All told, calypso records account for roughly a quarter of current pop sales...
...again the result is sparkling. A few of the lyrics are unexciting and some of the music is dull, but these are the exceptions as the audience is always tapping, sometimes humming, occasionally clapping in beat with the kick line, and once joined in for the chorus of a calypso number...