Alvin Daniell: Calypso Showcase, Cultural Memory & the Art of Interviewing Trinidad’s Legends | The Corie Sheppard Podcast

In this special on-location episode, we sit with Alvin Daniell — cultural archivist, lyricist, educator, engineer, and the visionary creator of Calypso Showcase — for an in-depth conversation on legacy, preparation, and preserving Trinidad and Tobago’s cultural memory.

Recorded in Miami, this episode explores Alvin Daniel’s journey from mathematics teacher and engineer to one of the most influential interviewers and advocates in Caribbean music history. He reflects on the origins of Calypso Showcase following the 1990 coup, his meticulous approach to interviewing calypsonians, and the responsibility of documenting artists with depth, respect, and historical accuracy.

We discuss:

• The philosophy and process behind Calypso Showcase
• Interviewing icons such as Baron, Shadow, Growling Tiger, Merchant, Maestro, Black Prince, Zandolee, and Marshall Montano
• The unseen labour behind cultural documentation and archival work
• Calypso adjudication, lyrical analysis, and colour commentary
• Panorama arrangements, thematic storytelling, and the genius of arrangers like Pelham Goddard, Len “Boogsie” Sharpe, and Jit Samaroo
• Alvin Daniel’s role in copyright reform and artist advocacy
• Teaching, engineering discipline, and excellence as a lifelong principle

This episode is both a masterclass in cultural interviewing and a tribute to the people who shaped Trinidad and Tobago’s musical identity. It is essential listening for artists, researchers, broadcasters, and anyone serious about Caribbean culture.

🎧 Click the link in my bio for the full episode
#coriesheppardpodcast #AlvinDaniell #CalypsoShowcase #TrinidadCulture #Calypso #Panorama #CaribbeanMusic #CulturalArchives

Chapters

• 0:00 Meeting The Mentor: Alvin Daniell
• 6:30 Birth Of Calypso Showcase
• 13:10 Winning Over Reluctant Legends
• 20:30 Color Commentary And Standards
• 28:00 Inside The Judges’ Room
• 36:45 From Composer To Credit: Copyright Fights
• 45:20 Paying Artists Fairly
• 51:30 Teaching, Engineering, And Problem Solving
• 59:20 Practice Makes Panorama
• 1:07:40 Learning Music The Hard Way
• 1:15:50 Breaking Down Panorama Arrangements
• 1:24:10 Documenting Lost Giants
• 1:31:40 Zandoli, Blakey, And A Mask Camp Revival
• 1:39:55 Marshall’s Uniform And Misconceptions
• 1:48:20 Crafting Lyrics, Themes, And Intros
• 1:57:30 Legacy, Teaching Excellence, And The Archive

Transcript

Corie: 0:01

Welcome to the Cory Shepherd Podcast. I'm your host, Corey Shepard. Welcome back to everybody who's been listening. This is a very special episode for me and for all of us, for all of us in the production team, because we have gotten requests to travel to do episodes, right, David? They tell us they will come, they tell us we will go. But we've traveled for one episode, so we're no longer in Kansas. David tell me to say that I don't know what it means, but we're no longer in Port Spain or no longer by affordable impulse. Because we came to meet the man who is the reason why I do this personally. Mr. Alvin Daniel, how are you going, sir? I'm doing fine.

SPEAKER_04: 0:33

And this has been a special thing for me, too, because I've always wondered that we interview so many people. Who's going to interview me? And when David said, We have a guy named Corey Shepard that really been inspired by your work and is doing podcasts, I said, interesting. And you know, I always had other people come to me and say, I would like to continue a program for you. I say, you look quite qualified. But I must say, Corey did. And what's most interesting here in Miami, getting the call that they would come to Miami, I wouldn't have to go to Trinidad and interview me. It made me feel very important. And the most interesting part is I called my daughter, Rachel, and I said, Rich, I have to do an interview Saturday coming by a guy who does podcasts and so on. She said, What's his name? I said, Sir Name is Shepard. I don't know if you, I don't think you'll know him. She said, Wait, what is his first name? Don't tell me it's Corey.

SPEAKER_02: 1:44

I said, It is Cory Shepard. She said, That's my boy.

SPEAKER_04: 1:49

That is the guy I'm always watching his podcast. And she started to tell me how many podcasts she's looked at and how many times she's looked at it. Nice. She said, Hello, we're going and buy some clothes.

Corie: 2:02

David, which are the micro stupid. Which camera is mine? This one I have to tell Rachel, your father is the reason I do this. So when you say people say they will take up from where you you took off, like there are so many interviews I did. I couldn't do why doing it without doing what you doing, what you had done. Because I tend not to like to start an interview before I saw what you did. I kind of look through your whole interview. I say, alright, I see what Alvin asked you. I see what so I almost treat it as if I'd taken the battle from somewhere. I say, all right, well, this is here. So I'll reference it and I'll say, boy, almost as if I want people to, when they look at it, go back and look at the original one. Because you have a fresh face Baron. Some of them interviews you.

SPEAKER_04: 2:45

You call a good bone Baron. Let me tell you something. Baron, when I say, I always had the attitude, you tell me where you want to be interviewed. And Baron said, You're coming. We are living in Toko. Really? Yes. And then when I went and I saw him feeding goats and cows and annuals, I said, Well, what? I didn't know the Baron was this type of person. And I remember he had a drinking, and he said, If you film me with the drinking hand, people go feel his rum, you know. And it's really water. Yeah. Yeah. But it was an interesting interview. And seeing him in the land where he said this is his true love was special for me. And we end up spending the whole day together because it wasn't about a come, I interview you and a gone. I remember with um Kroko, it was the same thing. Kruko said, I am celebrating my victory on my birthday of the independence calypso competition. Come down, we're gonna have a lot to eat and drink. And when I went down, that is the way it was. People were singing, they were laughing, they were joking. And after a while I said, you know, we have an interview to do.

Corie: 4:05

You know, it's something I always want to ask you because it did feel that way with a lot of your interviews. It felt like if because you would you almost every interview is in a different place. Like I saw one with with Shadow, for instance, before I go back to Baron. I see Shadow in studio, then I see you by Shadow. You know, you used to do a lot of that. So your interview, how long you used to take doing them things?

SPEAKER_04: 4:24

No, we used to plan it well. And I would call the person first and find out where they wanted to be interviewed. Now, Shadow was a difficult one. Yeah. Because Shadow normally didn't do interviews. And he told me so. He said, I don't like to be interviewed. And when I went, he was being difficult, and he said, and I said, How do I win him over? And then he came out because he was doing something in the studio, then he came back. Then he said, Why do you want to interview me? I said, because I love your work, I love the songs, I love your creativity. He said, You know my songs. I said, I know from the very first one.

SPEAKER_01: 5:13

He said, Which one?

SPEAKER_04: 5:15

And I started to sing. Steel Man, boys, peace listen to me. Dig the beat of this. He said, Let me get my guitar. And that was it. I just do so to O'Neill. I say, O'Neal, go. And the rest was history. We had a beautiful interview. It was, it was, it was, it was. And many, many of the interviews were like that. People doubted who I am, and do I have the authority to interview them? Because I a lot of them did not even know who I was and what I was about. And this whole concept of Calypso Showcase was entirely new. And how Showcase started, I'm sure that's one of the things. Of course. Everybody wants to know. You could go to this start. It started from 1990. The coup. During the coup, the people who took over TTT to keep people focused, they kept playing old videos of people Calypsoans singing Calypso. And I said, wow.

Corie: 6:36

One of them was the Foster Batman.

SPEAKER_01: 6:42

I was flabbergasted. So you're home watching that and I'm home watching this and I'm taking this in and taking notes.

SPEAKER_04: 6:48

Wow. And then United Sisters took part in the Trinidad and Tobago Song Festival and got into the finals of the Caribbean. And now I used to be an adjudicator. So I adjudicated when they won the local leg. And then the finals of the Caribbean Song Festival was also in Trinidad. And I was also one of the adjudicators. And they won. And then I was approached by one of the who it is in TTT, I don't remember, but they said we have to do a summary of the United Sisters. And I would like you to see if you could do interview them individually and as a group, too. And we're going to edit it and do it as a presentation. And I did that. And it came out pretty good. And that gave me the spark. Because I worked with O'Neill Davis, was the person who did the filming. Right. And we started to talk. And he said, you know, they're looking for some more local programming. This would, if we interview Californians, that could make a good thing.

Corie: 8:03

And I said, let me give it some thought. Well, salute to O'Neill. So at that time, TTT just calling you as a one-off just for United Sisters. Yes, just about one-off to do United Sisters.

SPEAKER_04: 8:13

And then he said, put together a package. And we could do a pilot if necessary. And I wrote how I think it should be that we should run a half an hour program. Right. And it was submitted. And they said, we ain't going to no pilot now. We go in. Tell us who you want to do on the first show. And we go run it a night and see how the crowd react. Yeah. And Krokro had just won. First time. But like trying to decide who it was with the song, they were having an independence calypso competition at the time. And I said, whoever wins, I'll go in with them. All right. And Krukru won. It was almost a mistake. Him winning? No. Using him as the first person of the show. Kokro arrived five minutes before we had to go near.

SPEAKER_01: 9:10

Oh.

SPEAKER_04: 9:12

But somehow we did it. Yeah. He just said, and you know, that's one of the things I pride about myself that despite all of the tension and everything else. Good evening, ladies and gentlemen. Welcome to Calypso Showcase. Like if nothing happened, nobody will ever think.

Corie: 9:29

Nobody will ever think anything was wrong.

SPEAKER_04: 9:31

I can tell you some personal experiences I had where a family member might have gone to the hospital and I had to take them and then rush back and just calmly say, like if you know, I'm the happiest man on earth.

Corie: 9:45

Good evening and welcome to Calypso Showcase. You know, it's one of the things that I observed when in looking at your interviews. Like if you start one and hear you say that, and then you just keep playing it over and over. Like go to other ones when you say it, it is always you can't you can't distinguish one from the next. You do it so accurately and so calmly every time. It's almost like you knew exactly what you're you're getting into. Yeah, and it's nothing that I had to write down.

SPEAKER_04: 10:08

It's just something I just felt. That I think one person told me that you're one of the few people when you come on TV, like you see the people at home. You know? Like you're speaking to them. And that is what we want. And that is what we a lot of people don't give us that interaction with feeling the people sitting down there watching TV.

Corie: 10:35

But what made them come to you, because you adjudicating at that point in time, why did you choose you to do United Sisters? Was it the way you talk? We had media training, or no media training whatsoever.

SPEAKER_04: 10:46

In fact, in fact, how I ended up on television, that is a story in itself. John Basotti and I was playing golf together. And John said, You ever thought of going on TV? I said, To do what? He said, and you're the man writing all these calypsos, judging people. You know everything about thing. Come on, do my semifinals now. I said, the semi-finals in San Fernando. He said, We need a color commentator, somebody who could talk about the artists, talk about their history. I said, but guys, I know that.

Corie: 11:30

And John does a T S T T Plus. No.

SPEAKER_02: 11:34

That's not.

SPEAKER_04: 11:35

He was this not the time. Right. So he said, so you ready? So Saturday, yeah, semi-finals. This is the week of Isle? One week before.

SPEAKER_01: 11:48

We jump playing golf on Saturday, and he tell me next week Saturday, you're done in the South.

SPEAKER_04: 11:55

He said, Look, just come as you are. Wow. Pass Friday, you'll get your pastor come in and you go out, and that is it. They hand me a microphone and they just tell me, Wow. I'm main man, and you use the color commentator, you want comments after every Calypso.

SPEAKER_00: 12:14

What?

Corie: 12:15

But at that time you know what? You know the Calypso and you know the Calypsoans well enough. You study notes.

SPEAKER_04: 12:21

I could go into the story of that, but when I adjudicated, I kept notes of every Calypsonian that I in heard. And I talking about hearing over 200 Calypsonians in a season.

SPEAKER_00: 12:36

Yeah.

SPEAKER_04: 12:37

Trinidad, Port of Spain, San Fernando, Arima, Tobago. Every single person. And I had comments on every song that they ever sang. And apparently I did a good job. Apparently. Because I got a call later that evening saying, What are you doing tomorrow? I said, What are you doing tomorrow? They say it's children's panorama tomorrow. And you could handle that? I said, I could handle that. And I went and I did the children's panorama. And then they got the next call. They say, listen, hear the shows you'll be doing between now and Canada. Every college show, every pan. Wow. Wow. And that was 1985. The showcase didn't start in 1901. So by that time, I had already established myself as a color commentator for preliminary semifinals. Imagine you're doing semifinals a pan from 9 in the morning until about 2, 3 the next morning. And I never blinked. No, I'm telling you, I was one that could have depended on. Find somebody else to think. I would go through the whole thing. They would change people along the way, but I would do the whole thing. Yeah, ban after band. But I had got it from Calypso Days because when I when we're doing like um unattached Calypsoans, we'd have 60 Calypsoans singing two songs each. I never fell asleep.

Corie: 14:15

Well, I wasn't hearing. No, no. Like when I look at it, everybody who I know did Skinner Park, for instance, always ask them if like, because for me, after song about 10, I think I'll be hearing the same thing over and over. You alert and paying attention. You don't hear the difference.

SPEAKER_04: 14:29

Because I am not to tell the audience this fella did a good job. I like the way he introduced this song. He played on this word, he developed that, and I like the way he rounded off the song. This is what the public want to hear.

Corie: 14:43

So as the judge, you had to tell the audience your process. You used to used to tell them?

SPEAKER_02: 14:48

You have to. Really? No, I'm talking as a color commentator. No.

Corie: 14:51

Oh, color commentator, got it. As an adjudicator, that is what I'm doing. Okay, okay. All right, got it, got it. Expressing it. I understand.

SPEAKER_04: 14:58

The audience now would appreciate what why this guy will probably make it to the finals.

Corie: 15:04

Oh, with you. And you would have been the first person to do that at the time they didn't have somebody doing it. They didn't have anybody doing color commentary like that. Right, yeah.

SPEAKER_04: 15:12

The commentator who was doing the whole show would just say fantastic. It was great. I like that band, you know, and that my kind of commentary. They were not breaking down the song and the singer's ability to render in a particular way and related to what the judges look for. So many points for this, so many points for that, and that sort of thing. But I had been doing that from since 1980.

Corie: 15:41

So, how you got into that in the first place? Into adjudication.

SPEAKER_04: 15:51

I just got a call. Say we're looking for some new judges to judge, um, and we have an opening to judge the children who sing um, you know, calypsos for the school competitions. Lennox Straker was the person who called me deceased. And I went, cut a long story short. They liked the way I handled myself, the way I was able to justify who I think should move forward and things like that. And it's Lennox, I throw in any big league from next year. Yeah, in 1981, I was deciding who going to the semifinals and eventually to the big yard. And that was what you would call uh throwing you into the fire. Yeah, yeah, yeah. Because the five of us who visited every single tent twice in Trinidad and Tobago to come up with the top 24. They used to put the five of us in a room with Lennox Straker. And at the end of whatever this decisions we made, the 24 people had to be written on us paper, and the five of us sign it, and that was cast in stone. Yeah, so one sheet. So everybody, five judges agree. Five judges have to agree that this would be top 24 and sign to it.

Corie: 17:30

I feel like this could be a hostile five people and all that possible. Let me tell you something. That can't be an easy room. I learned cool swords in that.

SPEAKER_04: 17:40

Because people did not agree every decision. It was it's something that I treasure that what we went through to come up with that 24, because the whole of Trinidad and Tobago is waiting to hear who is going to be in the semifinals. Yeah. And in fact, reporters used to be waiting outside our room for the 24. That used to tell you how bad it was. Yeah. Right? On the what? And the first exercise I had, I had I came with my notes. Because I had notes on every single Khalebsonian that I heard. So I come with my notes.

Corie: 18:22

So this is something you used to do all the time, even before you're adjudicating us to as a teacher.

SPEAKER_04: 18:27

I used to teach math in schools. I had a way that I loved grading. So I had got my 24 that I liked from by order from number one. Now, when we reached in the room, we had a head judge, and the head judge said, Alvin has the new person here. We're going to put you the asset test to call your top five. I called my top five, and they said you pass with flying colors. My top five was on everybody's thing. Now, here's the real problem in that room. The first 15. You can agree. Everybody agreed on the first 15. From the time you call the 16th person, one man said, No, I don't have him. And that is the argument right there. There's always no. Why you don't have him? And that person has to tell us. He has to win us over. And after he talk, sometimes you know what happens during the discussion. Now, if this person is strong, somebody else said, In hindsight, I don't have him either. So he drop down to three. Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah. And then they drop down to two. People isn't gone, you know. Wow.

Corie: 20:02

That sounds familiar. Yeah.

SPEAKER_04: 20:04

And then after we reached four, but that wasn't bad. It's the last five people after we see that. We'd gone down to three, and in some cases, two. I'm not calling names. But there was a particular judge who wanted a particular person to be in the finals that I thought had no place even in the competition. But I found out later they were kind of related. And the person said to me, Why don't you have him? I say, You have time. And I told up my notes. And I went through every aspect of his two calypsos. That the melodies are the same. That this is a hook line that everybody used in the old calypsos. And that the lyrical descent. When I was finished, the other three people said, You still want it? Even the justification is family. No, that's the way you had to be. You had to know what you were talking about. And it was an education for me. And I became a permanent fixture. On the preliminaries is the hardest thing to judge.

Corie: 21:25

Yeah, just to give people context, like people who watch it now and see Calypso Monac know. Because what I learned doing this, right, is some people look at and listen with today's ears and eyes. So they think that number one is two songs, now is one. So you gotta listen to people two songs. Two songs. Back then it's many, many tents across Trinidad and Tobago. And then the bullpen on top of that. You had to do the unattached.

SPEAKER_04: 21:48

And the unattached was David who had a sang unattached the first year he went in Calypso. Yeah. And he was refused. People don't know that.

Corie: 21:57

He did not qualify. You pay him out of it. You're the only joke. Okay, just check it. Just make him sure.

SPEAKER_04: 22:05

Sometimes the bullpen was done by other people. Right. We started to do it. But he actually was one of those people that sang on attached a year. And then the following year, he came to the tent and he went straight to the finals. But these are the things that people don't know. People like singing sandra. All of them come through the bullpen sometimes. I remember when Tigress came to audition to try to get into what was in those days called the government tent. Right. From the time she sang, I watched Striker and Striker watch me. Striker comes and said, Well, you have to tell me. I say, watch me. I say, I want to hear nothing more from that girl. She go inside. And she could be in the finals this year.

Corie: 22:54

Oh, see, yeah, she was that good. Yeah.

SPEAKER_04: 22:56

And she be, she won the prize that year for the most, but the first, the best new artist in Calypso. Oh wow. She she was magnificent. You could hear it from the go from Jamie Hill. There were so many situations like that. Melanie Hudson, I will always be there for you. She was unattached. Really? For me she started singing, I do so. But Shrika and I had a kind of thing. When you look at me, okay, put me inside. Yeah, good to go. You know? And she ended up going and singing her tent. We found out afterward that that song was written by David Weather.

SPEAKER_01: 23:38

I will always be there for you.

SPEAKER_04: 23:41

Christine Kangalou. Today is one of the greatest melodies that I had heard.

Corie: 23:48

And today that song is still standing up. The president used it at her inauguration, Kristen Kangalou. Yeah, she played that. That was one of her two songs. I want to say one was a merchant song. I have plenty to talk to about the colour. But it's a good place to pause. I'd step back again because plenty of the things you said. I keep on going back because some of these things feel like uh, you know, some people get jobs, they apply, they go on the thing, they do and they train, and you're just saying people calling you out of the blue. So, how people know that you're so into Calypso at that point in time? What was it?

SPEAKER_04: 24:23

I because I think the adjudication established a picture of me. Because when a Calypsoan comes to sing to try to get into a tent, or to because I also used to help the tent managers pick the artists. For some reason, they heard that I used to compose. Remember, I started composing in 1971.

Corie: 24:51

Also, long before then, long before you're getting into adjudications.

SPEAKER_04: 24:55

People started to hear that Alvin Daniel was involved in the song. And then when Pan played, you see lyrics by Alvin Daniel on the banner. Right. You know? Well, the first song that I composed was Pan on the Move with Ray Hallman. Yeah. Plenty people didn't know who I was, they just knew it's Ray Hallman's song. You know? But uh, and then I woke with Boogie. And I start I eight years I walked with Boogie before people even know who I was.

Corie: 25:25

So you're musically trained or something? How you getting to how you get into these people and are trying to figure out where they're training with this mind training that? No, you just do it. How is how you how that come about? You're just saying Ray Hallman and Boogie, like if they speak a passing song.

SPEAKER_04: 25:40

This one will blow your mind. When I was about seven years old, my father had a book. My father is a master electrician. That's the first thing I should tell you. He built his own record player. He buys speakers, he wire it up, he gets a turn table, and we're talking about the 1940s. Where um to play a 78 record that had one tune on it, you had to lift the arm and rest it on the record with a steel needle that had to be changed as soon as it played at one tune. So you had to have a box of needles, which I used to go and buy for my father. In otherwise, you can't play a tune. I went through the transition of the 78 to the 45 and then the 33 and I to the RPM. But be even before the transition, I used to listen because my father had a collection of calypsos by the old birds talking about roaring lion and tiger and these people. And one day I was singing one of the songs I heard. I'm hungry for something, not for lobsters, not for wine, but that sentimental sandwich that is yours and mine. Well, I get the finest cutters from my father when he heard me singing it.

SPEAKER_01: 27:29

But I did not know that was a vulgar song. How the hell are I gonna know that this sentimental sandwich is manufajan?

SPEAKER_04: 27:41

Hey, so I realize anytime you're listening to calypso, don't let nobody were here, what you're here. Yeah, listen good. Then we used to go to Richmond Street Boy School, and when you're walking down Park Street, Sagums playing all the rude calypsos for you to hear to come in and buy. Right. And we're learning them by heart. So I love my calypsoe. Gotcha. I take a little jump. I went through it, you know, over and over different aspects of it. But at University of the West Indies, when I first went in, I found out they had a calypso competition. So I said, Alvin, you had to compose something. I never composed a calypso before in my life. I composed my first calypso. They have a thing in UWI they call grub week. Where the new coming, they make you do all kinds of things. So I wrote a calypso about being a grub. And I made the finals. I ran third. And I wasn't satisfied. So you compose and sing? Compose. The next year, I say I had to win this thing. Christmas time, Milner Hall, which I used to attend. I used to live there. Half of the people that lived here were women, and half were men. North Blo, West Block, and they had the ladies' block. Canada Hall was all men. But they have like 300 and something students, and we only have about 40 something. We saw a football match every year and all kinds of things. But Christmas time now, they had their Christmas dinner. And you know, like men, the many have a decoration. But for all now, mill no one. When they come in for breakfast to eat breakfast in the morning, they see Christmas tree going up, streamers going across the room and thing. They're jealous, they're jealous. When we come in the night, we Christmas tree gone. So me and my boys, let me find a girl research and find out who is responsible for this. And we find out the main man was a fella named Stanley Reed. He said, All right. We went and we arrest him. And we bring him up to West Block. And we put him to sit down in that chair and we tie him up. And we decorate his steel. Put all kinds of things all over him. And we start to sing. Oh ho, ho, ho, one, real thing. So I take Nate when I take, I say, but this is a good idea for us all. So I hit them all because of jealousy. They stole our Christmas tree. Whenever the wall was said and done, we still get a better one. We hold a boy named Stanley Reed, of big fat, and ugly breed. I didn't put that in my book, though. Tie him to a chair, you see, and made him our Christmas tree. It was a ho-ho and a hee-hee he. You should have seen our Christmas tree. It was looking lovely. I'm ashamed of the case. You know who was one of the judges? The mighty sparrow. I see. I won the crown with sparrow being actually judged. I sang for four years. I never ran outside of the top three, but as he only had one. The following year, oh gosh, one of my good, good partners just died. Um, what's his name again? Of course. But I remember that's how it is at this age. Yeah.

Corie: 31:50

When you try to remember, you don't remember. Yeah, that's okay. And then they just come. That's in mind. At our age, we forget these things.

SPEAKER_04: 31:55

David Bartolomeo was one of the guys who used to sing Calypso. And of course, the guy who just passed away, which is a good, good friend of mine. Um, I don't remember his name. It's on the tip of my tongue, as always. But he sang a calypso the next year. Which all of us learn to sing because it was so it's a song that could have won the demands, I'm telling you that. Wow. It was about the fact that they were building a new block at UWI and a science block. And Wimpy was the contractor of the truth. And you always remember the first line Wimpy have the science. They naturally know the art. And it's an arts and science building. That line was just telling the whole calypso right there. You know, and it was a song in praise of the workmanship of a company like Wimpy. But a beautiful melody, well structured. And he put that over, and we just agree. He win the competition. And then David won the final year. David had a nice song about living on campus, you know, that is like a family affair with all of us. And we used to sing these songs afterward together as a group. We kept together. We used Christmas time. I used to play the quattro, and we go around from house and thing and have a little fun, you know? So the that aspect of the art form uh grew from that love of, you know, singing Nicolysos, and people knew me from just going from house to house kind of thing. And I don't know who mentioned it, but I got this call from Straker out of the blue that we're looking for a new judge. Right. And if I'm interested. And I said, okay. Gotcha. And that's where it started. And then 1985, Basoti came and said, We're looking for a colour commentator. And then 1991, Calypso Showcase. He's born. And you know what was significant about 91 going into 1990? Now that this was yeah, 1994 going into 95. And he said, Alvin, why are you not a member of Cut? I said, Cut, what is Cut? He said, the copyright organization of Children Are Tobago. I said, should I be? He said, Don't you write songs? I said, Well, mostly lyrics. I'll do a couple melodies, but mostly lyrics. He said, Both the lyrics and the melodies part of the song. And you should have, you don't, you never get a dollar for any of your songs. I said, No. He said, Well, you playing the fool. So he told me what to do. And I got and I got proof that I had written songs with Ray Allman, with Booksy, and some other people, and so on. I got a list of all the songs that I had been part of, one or two of the Didi melodies as well. Registered at Cut. And I was accepted as a member. Right after that membership, I was invited to be, they had a vote in this to select the directors for the next three years. And I was submitted, my name was submitted as one. And when the voting came through, I made it. And at the first meeting, well again, I don't want this button because I want to vilify the person. But when the nine of us sat down, they said, How we just choose the managing director, the director of COT, the chairman. Silent vote, you have to write the name on a piece of paper, who you think. So each person had to say what their history was and so on. And there was one guy who was saying, We're wasting time here, you know, because I was the last vice chairman. And it should be fairly automatic that I become the chairman. So somebody said, No, it don't work so. We have to do the voting. We did the voting. And when the turnover the paper, eight was for one person, and one was for another person. I got the eight votes. And the man he actually resigned after. Oh, you have to. Yeah, he got he got very upset because on top of that, I found out that he was using the company's vehicle for his wife to use to go to work. Oh, yeah, yeah, there's problems. And I told him he has to get it. Yeah, no, you have to address that. I told, no, no, you have to get her to return the vehicle. And he got very annoyed at me resigned. There are a lot of different things I had to do because the when I became the chairman of COT, they were in the red. And no society in the world was in relationship with us. In fact, the one from um United States, RS, what do you call it? Recording RS, something PRS, PRS. Performing Right Society. Right. The woman who was in charge of it, Diana Derek, I had to call her and tell her, I am going to be in charge now. Right. And I need your support. And she said, if you're in charge, I will put back the reciprocal agreement between PRS and Trinidad. Right. That year, we were able to reverse from a negative position to one of the highest payouts they ever had in cut to that date.

Corie: 37:53

I suppose England would be an important market for calypsoidism, because they were collecting all our international.

SPEAKER_04: 38:00

Right, right. The following year, hear this. I got selected to go to Paris, France, and represent Trinidad and to be going to the World Copyright Convention. And on the way back, I stopped at PRS. And I found out that there's a thing called non-identified songs. So I asked them if I could look at the database and see if I see any bongs from Trinidad. I came back to Trinidad with 10,000 pounds of money that they had holding for us in there. Which when you hold that there for three years, it remained in PRS. Oh my God.

Corie: 38:42

Oh God. So that end might be just a fraction of what was there. Because the time passed. What I found.

SPEAKER_04: 38:48

They could have had more. Of course. But I was able to identify that. They calculated and they say we have a. But they take out their commission out of it. Of course. And they wrote a check to cut for 10,000. Yeah. So you could remit to some California. And in those days, it was like about four to one.

Corie: 39:04

Yeah.

SPEAKER_04: 39:04

Yeah. So that went into the payout. And that year, I reintroduced a thing they had stopped doing, which was there were many Calypsonians who would sing in a little cubbyhole somewhere. And they got no money at the end of the year. And we set up a thing called the unidentifiable income. And it meant about 75% of our Calypsonians got a$400 for Christmas. Boy, those fellas were not. Yeah, they must have been grateful. But in that day, that was like goal. Of course. You have for Christmas to spend and buy a turkey, a ham, and whatnot. Right? And stop just 10 or 12 people getting all the money. Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah. Which, by the way, has started happening again.

Corie: 40:00

So the people who I have won from producers, Calypsonian, soaker artists here, and they're making that same complaint. And it's funny, like when I ask people, when I tell people I come in to interview you, this I heard two things over and over from people all over. One was that man no real kaisu. They say that a man knows plenty lyrics at Kaiso. And the second thing was also people said you wasn't just interviewing Calypso, it was dedicated to it and helping a lot of them. So this this tells some of that story.

SPEAKER_04: 40:27

Yeah. I said every Calypsoan has to get something for Christmas. But I could tell you, it was a fight dung. And many things when I tried to institute certain things. I'll give you an example now. One now. There was a time they said, to increase income, let us charge the guys who plane radio stations in their cars, the taxi drivers. I said, no way, move. Rough. One of them went on the air and said, We are planning to do this. And everybody saw it as something that came from me. Of course, of course. And in fact, I remember taxi driver and say James stop and he said, Alvin, this one go pull your dung, you know. I say, what? He said, charging me for I say, I am not in favor of that. And I went back and cut and I said, I am resigning because you all are making me look back. I will not be party to this. It was eight to one, you know. Wow. I said, you cannot charge taxi drivers for things. And that is when I decided to come out of cut. I said, this is going to malign my reputation. And that means too much to me. And I came out of cut. I went back as a once or twice, they asked me if I just come on the board and help them out. I said, but I'm not taking the top position anymore because I don't want my name aligned. I will help you all in any way. But don't put me back at the top. Because. And is that certain incidents that happened even with the pan world, things that I did and got threatened for certain things that they felt that I was doing and so on. And I suppose that's part of that comes with the territory in terms of once you got into that kind of a world. Many people ask me to get into politics. I say, well, I draw the line. I ain't going into politics. No, no. I said I draw the line on that one. Because I feel my integrity will be questioned considerably. Right. I agree to go to a particular party.

Corie: 42:33

Yeah, especially when people know you for something and deliver it at a high standard.

SPEAKER_04: 42:37

When UNC came out and I was the head of cut, I used to sit down with Kamala when she had for interviews. And I actually did the rewriting of the Copyright Act that was passed in Parliament alongside with Ottie Mirez and one other girl, but her name now. Beat three of us sit down and rewrote the whole competition. I went and sat down in parliament when they went through all of it and it was passed with flying colours, not one argument. Both the opposition and the ruling party passed it that same day. Yeah. Only one visit to the parliament.

Corie: 43:18

And that was that. And that was it. You might need your back now. You might have those international relations.

SPEAKER_04: 43:23

I'm not interested in politics at all. Yeah. Because I see how it has changed people. And I could give you examples, but I ain't going there.

Corie: 43:30

Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah. No, early is career. Like I you said you were teaching. What were you teaching and what was your training?

SPEAKER_04: 43:38

I loved teaching from a child. And I would look at certain teachers that I admired. You know, there was a teacher I had that taught Latin. I liked him. One that taught French. He was great. But maths was my thing. And I loved a good maths teacher. I had one that wasn't so good, but Andrew G. J. Camacho, who taught us in sixth form, he was the best who wrote the books that we used to use in QRC. I admired him as a teacher. And I I wanted teaching, in fact, is strange. In sixth form, there was a time where somebody came and was talking to us about when you leave school, what you would want to be. And you should start thinking along those lines. And people were putting down doctors, lawyers, and so on. And I put, I would like to be a university professor. And believe it, that's what I am. That's what you don't know. Yeah. At age 19, I wrote, I would like to be a university professor. And the first job I got, because I I think you could apply at that time for different jobs in civil service or something, I applied. But somebody said they opened new schools and they're looking for maths teachers. So I told them I'm interested in that. And I got my first job as a maths teacher at Samuel Secondary on the Little Hill there. And that's where I started to teach maths. The first teaching assignment, because I was the only maths teacher, was to teach maths from first form to the highest form.

SPEAKER_01: 45:33

All the way draw. I virtually taught, I had no free periods.

SPEAKER_02: 45:40

36 hours of teaching every week.

SPEAKER_04: 45:53

To Woodbrook Secondary. Right, okay. But then they said they needed a message in St. Jim's secondary, and I got a message to go to St. Jim's secondary. I met my wife there. I see, I see. That was my wife until she passed away. We spent 48 years together. Oh, wow, wow.

Corie: 46:11

That you don't hear much again either. 48 years wow. Before she died.

SPEAKER_04: 46:15

We would have still been together if she was alive. I have no doubt about that. Yeah, yeah. So maths was my thing. And I started off as a maths teacher. Right. And I taught a lot of that. When I went to UWI and I graduated, um I then decided to go into the world of engineering. Oh, so you went into Engine? Yeah, I did a BSC in mechanical engineering. Okay. Okay. And I started to work at Wasa. I didn't like it there. Left after six months, and then I took a job with a small air conditioning company, Sumwa Engineering Limited. That was the first place I worked in air conditioning. And I was telling this story about O'Neill.

Corie: 47:03

Yes.

SPEAKER_04: 47:04

I say I want to learn some of the practical. So I went to this guy. I say, when you're going out on one age, troubleshooting jobs, go with me now. Let me come with you now.

SPEAKER_00: 47:14

Mm-hmm.

SPEAKER_04: 47:14

You say, Yeah. Look my toolkit there. So I pick it up. I'm going to pick it up. Come in on the woods. So when you go to do the job now, you say, um, bring me, bring me a crescent wrench for me. Now me a dead know the hell is a crescent winch. We're gonna pick up about four different things and come back. You say and you have a degree, eh? And you're working for more money than me. And you don't know how much cent. Alright. So you do so now. You walk back and press it, go on. Then he's gonna try to put my hand on the top. I pull back as we call it hot. And he's gonna hold something here and he holds something, and I doing everything he does. He said, All right, the short I guess. And then he charge him and start up the system. So I said, why how you come to the conclusion? He said that's not your business. So right then, then I realized he could have fixed that in, like you say, in five minutes, but he makes sure he speaks our work. Of course. So he could charge for that.

SPEAKER_02: 48:24

Yeah, you're right. Charge for your expertise.

SPEAKER_04: 48:28

Know what you're doing. You're not guessing. At a glance, you could tell. He knew what to touch, and he could tell you what was wrong. Yeah. And he was that kind of person. To win him over, I had to line with him, play cards with him, drink a little rum with him. And eventually he would share. Right. Well, that's my boys. All them became my boys. I'll tell you a little, I don't know if you know this story. One of the first jobs I got. Now you would know it because that was before your time. But one of the first jobs that Carl Si Paul, the owner of Tumo Engineering, gave me. We just got a job to install six 15-ton split systems in the convention center. He said, All right, Mr. Young Engineer. I've given you that job. Don't ask me nothing. Just get it done. I said, What about the equipment? He said, I'm flying it in. I'll tell you when it's here. Your job, install the units, run the pipe and install the duckwork. Whatever men you need, go and talk to the men and say, work your team. So I went on a look at the job, I size it up and so on. I get to meet um, it was by uh Canute Spencer was the main man on the job. He said, You little bitch. Come here, you're gonna see an engineer, you know. So I do so, and I get my doc men, man. We went and we ran out the dark work long time. But I waited on my units. Carcy Paul called me. He said, Your units landing at Piako and we'll be done here in a short while. But I want to see if I could get it straight to the job side for you. Right? And you know where they're going? I say, yeah, the condensing is going on on some portico on the outside, and the handle's going on the inside. So I don't have everything set up. So you have everything set up. What lifting the units? I said I had to call for a crane. He said, But what you watching me for? Did you do everything? So I call the man and tell the man, we had to lift up about 25 feet, and the man said, no problem. Friday afternoon, eh? We're going to lift the units in position. And Canute Spencer watching me. I am closing those things up on Monday morning, eh? So make sure you get my units in position. So I've gone down. Train man arrived. When he reached, he four feet about a foot short. Because 25 feet so is not 25 feet, so. And man bring a little smaller screen and can't get the thing because now for 25 feet. I learned that the hard way. You need to come here. Right, right. And measure the angle to the boom today. So he needed almost a hundred foot of boom to take something that 25 feet off the ground. Gotcha. To be able to lift it and drop it in position. The man ain't have enough boom. I say, um, you have any other queen? He said, yes. I say, well, we come and do it Saturday morning. He said, Saturday, I don't work on weekend. Oh my god. I said, but I don't call another queen. I call supposed to say I tell you, don't call me. Just solve the problem. I say, hell is this? Well, that's the first time I learned engineers solve problems. Right. Yeah. I say, Caronaj, I go and buy a bar. I said looking for six strong men. A hundred dollars and a bottle of rum. Yeah. We had to lift it up of some flight of stairs. And that is what we did. We lift up every condensing unit through the inside of the building. And then I had one of those lift cranes. We lift that up and slide it in position. And we do that six times. Finish nearly two o'clock in the morning. I drink room with them till I get drunk. Because I say, I don't know how I do it, but I do it. The enlist was chicken feeding. Monday morning, Canute Spencer came to me. How do you ask you to get those things up, Dell? I want to know. Because I know you hadn't your crane couldn't do it. And you're not no crane over the weekend. How did you get that deal? I said, Well, I hire a helicopter and they drop it in from above. He said, Little bitch. You know I never tell him how I do it. But the man said, Don't call him right. He died not knowing. As a young engineer, I said, I'm not telling him. I said, that is my secret. Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah. And from there on I learn when you solve something, you have things you keep to yourself and you have things you tell others. I will teach the people below me, especially. But you see people who fight in your dung. Yeah, yeah, yeah. That makes me people you want to help.

Corie: 53:50

Then you're not going to know my secrets. But the engineering story tells it answering plenty of questions for me, to be honest, because I saw what you're doing as you brought up Calypso Showcase and getting into that in the in 90. That's a work in engineering and problem solving too, because it seems as though it couldn't be easy. I remember the first time we spoke, and I have to tell people as well that you've taken a lot of time. This is not the first time we're talking. I usually call you before interviews, I had Pelum, and I call you before because your interview with Pelham is a piece of mastery we could talk about. And you can't wing what two of y'all did there, or you did in particular. You have to know that you had to live that to do that. And you would always give me advice and tell me, hey, you know what, we're having problems with this. And almost every question you asked me, I was like, well, yeah, that's that's the challenge. This is, and you're going through it. So I understood from looking at you even before we spoke that you going through a piece of work. I want to talk about some of the episodes you did, like spoiler, melody, uh, I think Maestra as well, where, as you said, they were they were they were dedication sort sort of episodes that fit within a structure that you were doing before. Again, something I took pattern from. So now, any Calypsonian that passed away. The last one was funny. I did just what you did. I I went back, listened to the songs, watch your interviews, go back, you know, put piece it together. Yeah, people play this songs.

SPEAKER_04: 55:13

Had passed on was a challenge. And it meant I had to search and research, read books about them that other people who had met them. I never met spoiler in person. But by the time I had spoken to people like um um, you know, people who interacted with him, and they tell me, oh, he had long fingers and he loved to des gesticulate. I found out through the regeneration now that Spoiler's mother was alive. Oh, really? Yes. And I went and met her mother and talked with her. And she told me about aspects of spoiler that other people didn't know. She said, you know, he used to drink a lot. I said, I heard so. She said, Well, I am telling you. In fact, he used to learn so drink so much that one day he came by me and he said he wanted a soup. And I took a bowl, the soup bowl he liked to drink from, and I filled it with rum. And I put it in front of him. And she said he hit it a lash and broke it up because I was insulting him. But I wanted to tell him you love rum so much. What you're asking for soup for. You know what I'm saying? And she gave me the very picture that Eddie Grant used on the CD that he produced. That was the picture of spoiler that she gave me. And then she told me a picture of him and the woman he was married to. She said, Do you know the day he was married? Three women came to the wedding and said, It's me he should have been marrying because he's my man. You hear what I tell you? She gave me these stories. And nobody knew all those things. And the other thing I made an effort to do when they told me that he buried in Laparous, but nobody knows which grave. I went. I saw. And spoke to the guy. I told him the year he died. And we searched until he said, I found the grave. And that's why I went on a point. I saw. I said, This is the grave where spoiler was. People didn't even know that. And I arranged for his mother to also come on Alison's morning show. Right. The cop picked her up at home, brought her to TTT, and she went on Allison's show. Yeah. And that's the kind of thing I it helped me to understand the human being, spoiler. Sure. And then when I started to go through the lyrics of his songs now, I began to understand. There was frustration in some of his lyrics. I meet a man on Juvem. What do you call it? For Christmas, uh, I'm a police in our short pants. Come to a yeah. This was a man that was frustrated, who was upset about his life. And his career was about only 14 years. Yeah, yeah. You know, it's something to think about that in he could produce such deep messages in a short space of time. He produced a lot in the in the in the 14 years. And we didn't even get all his material. I wouldn't doubt. I wouldn't doubt. A lot of it was not recorded. Yes, and so Bill Trotman, uh new songs by him that were not on record because Bill Trotman was very close to him. I see. And Bill Trotman told me he never recorded a Vulgar song, but he sang a lot.

Corie: 58:58

I heard I didn't say that. He said, keep it clean on your recording.

SPEAKER_04: 59:03

And he said, white people in Trinidad used to hire him to come and sing the Vulgar song. I see, I see, I see. So we missed out on a lot. Yeah, I could imagine. That's what that's one of the things. That became the end thing now in singing calypso that you had to have a double meaning in every song you sing.

Corie: 59:21

You know? Yeah. But that episode in particular saw us, and that's why I say, in terms of me just following you, something it said in that episode, and it was about Bummer.

SPEAKER_00: 59:30

Yeah.

Corie: 59:31

That Bummer song is the first calypso I ever learned to sing. Right. So the end of the song, you pointed it out on the grave. He said he's singing with the people who collect money, and he said they're gonna bring high school for me. Yeah, and I used to sing for them like a sleeve. They wouldn't even burn a cocktail. And so said so that you pointed on it, and you do it and he pointed. Yeah, yeah, it was it was it was stark for what spoiler had done. And it's one of the things that stood out to those, it was the same with the maestro episode, the depth. That you're going to. A lot of people ask me now how long it's taken to do research and those things. And I said, let me cannot quantify that. And I saw that.

SPEAKER_04: 1:00:08

Start researching almost from the time you're born because every song you hear that sticks in your head is part of the whole thing. I was telling you, for example, about the song I sang as a child. I went searching to find out who was the Calypsonian that actually sang it. And you know what I discovered with that song? This song was sung by Dorothy Lamore in a movie in the United States in the late 60s. And that person credited with writing it, his name was there. And I am confident that they stole the song from a Trinidad. But does you see this was the practice? There were people who would come from the United States, listen to Calypso's songs, very much like what happened with Roman Coca-Cola. Of course. Right? Where Maury Amsterdam, who was working at the base at the time, heard the song and took it and gave it to the Andrew Sisters. That sell over a million records in that day. But how the hell could somebody be saying talking about Frederick Street and you know certain parts of Trinidad? Impossible. In the United States.

Corie: 1:01:39

I mean, a song I didn't, I never heard that song that Sparrow sang about Melody and um Belafonte. Yeah. I listening to that at the time, I'm listening to it, it's kind of like in hindsight. Isn't it what I'm saying? You know, listening back to that. And it sounded almost as if Melody and Belafonte had a great relationship, and you know, everybody make money and everybody eat, but it didn't sound like that was the case in the end, based on what you said.

SPEAKER_04: 1:01:59

No, it wasn't the case, but it was, and I have this on record that when he met Belafonte and accosted him, um Belafonte acknowledged that the writer of these songs had to be a genius. And they became good friends. Okay, so it was still. I can I can if you look at the the the work that we did on um Calypso Dreams. You ever saw the whole of that? No, I never saw the whole thing. I saw clips. Look at the whole thing, and you'll see where we have a clip with Melody acknowledging what when he met Belafonte, what it was like. Right. And that that should clarify what I'm saying. That it was not any enemy enemy type of thing. It was an acknowledgement that you are great and I like the way you put over my songs eventually.

Corie: 1:02:53

Right.

SPEAKER_04: 1:02:54

So that is something too that should be used as a clarification.

Corie: 1:02:58

Understood, understood. And I wonder about royalties and those things. If you'd have, you know, if it's for I think he was credited. Okay.

SPEAKER_04: 1:03:04

And he was, in fact, compensated because I think he also did other songs for him after.

Corie: 1:03:12

Yeah. Oh, true. So maybe before I get into some of the other episodes, we could talk about that um that episode with Pelham. Because Pelham at the time had arranged that we leave it was Kitcheners get a pan. Yeah. And the detail that you went into breaking up the song into all the different pieces of as an arranger, where does that, where you got that knowledge in terms of musical construction for? This is this is this is special.

SPEAKER_04: 1:03:38

I first had an interest and a love for music. I don't think I'm the best singer. I mean, I think I have a good understanding of what is good pitch and so on, but I do think that I was blessed with a voice like a baron. Or, you know, I could phrase a song for you because many times when I worked in the studio with artists, I would sing what I want them to sing. But I would give them the phrasing more than anything else. They could still sing back for me what I sing better than me. Working with Denise Plummer, for example, is a pleasure. Because when you tell her what you want and you lay it out, she would then make you feel like I'm here in it for the first time. She really would master it, make it hers. Um, what's his name? Douglas. How is it his first name again? Uh Ansome Douglas? Answer and Douglas was like that too. I remember when we did one of um the songs written by myself and um what's his name from Silver Stars? He said, Alvin, what is this? I have to sing, practice 14 times. How do you do that? Yeah, I said, Well, I could do it. Practice, practice, practice, practice, practice, practice, practicing. He said, Jesus, how do I count it? I say, you don't count it, you feel it. Right? And the point I was making is that for panmen to be able to be so proficient on stage, it meant, and it's something I witnessed and I felt. They would play the same line over a half an hour. And I wanted to bring this out in the song because when Edwin Pushett gave me the song, I noticed this repeated thing.

SPEAKER_01: 1:05:48

I said, How do I write lyrics to that? I see. Maybe I just leave it as an instrument.

SPEAKER_04: 1:05:52

Or repeated phrase in any melody, I mean. And then something just hit me practice, practice, practice, practice, practice, practice. And then there was a three note, practice sing. I said, I'm going with that. And the late guru of music, and who used to have the the best um vocal group in Trinidad. Um, what's her name? She said, Alvin, that word you use in that song, practice. She said, You that was so perfect what you did there, because that is the essence of what makes our pan, what we hear at Panorama. Practice, practice over and over. And it's something I emphasize with my choir, with all of the people that I work with. She said, Well done. That was the endorsement I got from her. Yeah, the original drama. Back to me now. I decided I want to be, I want to do some form of music. I don't know what it was. When my mother died, I was 11 at the time. My father moved us from where I was born and grew up, which is East River, Martin O'Lane, Calvary. And we went to Woodbrook, Hunter Street in Woodbrook. Four houses from Ray Holman. You understand? If I tell you some people that born and grew up in Hunter Street, you'd want to know that that's the longest street in Bonbrook. No, there are the powerful people used to live on that street. Mass makers. There was a piano in my home. And I went to play the piano. And I should by now tell you that my father loved to beat. And he saw me on the piano. And he pulled me aside, dropped two on me, and said, Don't touch that piano. Who did you ask? And don't let me catch your hands on it again. So I just keep quiet. My aunt, who was in the same home and had her children, she brought in a person to teach them to play the piano. They did not like it, they did not want it. And I used to just be listening. And one day when the elderlies were not present, I decided I'm gonna try out the piano and play some of the things I was hearing. And my cousin heard me, and they came out on the watch. And when my father came home, he said he was playing the piano today. Mollocks. I will break your hand if you touch that piano again. Then Staliff comes and set up their paniard right opposite us. And I listening. Then I go to Kasi and I find out they have a lot of KRC boys playing in the band. So I started going by the band and listening and watching, and then one day they were playing I Feel Pretty. I feel pretty. I say, what? Look how nice that sounds on the band boy. So I went to a guy and said, What's the easiest instrument to play in this band?

SPEAKER_01: 1:09:33

Felicity bass. Yeah, I don't do nothing, you're just a fall in audio.

SPEAKER_04: 1:09:37

So I went on the bass and started to learn to play I Feel Pretty. Boom, boom, mudo. Then my father walked to the yard and literally dragged me out of the yard and cutting my tail on the way to opposite. My house is right opposite Staliff Yard. He said, This time I'll break every bone in your body if I catch you in a panyard of any kind. And I remember telling Ray Hallman this. One thing he couldn't stop. Listening. And one of the things, one of the first things I heard was Ray Hallman arranging the bull. Oh. And I would listen and I'd say, I think that's the bull by Kitchener, but what he playing there? Like he gone off on a tangent or something. Then the next night I hear in some other part. Say, let's hear that jam session of some sort. Is that related to the tune? And then one day I used to talk to some of the guys and they said, We're putting the whole tune together tonight. Well, now I ain't sleeping. Not in my bed, but I listening. And for the first time, I hear the verse, and I hear the chorus, and then I hear where he went from there. And that's when the birth of my understanding, how a panorama arrangement could flow from one way to another, and how at the end they could come back to the voice and chorus, and then a magical ending. But one of the things that he used to do, he never gave them the ending until they end the drag. Israel. Yeah, right. So I said, but the song and ending. And then I'll go to me. We get in the ending of the drag. Well, you know. Although my father don't want me in the savannah, I'm going to hear the ending. Yeah, yeah, yeah. And that is when I learned about the drag. How important it was for a steel band. That when they assemble that day and they start to run through the tune at different speeds, and then the arranger teaches them the ending on the drag. You could believe that? That's crazy. And those men would go on stage now and put that down like if they'd been playing it forever. That year, he won with the bull. But that was my lesson of how a panorama piece was structured. So when the first time TTT asked me to do the children's panorama, I started to describe what the arrangers are doing.

SPEAKER_01: 1:12:31

And they say, boy, people ring us and say they like how you work and explaining things to us. You're doing the big bands from next week. This is a theme. This is a running theme now. Yeah, you're doing big bands from next week.

SPEAKER_04: 1:12:46

Yeah, yeah, yeah. And that's what I used to do. My little color commentary was to say at the end, oh, they had a nice introduction. They use the fourth line of the chorus there, and they develop that, and then they do a little changeover into the first plane. When they play the first time, they repeated the first verse, and then they went into the chorus where they play it once, and then they did a jam session behind it and start down the line. And then other people started hear me and do the same thing. But I am telling you, as far as I know, I was one of the first people to break it down like that.

Corie: 1:13:19

Yeah.

SPEAKER_04: 1:13:20

Right? And I mastered it because I would listen back to what I said a lot. And I would say, Alvin, you could have said more there about that. Or you could have said less about that because you was actually making the oranger look bad when you say that. So don't do that because the men could drop a harmonious.

SPEAKER_02: 1:13:40

You know. So I realized keep it for centuries.

SPEAKER_01: 1:13:44

Right? No, seriously, because once or twice I get a call.

SPEAKER_04: 1:13:48

I can imagine serious matters. I'm getting everybody all the information. You didn't say nothing about my band. They tell me I had to go to a break, and then they tell me the next band until started talking about the next band. I had a little piece in my ears, and that's it. I had the I had it write down what I'm gonna do. I want to hear what you were doing. You better tell me no bluff, no, no bluff it. Xander. Xander from was doing a band from South, and they were playing a song by a guy who used to sing high-pitch soccer. I can't remember his name, I was fan, but he used to sing this at a very, you know, the false set tuna. But high, but it it worked for him. And he has to sing kind of repeated kind of a way, and his songs were doing well. Sander Outer the Blue decided playing that for Panorama. But this was a small band category, yeah. So when they played, I made a mention that this band failed to capture the singer's rendition, and it affected the mark that they got. Xander called me one time. He said, Alvin, I have a whole band of players here, they want to kill you for what you say. I said, but what I tell you was the truth, correct? He said, What do you mean? I said, Why didn't you get the guy to reverse the sticks and play some high notes on the pan? He said, have a point there, you know. So then a couple days later, they're going in now to the semi, the finals. He called me. He said, Come and hear the band before you talk on TV. Say, come and hear the band. And I remember when I was approaching, they were in a little corner near the savannah, and I hear the thing from a distance.

SPEAKER_02: 1:15:42

I said, Jesus, and the band of it. When I went, all the place, and they're going up in the air.

SPEAKER_04: 1:15:50

I tell them I say just win it. They just win small bands. And they so said so done. Yeah. They won it easily because of the way they interpreted the singer. And it is one of the things that I felt there was not a what I would call a category in your adjudication, which I would call thematic. Right, right. If I and yet it was probably what caused the band to win a panorama. Let me say, okay, you're preaching, you're playing Kitchener's hurricane or earthquake. Let's say pan earthquake, right? Doesn't the band simulate an earthquake? How do you grade that? What category do you grade the fact that the band actually sounded like they presented an earthquake through their performance that is thematic. You know, that was taking the theme of the composition and carrying it on the pan. When you talk about pans coming down the dry river, ping pong, patang, pang, patang, and Jitsamaru actually give the pen little things to hit. It's no joke. It was thematic. Alright. Sailing. I went and asked Ly Bradley how you get that water to sound at the intro of the tune. You see, when you go home, play this on your keyboard. Over and over, and you hear water flowing. These are I I this is what I tried when I did my commentary to let the listening public know. I discovered afterwards, many men used to tell me, while we are coming up, we have a radio listening to what you were saying. The bands themselves, yeah. I remember I did a commentary in San Fernando, and we were making the comment, these bands have a big wooden background, and they're getting a double song coming out. And if they come forward a little bit, they would be more, there'd be a better clear. Junior Gello came and told me, thanks for helping out to win for. Because that's exactly what we did. We came right to the edge of the stage, the front of the stage, and played it. Because to avoid what you were saying was a problem. Yes, of course. We heard what you said and we benefited from that. I say these things to say that, you know, I paid a lot of attention to researching, talking to panmen, talking to Calypsonians. I mean, a lot of times when I did interviews, it was because I was there when they sang. Because I started visiting the tents from as soon as I was allowed to. And fortunately, my wife, Diane, she loved it more than me.

SPEAKER_01: 1:19:05

She's nine months pregnant and she is there with me as he could testify. She wants to hear her calypso. And she's telling me straight off, don't leave him out, you know.

SPEAKER_02: 1:19:18

She done picked her 24 before he said. She didn't adjudicate it. She didn't have adjudication because she was the 56th adjudicator.

SPEAKER_04: 1:19:27

And telling him I said, Nah, she didn't pick it up. You know, she was a baron fanatic. Yeah, you have interviews with Baron or something else too, you know. And she, you know, she had her favorites. And she would, and sometimes if she likes a Calypsoan, she alone could bring him back.

SPEAKER_02: 1:19:46

She's the only person clapping in the own, but the way she would get on the man gonna fall back.

SPEAKER_04: 1:19:53

No, we had some really good times in the culture in terms of between the Calypso and the band, it was something that I loved. And Calypso Showcase allowed me now to put all of the knowledge I had as an adjudicator, as a co-composer, and as a pan lover. Yeah, as an engineer too. Because I did not restrict Calypso Showcase to only Calypsoans. No. For that was the intent at the beginning. I see. But I then said we have to bring the pan arrangers. Right. And then we have to actually visit the pan tents while they're playing and let people get a taste of what they are coming with. And I think that worked well too. And then sometimes I think one or two shows we did, Winners of Pastor. Oh, the people used to call how you leave out solo. Of course. Playing so on so I said, we don't have the footage. All right.

SPEAKER_01: 1:20:50

It was a challenge.

SPEAKER_04: 1:20:50

It was a challenge. I mean, I had to dig in the library to find certain things and stumble on some things that Dave Elcock did. That was magical too. That footage where he used to bring people into the show, into the rooms and let them sing their calypsoids. And two little dancing girls and things. I used those footages because it was important to show people how the early performances were like.

Corie: 1:21:19

Yeah, it's something that I benefit from now because again, I could look at it. As you said, there's several songs that are not recorded. Actually, I don't know one, right? You had mentioned this. I was talking to you about that merchant episode, and there was a part of it where you spoke to him about a song he had done, uh Pin. Oh gosh. Yeah. That big song boy.

SPEAKER_04: 1:21:40

Yes, I never heard it. So he made the semifinals who did it, but didn't reach the Savannah. Didn't reach Savannah. I could not understand. The lyrics in that. Yeah. And it was a, you see, the one of the problems I think that Merchant had, he was seeing the world. And people were seeing Trinidad and Tobago only. So a song like Pain, which touched on what was going on wrong in the world, didn't really register to the average Trinidadian. You know? And that is what I think happened with that song, Pain, because that to me, that was a winning song. Yeah, yeah, yeah. Right? Not only for the melody, but for what the lyrics are and the feeling, the hurt that you get just listening to. Yeah, just the way he built together. Yeah. And uh I put that down as one of his top ten songs. Yeah, yeah, yeah. But Merchant, I tell you, two people that I really put in a class by themselves: Merchant and Winsford Davines. Winsford DeVienes, for his depth, I mean, I used to go to his home and talk to him. He was an avid reader, you know. And he would watch the type of television he would watch is about world history and that kind of a thing, you know, because he wanted his knowledge. And he left school at age 13, you know. He didn't, he left school in second, what he was called second standard. And yet his knowledge was bigger than people who have university degrees. So much so that yeah, it I was great to see that he got an honorary degree because he was well deserving of it. But merchant could compose a tune in five minutes. There was an example that I got from Crazy. Crazy said the merchant came to him and he wanted some money. He said, Well, what do you want for it? He said, Well, I want a song from you. He said, All right, well, just tell me where you want to sing on. He said, No, something like a taxi driver or something like that. He said, Well, give me the money now.

SPEAKER_01: 1:24:12

He said, No, when you finish this song, you'll get it. Uh-huh. And he started to walk away. And Touch and said, Have it already, you know.

SPEAKER_04: 1:24:19

And he said, right there, and then he started from his gate, and he said, Come crazy, drive it. It's crazy. And started to sing the song. Which I too crazy. He said, But you're a madman. How you could compose that so quick? This song as you know.

Corie: 1:24:33

One of crazy biggest songs. Yeah, one of the crazy biggest songs. Yeah. And his intricate writing too, it's no joke writing. It's not no, it's not a peer-pier song.

SPEAKER_04: 1:24:41

And not only that, his melodies were unique. No, you can't say, Well, there's somebody else's melody, Steve, and he does this with it, or nothing like that.

Corie: 1:24:49

It was unique, special. The two men you call in particular, because uh they had a way of, I mean, writing, well, Richanton's case writing for himself, but the ones you write for people, like drive it is a good example. It'd be bill for crazy, isn't it? Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah. And much and divines do it too. Well, there was one I was looking up late last night. I was watching your interview with a very young Marshall Montano in school uniform. And it was so interesting the way you put the whole interview together because you went in studio with him. Again, very, very insightful questions to somebody who had to be a teenager in school uniform. I must say this.

SPEAKER_04: 1:25:26

I knew I mean Marshall's mother because I taught her at Send Jim Secondary. She was in second form when I first went into the school. And I knew her bigger sister who was in the fifth form. So I know the family well. Right. And when Marshall came on the scene and started to think, you know, I was observing from a distance. Right. But there were comments from the public that they're pushing this boy too hard, and what kind of family is this? They're pushing him into Kaiso to sing with a big hard back men and all this kind of thing. There were a lot of negative comments. And I called her and I said, I want to do a showcase with your son, with Marshall. And she said, You sure? I said, Yes. I said, this could do a lot for him. She said, All right, what where are we going to do it? I said, I want to come home by you and do it. And when she came, I said, I want to. We discussed it. O'Neill used to come and pick me up, and we would drive together to the location. And he would always decide while we're walking how we're going to approach the particular person. I said, I want to bring out the fact that Marshall is actually in school and doing well. He said, that's a great one. So we set it up that he's returning home with his books. In uniform. In uniform. And then I met him coming from school so that it was established to the viewer right away. This is not just an off-the-street kind of kid. This is an intelligent person who has chosen music as his career, in a sense. Because he had already gotten seven ones at all levels.

Corie: 1:27:20

He was an intelligent human being. And not just ones, you say biochemistry, physics, the hard subjects he said. He was getting distinctions in.

SPEAKER_04: 1:27:31

And people were saying negative things about his family and him. To think that he wants to sing Kaiso. You know? So I think it might have thrown a little water on the fire. That, you know, people started to look at him in a slightly different light. And I was hoping that Showcase would have done that for him. And I approached it from that point of view. But as time showed that, he was able to win over the public eventually by his the way he carried himself, the way he displayed himself, and the intelligence that he put forward when he even in doing interviews and so on. So I felt good about that. And a lot of the showcases I did, I tried to look at some of the negatives that people had about the person to see if I could bring out the positive side of certain Calypsonians that people would be bad talking in public, even though they like his songs. Yeah, yeah, yeah. But they would always say, This is a damn Calypsonian. As though a Calypsoan was a bad word.

Corie: 1:28:43

Yes, like so. Treated that way. So even like again, in today's eyes, when you're you're too young to soak, it's song like just a song. It's not like somebody just singing too young, so like a child singing it today. It's a whole different meaning of what development.

SPEAKER_04: 1:28:56

And I mean that somebody like DeVience could capture what the parents put over to them that we are concerned that people are saying this about him. He's too long, he's too young for soak, and that kind of a thing. DeVienz was a master. I mean, I sat down and I learned a lot from him. He even told me, he said, anytime you have a hit song, you could get four songs from that song, you know.

unknown: 1:29:24

What?

SPEAKER_04: 1:29:25

He said, the first thing you could do, play the chords backwards and you have a new song. No, and I he said, you learn how to build from your hits into new hits by using the elements of it that worked, but in a different way, in a fresh way. Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah. And he said, even your topics must build as you go along. Throughout the years, as a lyricist, which is what I concern myself mostly, I would always try to find the circumstances. And I am writing a book, by the way, about my history of composing lyrics for different with different composers because I've worked with Ray Hallman in the show. Yeah, the best, yeah. Work with Len Booster Shop, that itself was fantastic. Pelham Goddard, of course, Brian Bean Griffith, and some other people lesser known. I've even did a couple songs where Merchant gave me the melodies to work with. Like I remember Africa for um deceased Wayne Rodriguez, that, you know, was a big song. I got that melody from Merchant. I heard the lyrics. And you know, I could say now the idea for it came from Umbayao. Because I'm saying, okay, you went up, you dream you were in Africa. But I'm gonna say now, I remember Africa. So it's an extension of the extension of Umbayao.

SPEAKER_01: 1:31:09

And it was something that my boy taught me.

SPEAKER_04: 1:31:14

But you build from your former ideas. When I did Pan on the move, and the next year we had the problem where they ran through the ban and whatnot, Pan on the Run was an actual. You understand what I mean? Yeah, yeah. So you build from what before. When I worked with Edwin Pushett, I I called the song First in the Line after we had written the one before, which was Thundercoming. Thundercoming was something that was an extension of something he told me. He said, These big bands that we're gonna fight, we were moving up from what we call medium to large. Everybody telling me I wasted my time. He said, but you know, Trinidad has an expression. When, like if I come in to destroy you, I say thunder coming, you know. I say, I like that expression. And we called the song Thunder Coming. He came fifth. But incidentally, Trinidad All-Stars also played it and came second. And I thought they had won the Panama. Yeah, yeah, yeah. Right? But the song was saying, and I think it achieved it. To just reach the final, the band showed we're just not a little band that's taking part in thing. So he said, I'll be gonna do next year. I said, We come in first. Yeah. I'm gonna call it first in the line. He said, I like it. And the band did win the Banana. Yes, nice. And his third song now. I when we were celebrating the victory of First in the Line, he said to me, Next year go be hard. Everybody coming at me. That's how I'm gonna be a battle zone. Well, Jesus, the word battle zone, you have it went into my head one time. That song was literally written in my mind a year before. Wow. Battle zone, that was a given. And as you see, they won't be one if I was gone again. I don't even want to talk about um showcase. What do you call it? Um what they call the third one? Oh showtime. Right. I could say this to a certain extent. Showtime, although it was written for silver stars, I was really thinking of Trinidad All-Stars when I wrote this song because that was the true Showtime band. In my mind, I had no other band that really captured performance on a stage like Trinidad All-Stars in the 80s. And although I'm writing in the 90s now, I was thinking of their performance with Woman on the Bass, Unknown Man. I don't say that. But because I was writing it for Silver Stage. And from the time I brought it, Edwin said, Edwin had an expression: people don't come to see to hear panorama. They come to see panorama. So I like the idea of showcase. Sometimes he said, but one thing, the only band I don't want to play this tune is Trader All-Stars. Right. He told me that. And then Smoot called me. And Smoot said, Ivan. The band that wins Panama this year will be playing showcase. And I'm playing it. So I came and I tell Edwin I said settled. You don't want to hear this. All stars playing Showcase too. We say, Oh God, what? Unfortunately, Edwin got sick that year. He came out of hospital on a wheelchair with a nurse on a doctor in the pania to finish the panorama arrangement for semi-final. And he said, the only thing I'm not going to give them is the introduction. I'll wait till they get in the finals. Right. They came one-two with all stars. And it was now up to the finals. Edwin was too sick to come back and give the introduction. I wonder if I should say this. I had an idea for the introduction. Edwin always placed a lot of importance on the way your introduction introduces one. He always tells me, from the time we played the introduction to both of the songs that we won in Panorama, we won it after the introduction. As soon as we played the introduction, we won it. First in the line where we use the theme song from the Olympics. The band was already at them. Battle is one, we're thinking about what we're using for the introduction. Is a member of the band coming and say, we're going to put on a real performance, like a theatrical performance. Let me use the introduction from 20th Century Fox. Right. And I telling you, from the time the band played that, we could have stopped playing the idea, we were in the panorama. The introduction won us the panorama. So Edwin and I knew the importance of a good introduction. I had the idea. But I could not get to him because he was in hospital and they were not allowing visitors. I went to the band members, and the person who was drilling the band at the time and who was given the responsibility of doing the introduction had already taught the band an introduction. It was going to be very difficult for him to change the introduction at that time. So I never got to tell him what my idea was. My idea, in fact, was to treat showcase as a circus type thing. Where, you know, the circus master would come out and say, it's show time. Right?

SPEAKER_03: 1:38:00

Pam, pam, parad, pam, pam, pam, bad. That was my idea.

SPEAKER_04: 1:38:08

Yeah. To start the team. Yeah, that would have been it for the savannah. No, the Savannah would have gone crazy. Yeah, yeah, yeah. Because everybody knows that type of things. But these are some of the things that I went through as a lyricist, trying to find the right theme. I felt theme. One of the things that Principal Devine told me about panorama selections, he said, remember the elements. Fire, water, wind, hurricane. You understand? Thunder. He said, anytime you use the elements, you have a theme. You feel it. And the pan can interpret it. And if you look back at the winning selections in Panama, you see where the use of the thematic and the elements that we know of in Pan was used effectively to get across, you know, what they were doing.

Corie: 1:39:15

Yeah, it made perfect sense. Perfect sense.

SPEAKER_04: 1:39:17

Yeah, yeah, yeah. When you look back at it especially. This is what I did. Right. This was my from a musical point of view, and I didn't get to tell you what was most important that after the second beating or the third beating by my father, I kind of lay low for a while. And of course, I shared my experiences with my wife. And one day she said, For your birthday, I'm giving you a month's lessons on the piano with Treasure La Chapelle. So I called Treasure and I said, My wife has told me I should come and let play the piano by you. She said, Go out. And buy a grade one book book, Royal School of Music, and bring that when you come this evening. So during a lunch hour, I went and I bought the book. And then I said, Oh man, I started go through the book. And I did all the exercises in the book before I went to her. So when I went in the afternoon and I can't book, you say, What the hell is this? I thought you said no, no, no music. I said, I to me it was math. Yeah. I mean, four quavers in a bar and all them kind of nonsense. It's mathematics. I ran through that in no time. She said, Well, I tell you something, you sit in grade one next week. No. Since you know so much. When you don't get a hundred in grade, I don't know if you ever get grades. You get 99 when you get everything right.

SPEAKER_02: 1:40:48

So don't give me a hundred. So I got 99.

SPEAKER_04: 1:40:54

And to cut a long story short, I I reached as far as the grade A theory, but only up to grade four in the practical. I could never be a pianist. I could never go on stage and play for somebody. I mean, I learned how to make the chords, I learned how to play all the scales in the minor scales and everything. But it was not my thing. I mean, I learned to play the quattro, that was my thing. But the the piano, I could never master the piano. I had an aunt who never took a lesson, but she could walk on her keyboard and just play by ear. Any song she heard on the radio, she could come and play it. And I realized certain aspects of music is God-given. You either have it or you don't have it. They say in China they lock a set of children into a room with a keyboard and they tell them nothing, and one of the children will go straight on and play Chaikosky. Yeah, and they know, yeah, so they know what's your call. He's born in. He's been given the gift of music. Right? So I decided to then study music from an analytical point of view, if you may call it that. I got a software. Um finale. In fact, I bought finale 1.0. Yeah. That's when it first came out around 1989. Right. Learned how to use it and started doing scoring of music. Oh, so that's when you started the arrangement too. Yeah. Understand. So I started to learn. And you see, it helped me develop a sense of pitch because you're playing the keyboard with your left hand and you're operating the computer with your right hand. So you had to listen. You don't look. You don't look to the left anymore. If you gotta play C and you play it wrong, you know you didn't touch C. Right? So I was developing a sense of pitch. Yeah. And then I started to learn chord progression. I got into chord progression and what you would call tensions through Ovid Alexis, master keyboardist who later on went abroad and was at um one of these top schools abroad. I have to thank Andre Tanker too. Andre used to come to me and say, Alvin, I need to have this chord. I'm going to London and they send me I have to send my music on sheets. Music before. So I got him to give me everything. I got him to record it, play it on the keyboard, and then I analyzed it with finale, then printed out the sheets, and we sent it up. And when he went up there, he said, Alvin, the men were playing my music.

SPEAKER_02: 1:43:59

Exactly as well. I said, but then you play it here. I said, all I did was transfer it. He said, but no, it was magical.

SPEAKER_04: 1:44:12

I said, but you came and you played the parts for me. Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah. You know. Then the other Xander, the real one, he used to come by me and put on things, and he said, Listen, when I play this part, I want you to put a tenor sax tone on it for me. That one is for trumpet. You know what happened? He said, when he goes and he handed sheet music, those are the early days when you're giving people sheet music, they were very skeptical. Right about they like the handwritten one by Art Deco write over the write it out front. But when they see this thing printed, no, no, no, that computer don't know what it's doing. So when he said when he hand them the music, and a tenor man said, I can't blow that. That is computer nonsense. He said, You want to hear it? And he put in the cassette because you had to give him a recorded. He said, Who blew that? He said, You have to blow it now. So anyway, but it was the computer playing. Of course, of course. But and then too, in those days, you could tell the computer, not just the plate, staccato early. You say, give it a little flair for me. Of course. And the computer could actually make it song like a real instrument.

Corie: 1:45:30

That was AI. Of course, of course, of course. AI was with us. Yeah, yeah, yeah. Well, it's always it always built in. And one of the things with going back to you and and outside of the musical thing, your diction, your tone, the way you carry, the way you say things. I remember you were telling more about a relationship with you and Leslie and Paul in terms of helping artists to deliver. Oh, yeah.

SPEAKER_04: 1:45:51

One of the things I did, I like to, I have to be in the studio when any of the songs that I was associated with been actually produced. And I think what I brought to these studio sessions was diction, clarity of expression. Both Jesson and I would sometimes work out harmonies. He was very good at harmonizing when he used the backup singers. Sing this one, sing that, that one, sing that, and so on. Great, great. Absolutely awesome. But when the singer said, wait, wait, I ain't hearing what all they're saying. I need a little clarification on your expression. And I was very good too, I think, at phrasing. Right. Right? It's not just bam, bam, bam, bam. A little lilt on this word, come back in on that, that kind of a thing. And sometimes I would go to the mic and I would sing it the way I think it should be sung. And then they would say, okay, yeah, I'll get your message now and so on. So that was my contribution in the studio. Of course, we would also look at what key this person is going to sing in. And I sometimes tell Eston, could we go up a semi-tone and find a little flat on the higher notes? And things like that. Some people say, No, I can't sing in that key. I say, it's not your key. We don't study the key. We're looking at your range. Right. The perfect range for you. And we'd go a little higher, and then you'll see the song get a little brighter and things like that. Tempo. We talk a lot about that. 120 or 115 of doing, you know, was the right tempo for the song. And these are the things that I think I gave an input. But I'm telling you, working with people like Pelham, Leston, and Aibo from South. Yeah, yeah, yeah. It was a learning experience. These guys are geniuses. I'm telling you that.

Corie: 1:47:42

A genius is like a genius. You're saying these guys are geniuses.

SPEAKER_01: 1:47:45

Like he's not. I'm telling you, listen, when you go by Pelham and you just say, I have a song. You just sing it for me, Lana.

Corie: 1:47:53

And while you starting to sing it, he's he done doing so. He said so. He said so in the interview. Oh, talk about it. And he's doing that with somebody great. He said, Wow.

SPEAKER_04: 1:48:03

Yeah. One of the hardest songs we ever did. Pan for Carnival. Written by the late Oh gosh, come down, help me. Don't let me forget people's names. That's it. No, no, wait, no, I'm just telling myself that. We can remember it just now. It will come back. But when he came home by me, he said, Albania here could write lyrics. And I have a melody here. Who can forget this man? And he said, so I forgive my setup my keyboard, had my little room. And he started playing.

SPEAKER_01: 1:48:42

I said, baby, we stop right here.

SPEAKER_04: 1:48:44

I said, I just work from melodic lines. Right. You I all them chords you play in there. He said, I can't play with my finger. I just play with my whole hand. Right. So you had to find a way to understand what I do. So um I said, but yeah, sister. So after he gone, I go to a finale and I'm looking at all these notes. I say, what the hell? I said, well, I can take it by less than thing. So when I go my lesson, I said I say, You matter what? What's this? Every note is a different chord. I said, But this is what the man gave me. He said, Well, no, no, no. You gotta go back to a finale and pull out a note from each chord and make a melody from that. So I went back and I lift a note out of it and I create a melodic line on top of the chords.

SPEAKER_03: 1:49:44

See, Shanakwa.

SPEAKER_04: 1:49:45

Shanaqua is the singer. But the composer. For the composer, alright. Look at it, look for it. I'll remember his name now. Robinson, Ralph Robinson. Ralph Robinson. Right. Ralph Roberts, right? Not Ralph. Ralph. Yeah, Ralph Robinson. Ralph Robertson. That's the person. Okay. So Ralph Robertson came by me and played with all his fingers. Great pianist. Yeah, yeah. Great, great, great. You had an isolator melody now. And I had to isolate a melody from that. When I go back now, let's then say, by the way, them notes you code. You could give me any names of those chords. So I had to go back now and tell finale, name of the chord. When I come back, he said, Alvin, we're gonna use the chord at the beginning of each bar.

SPEAKER_02: 1:50:35

Drop all the other chords.

SPEAKER_04: 1:50:37

It's too much. Right? And then he started arranging his song. Jesus Christ, I'm telling you. Leston is a genius. When we called, he said the only person is a little girl named Shanaqua. And Shanakwa came in that studio and started singing that song. Now I'm gonna tell you something else. That is one of the greatest songs that I was associated with. Writing the lyrics right now. After I get it, I say, How the hell to write? I remember the year before I was jumping up to a steel band. And I was saying to myself, you know, pan is carnival. I enjoyed the carnival because I jumped in a steel band. And I tell you, I get the idea. And I call it Pan is Carnival. My greatest joy was when Jet Samuro called me and he said, I'll go in and play Pan Escarnaval. He said, I get in opposition from the boys, they want to play a catch. He said, But this song is a challenge. And I take in the challenge. When I went in the yard and I hear what he put in down, I said, Boy, I want to walk. Oh no, he came and he called me now. He said, When we're playing on the drag, I want you to walk at the side of the band. I going to be playing it at different tempe. When I play it what you consider to be the right one, do me so that's gospel. And boy, put on a tempo at time, and I say, oh gosh. And I do him so. And he shake his head. So my God. The band came first in the prelims. History will tell them right. They came first in the prelims that year with Panis Carnival. And that's where the fight down started. They accused him of making the band song like a Westman. You might not understand the importance of that.

SPEAKER_01: 1:52:55

You would know. Yeah, make them song like a song. The West bands were Starliffe and Phase 2 and Invaders. That'd be possible myself. And you telling me I am Rennie Gates.

SPEAKER_04: 1:53:09

And you're making me song like phase two, the bandman could not accept it. They wanted him to drop the song and change to a kitchener song. But he stuck with it. He didn't win the panorama. But I telling you, if you go back and listen to that performance at the final night, it is one of the greatest performances of a difficult tune. The coding of that tune, what he had to do to spread the notes throughout the band. Because if you know how panmen arrange, no one band could play the chord sometime. You have your guitar pan that plays codes. Right? But the strumming sometimes on one note and then they will play the four chords. Right? But sometimes to get that chord, you see some additional plus seventh and plus eleven that men like Bussy like to put into panorama arrangements. You had to run tenor, you play the chords. Double tenor, you play that, double second, you play that, double tenors you play. And then he had the code. When that man spread them chords through Renegades, I said, Jet is a genius. Yeah. He was in a class by himself. Yeah, yeah, yeah. Jet is one of them. And he always tells me that's the only time I get to play what I wanted. Everything else I play was what the man wanted. Yeah, he gave his way. But he got his way. And he was satisfied. So, you know, these are some of the experiences that I had in working with some of the best musicians in Trinidad and Tobago. I mean, I could call out their names from now till tomorrow morning. I was really blessed to work with great musicians, great composers, men of class. I'm telling you, because it was always a learning experience for me to be in a studio. Go down south. What I liked about Aibo, every time you come out, you carry your tune playing.

SPEAKER_02: 1:55:16

He lets you hear your music on nobody else tune.

SPEAKER_04: 1:55:21

You feel good already because you're coming in. He said, Boy, like your tune.

Corie: 1:55:26

And he begged in you up, and you know. As they talking south, it has some things we had to talk about. Because I would not have known a few things in talking to you that I learned is, well, first and foremost, that Calypso Showcase was yours. You know, it's it seemed as though when you're looking back at it as a TTT program. And it was we offered it the the idea.

SPEAKER_04: 1:55:46

I wrote what I wanted to do. Right. And it was submitted because it was part of an effort at that time to do more local programming and not just be downloading from the what they call the um the dish. Right, right. Which was cheaper. And they used to say, you know, whatever we cost for your program has to be compared to what it costs for us to import. Of course. And you know, our first program, which was supposed to be half an hour with Kokro, actually went for 40 minutes because there were so many calls. Yeah, people wanted. Yeah. And then they called me after the program and say, Your program is extended to one hour.

Corie: 1:56:24

Oh, nice. The second program was how long right away. Well, I guess so, because now when I look at them on YouTube, and you upload a lot of them on your channel, I appreciate that because now we could go back and look at it. But most of the time.

SPEAKER_04: 1:56:35

No, that's what I didn't want it to die. Yeah, that's important. And I said, I'm gonna give this back to the world by putting it on YouTube. Yeah, you know. I still have a few that I just don't have the time to do. So that not as important as those that are there because the ones I put up there were the key ones. Right. But there are one or two in-between shows that I think people would like to. Like the Christmas programs and stuff.

Corie: 1:56:56

Of course, yeah. I think so. It's always interesting to see the comments because when I was looking at some of them last night, you would see comments like this year, like no, like people talk about it all the time. So one of them I had to go back to before I did an episode was an explainer died. And it was a masterful episode again. He is oh god, he was one of my close friends, you know.

SPEAKER_04: 1:57:19

Yeah, he used to talk to me and tell me, how could I improve this? Serious. The year he sang Lorraine, you know what I told him? I said, don't try to sing that high note. Yeah. Let one of the girls in the chorus hit it for you.

Corie: 1:57:35

Laurain, then he did it in the recording.

SPEAKER_01: 1:57:38

Go back and let's listen to it.

SPEAKER_04: 1:57:41

I say you I say you're going to be, yeah, you ain't sure you're gonna hit that note. You could do it in the studio. Yeah, but live. You say, Alvin, you know how much time I just play in 10 to do sing that note at all. I will take it in, I'll take it in. A lot of a lot of the Calypso would come and ask me comments about how I could improve this, how I could add to that. I mean, I wouldn't want to call names. Yeah.

Corie: 1:58:05

Nobody still bands was doing it, so your air was respected across the board by the best.

SPEAKER_04: 1:58:11

But many times people would ask me, I'm going into the finals now and only have three verses. What should I do in the fourth verse? I say you haven't wronged it off. You've been given questions in your song, but where's the answers? You need to add a verse now that gives you the summary of what you've been saying. Don't only criticize. How can we improve? Of course. And you get them there. So at least I used to give that advice, and then I would see the results of it where they would do it uh afterward, you know? Right, yeah. So those are little things that I would say I credit myself for, but I re-emphasize that it was really a pleasure, an honor, and a privilege to work with both some of these talented Calabsonians. Or don't talk about the arrangers. I put them in a class by themselves. The ability to take a song that is 30 minutes long, 30 seconds, and developing. Well, in the old days it used to be 10 minutes. I suppose I suppose it's eight now.

SPEAKER_01: 1:59:22

And eight, the complaining and say they're taking away my creativity.

SPEAKER_02: 1:59:27

I have more than one.

SPEAKER_04: 1:59:30

And if you listen to somebody's 10-minute arrangements, it don't sound boring. No, there's go because it you always had your interests. And we're talking about the days of when you're talking about Pan Am North Stars. Yes, complete showdown. They meant going down the road. Yeah. And you're talking about steel bands in the early days. People don't know this. Every song they played for Carnival was totally original.

SPEAKER_01: 1:59:57

They didn't used to play voice on chorus over and over and over again. You coming on the road, and these men playing, going down and rolling notes while they're pushing pan.

Corie: 2:00:09

They were really dedicated persons. Yeah. No, when you talk greats, one of the greats to me that I saw I interviewed and the backstory is something else to hear. Because again, something I would not know is that you and Salute O'Neil, so you're investing your own time, your own money, you're trying to figure this thing out. So Zandoli is one of them that comes to mind. One of my favorite lyricists of all time. But you gained Zandoli when he would have been Zandoli older at that point.

SPEAKER_01: 2:00:35

People done with him. Yeah, yeah, yeah.

SPEAKER_04: 2:00:36

Yet he was able to come and mash up the mask and pop because we said people need to hear you.

Corie: 2:00:43

So you were this is a debate David and I have all the time now because uh I have the benefit now of well, everything I do is digital.

SPEAKER_02: 2:00:49

Yeah.

Corie: 2:00:50

So you see episodes like these, when we mention Explainer Interview, what you will see is people go back into the interview and they say, I hear from Cory Shepard, but I come to check this out. You didn't have the benefit of that. So you were putting together these performances. So that I would say infamous. Uh I would say it was Zandolin, uh Blakey, uh was my partner again with the bring a letter from your last woman.

SPEAKER_01: 2:01:18

Oh gosh, Black Prince. And I see people didn't see Black Prince as a top Calypsoan. No. Give you a joke. Serious?

SPEAKER_04: 2:01:26

Black Prince used to come home by me. He was like a friend. And one day he sang, I say, wait, you see, man, sing that. He said, but people ain't taking me on. He sang the sang song he sang for me was, and I brought it up in the interview. It have two people like to come for carnival. Hoops, um AIDS and Hoopies. Yeah. I said, that's a big song. And people ain't taking him on. No, no, not taking him on. He went to auditions and people leave him out. Serious. Now, when I used to do what you call the coming attractions of Calypso, he came and he said, I have a song. I said, I'll call you when I ready. I forgot about him. And it was like one o'clock in the morning. We look into a wrap up. And I say, Black Prince, we a song. You say I'm waiting on you. I said, All right, all right, you'll close off the show tonight. Dice one he sings about bring the letter. Yeah, boy. A big, big, big, big song.

SPEAKER_02: 2:02:37

Mash up the mask up totally.

SPEAKER_04: 2:02:39

Yeah, boy, it's crazy. So then I used to in touch with Spectacular Forum. And he said, Alvin, you have anybody for me? I said, I have just the man to sing just after your intermission. I said, but one thing, I don't want him singing with the band. He had to sing with a guitar. You gave me a piece of nonsense there. I said, trust me. When he gave the break on the first night, and he was the main stair the tent. Yeah, boy. When he sang the letter, boy, oh gosh, masha place.

Corie: 2:03:16

He's a punchline champion. Man, you write the letter, he say in the end, the blasted girl is a homo tool. Well, boy, when he sang that letter, the first night in spectacular forum, the place erupted. I can imagine.

SPEAKER_01: 2:03:29

Just was rolling out the ground and all kinds of things.

Corie: 2:03:32

But the reaction in Mascamp was the same because the backup singers, even with a star cast like that, your backup singers was gypsy, David Ruddell, Mystic Pope. But yeah, we set up that with him.

SPEAKER_04: 2:03:41

Okay. We set that up. We wanted some strong Calypsonians backing up to give him the confidence.

Corie: 2:03:47

This is for Zandu.

unknown: 2:03:48

Yeah.

Corie: 2:03:49

This is for Zandoli to get him to come out and perform. Yeah. Yeah, so at that time he don't you don't want to come and perform. He was related to Robin Foster. No, I didn't know that. Really?

SPEAKER_04: 2:04:00

Yeah. In fact, I think it might be his wife that she related to. I see. But he when I told him I want to do this man, and how do I find him? Somebody told me, check Robin. I'm gonna ask Robin. Robin said, I hope you're ready to go down my arrow or wherever it was. I say, Yeah, yeah, yeah. He said, All right. Just tell him I send you. Because when you when I went on to him and I tell him, I ring someplace and they tell me, he said, Well, come now. He'll just come now. But he didn't sound enthusiastic. So when we phoned them down, he said, where it is, they tell me, you come to film me? Why? I said, because the people need to know that you are one of the greatest for the short period that you worked. And uh I would like you to sing. He said, but no, I know no recording of me. I said, well, I'm going to come to that after. Because we want to come up to the mask and pub and perform. He said, What? I say, yes. Yeah about that. He said that song is a nice voice. You know, he liked the idea. Okay. And then when we do so, and we sit down in front of our rum shop, you know, to do the interview. And I start to ask him questions. As I started talking the tunes, I see a different light come on his face. This man is actually interested in me and my work. And is he like it? You know, when I tell him about the the stick man and thing, he started to get excited now to talk about it. But I always remember when he says, I am, and he started to grow and say, Oh God, this is going to be a great showcase. So then I organized with Robin to set up everything at the mask camper. And we get the big mentor to back him up. Right. Gypsy Prollo, brother? Yeah, they say they want to back him up because they know the songs to it. And they say, we always hold this man in awe for that period that he worked, that four-year period where every song was a hit. Yeah, it's crazy. And that night it was really something special to get that on footage that I could now support the interview with his performances.

Corie: 2:06:19

So to be clear for people who are listening, you put together the show for the purpose of the interview.

SPEAKER_01: 2:06:24

I get TDT. Listener, all I had to tell TDTs, I need all any mask tonight. They support me a hundred percent. I didn't have to beg, you know.

SPEAKER_04: 2:06:34

I just used to say, I need the the men who was filming this, this whether they tell or not, we're coming down for we will bring the cameras and do it for you. Well, they were really and if people here choke um cameras here with there tonight, you know they're coming out in the country.

SPEAKER_01: 2:06:51

Yeah, I guess, I guess the audience will stand in room only.

Corie: 2:06:56

It's selling out all the Calypso coming out, all the Calypsoans coming out that night. Well, let me say we will make the show so so unique for me, yeah, because like if you ask people who are interested in old-time kaisu and they love kaiso, and they if they were to listen to a Blakey Zandoli Black Prince, I feel I'm missing somebody from that show. Ask a wrong and hear this, right? The versions of the song from that night is a song that they know more than the original recording. Ask a wrong and see for sure. Of course. So when people hear Man Family, they're referring to that version from Mask Camp or even Blakey's still band clash, they're referring to that version that you sing in the Mask Camp over the.

SPEAKER_01: 2:07:36

That is what they they heard, they learned. It's on is on Apple Music, it is the original, correct.

SPEAKER_04: 2:07:42

That's the original, and I am using the original in a sense, so that even though the person sing a little part of it, we used to flash back to the original, so they could get the feel, and they used to be singing in the same key.

SPEAKER_01: 2:07:56

Yeah, all of them.

Corie: 2:07:57

All of them would at that age, they would automatically gravitate to the original key and sing the song. You know what's unique about that too? The audience, without being maybe somebody not musically inclined, but they I remember one at one point in time Blakey turned around to the band and he said, Well, he always said, Well, it ready, and as the song comes in, the audience is singing in that original. They remember the song as we call it. Word for word, word for word. That that's that was one of them special things, like it's on Apple Music. Now, if you go for Blakey, that's where you will hear. Of course.

SPEAKER_04: 2:08:32

Did you watch the episodes? Two episodes, I think I did. With Growling Tiger. Yeah, you know what was unique about Tiger?

SPEAKER_01: 2:08:41

Woman died very soon after I interviewed him. Really? Yeah, that was a real you know who told me to do it?

SPEAKER_04: 2:08:50

Is Njakino serious? They were planning to give him a trophy, and they came and they said, Alvin, you're doing calypso showcase. You need to interview the growling tiger. I say, he's alive, they say, I mean if he's alive, and they said Duncan Street or something like that, apartment, so and so and they say you're almost blind, blind, you know. He was blind. And when I come to interview him, he said, Who are you? I said they call me Alvin Daniel. He said, You are some program on TV, some showcase nonsense. I say, Yes. This is what we're doing here. I said, I come to interview you. He said, What do you know about me? I said, I do a little research on you. You was a boxer.

SPEAKER_02: 2:09:46

He said, When I was a little kid, you know.

SPEAKER_04: 2:09:50

I said, but you was considered the lightweight champion in that era and thing. And we started to talk about the early days. And as he started talking, I said, just take everything and tell it. Go ahead, whatever you say. Yeah, everything golden. It is the most footage I had of one person because he had a way he used to describe things. I said, What was the tent like in those days? He said, What was the tent like? Let me tell you the first time I sing in a tent. And somebody told me to have a tent. Down lower down. He said, I know I could sing. I said I'm going in the tent and hear what they're doing. And apparently, in those days, if you want to sing, you could have just put up your hand and say, I have a song. But when you come on stage now, the regulars will start to bash you the next tempo. And if you can't stand up, if you can survive that, you're gone. So when they start to sing different songs, he says, I have a song. Hey, a new one, a new one. When he comes up, somebody starts to hit him. You come in here with your grandfather jacket on and your old lady pants, and they start to hit him. And then he answered the pan. And people say, What? And they start to answer him. He said, and they start to man start to tell him all kinds of things about your father dead and your buried, and he takes his jacket and put on. And somebody whispered to him, telling about the Indian girl he having sour. He said, and he make up the ex-tempo one time on the spot and he said, You want some more? Why ain't go by the girl in sour? Mash up.

SPEAKER_02: 2:11:46

Mash up.

SPEAKER_04: 2:11:49

He said, That's where my career started. Going from the and let me tell you something, I had two full tips of my interview with him, and somebody went and covered it over after I edited parts of it. I lost all of the long talks that we had together about the early days of Calypso, how Lion Roaring Lion had a bicycle painted with so many colors, and how four and five women used to come in with him when he's going to sing and all that. We lose all that footage. Like, oh, you interviewing me? That's how it treated it. Yeah, yeah, yeah. Let me just talk. You know? And it was really, really something special, but we lost all of that footage.

Corie: 2:12:33

Yeah, it's a sad thing. That was a special one too. I do remember as we were talking about Marshall with doing a prize on Marshall being there as one of the people awarding him. Yeah. And later on in life. But that was the second one that I did. Right. It's so funny you say that because it is almost like when I saw it, the boxing question just opened him. It's like when you ask about the box, and it's something that it opened the door. It did, it did, it did. And it's something that I wanted to talk about in closing, if David go allow me. In terms of me looking at what you were doing, I took so many lessons. I'm grateful now that I could call you and just ask. But before I took so many lessons, and that was one of them, huh? Where the more prepared you are and enthusiastic about that person, genuinely, is it's it's it's never going to be a very difficult interview. No matter how it starts off, it tends to I I've felt it many, many times where it gets to this point where the person says, But like, how you know that? Oh, you know that song. And it's like, oh, you mean I know that song? Sometimes I was there. Sometimes it's a song I learned and I and I appreciate it that you your level of preparation going into it. That's why I tell people now when they ask me when the research starts for the thing, I can't tell you. You have to, you have to spend the time.

SPEAKER_04: 2:13:44

It'll live it, and it'll love it. You have to live it, but you also have to still sit down. Of course. Put all your thoughts together in a particular way to bring out the best of the person that you are interviewing. Because that is your objective, is not to sell yourself, but to sell the person that you are interviewing.

Corie: 2:14:01

Yeah. I remember that being one of the first things you told me to when we spoke. It's like, don't worry about. And I don't ever do it. Like with uh when we do, for instance, now a big important part of the interview now is what is the parts that you clip and put into one-minute things for social media. Right. 90% of the things I put there, they're not in it. Unless I had some important question or input to put in it, I don't see the post, yeah. Yeah, I think I think the archiving and documenting of it is important and is really where I've I've I can't tell you how many times people tell me now, they say boy, only doing what Alvin Daniel and them fellas doing. And I want to tell them deliberately, but I say, Let me not tell them that till I've till we do this interview. But it's it's deliberate for us. I appreciate it. And we work very, very closely with David to ensure that the quality and the standard that you have set, I am determined to make sure I saw what you did. I sent you to what you do. I ain't nobody exceed part. Especially after today.

SPEAKER_04: 2:14:55

Let me tell you about my life today. Right now, I'm an engineer teaching at Miami Dade College to young people who want to become engineers, first of all. And to another grouping in Miami Data that is what we call a construction trade institute, where people want to become HVAC technicians, plumbing technicians, and electrical technicians. I feel proud about that opportunity to put a lot of the experience I had with my own company, Comfort Engineering Limited, that I had for 32 years an association with. A lot of the things that I achieved, the construction industry, some of the biggest buildings in Trinidad, we did the air conditioning of. The last project I worked on on Richmond Street, involving four 22-story high buildings and a multi-storage car park. I was like the project engineer for all the disciplines where I had a plumbing company working through me, an electrical company working through me, and piping people. And that five to six year experience was part of what makes me what I am today now, that I could speak to any discipline in the engineering industry. And getting to see I could cause these young aspirants to excel at what they do because I demand the best. I let them know that when you don't make a hundred percent in something, that 10% room that you leave is what can cause failure. You wouldn't like to know that a pilot was pushed through his exams and you are flying in that plane. You wouldn't like to know the doctor who is performing surgery on you. He didn't, this is the first time he's really holding a scalpel in his hand. That he didn't do the practical, he finds an excuse to not be there when they were teaching that aspect of the medical things. You wouldn't like to even know that the Uber driver that you have didn't really pass his license. Somebody gave him a license. You know what I mean? You want to know it was the best that you got. And I try to instill that and to motivate them to go for excellence in their trade. And I I feel gratified when someone comes and tells me I really feel like I learned something today, and that this will help me in the future. There's a particular person that I met recently who was one of my former students, and he's now the chief engineer of a hotel. And he did the electrical course with me, and he says it's because of striving for excellence that I got this job, always trying to be one better than everybody else. And I thank you for that. This is what my reward is at this stage in my life, that I can give back some of the talents that God gave me, that I can now expand to others and motivate them to be the best at what they do. As far as the musical side of me, the I I just feel blessed to know that I've worked with some of the greatest of this trade from Trinidad and Tobago. And if my little contribution, especially lyrically, helped to make the song a hit, helped to win a panorama, helped to take some people to the finals of Dimash Gras, I am grateful for that. And any assistance that anyone calls to me and asks me if I feel I have the knowledge to tell them how to go about it. Because I did productions in the studio, I produced CDs, about 30, 40 CDs, which is still selling. And uh all my work is registered through a company in Germany called Faluma that people can, I see people buying and downloading my songs from Australia, India, China, all through Europe, America, and the Caribbean. It's gratifying. And I thanked God for that. And I just pray that if there's still an opportunity for make a contribution, that I continue. To do it.

Corie: 2:20:00

Yeah. Well, I mean, we started off by talking about you being a teacher and you know, teaching. And it's it's funny when I met you, how many things we have in common. Because I lecture part-time, I play quattro, I like lyrics for things, so maybe it's destined that I was always going to follow the path that you said. But to be a teacher is, you know, there's a vocation versus job, right? And it's a calling. Yeah. And I think you teach by example, maybe many, many, many more people than you could ever teach in person. Exactly. I'm happy to follow that example. Ask David about the obsession over preparedness because of you. I say we can't have somebody who was by you, and I have to do this now because I enjoy times when you had people multiple times where you could see the person when they were just coming in, and then a few years later you see them. I love that. Watchman, for example. Yeah, or Ronnie. Yeah. And I feel like if some of what I do it now, I felt good sitting with people who you sat with. I never thought that they would come, to be honest. It was a little surreal for me because I would have watched you for so long sitting with some of those same people. And I try to maintain some maybe about 60% of the quality you said. We we we somewhere there.

SPEAKER_04: 2:21:11

What you all are doing now is really timely. It's relevant and it's avant-garde. Because you all are doing, using, and again I say this now to those who are listening: don't fight technology, embrace it. Because no matter what you do, it's going to be part of you. 100%.

SPEAKER_02: 2:21:36

It's going to be in your voice.

SPEAKER_04: 2:21:38

You can't run from it. So use it. Yeah. Use it to your assistance. Make it your slave and not be a slave.

Corie: 2:21:50

Thanks very much. This was a pleasure. We'll be coming back when it's time for the book. Yeah. We're coming back, right? Yeah. All right. When I'm ready to get the book, yes, we will be right back here. Thanks very much. All right. Let me just take notes. I'm sure we'll cover everything, didn't I? I don't know what part of the interview you're putting this back in, but I need to know why you choose this melody suite as the intro for Calypso Showcase.

SPEAKER_04: 2:22:15

When O'Neill Davis and I was developing the visual, the video. And then he said, I need a piece of music. But I don't want somebody singing because it would focus only on that person. I need an instrumental, catchy. And somehow I I knew I was attracted to this mid-blue break that Leston did. And I said, I have just the thing. And he said, Alright, let me hear it. And we went and I just showed the instrumental break in this melody suite.

SPEAKER_02: 2:23:14

And he said, Oh God, this is serious crazy.

SPEAKER_01: 2:23:18

He said, Genius. This is it fit like and he had the people dancing to it as you see when they come out, time it perfectly. And you know, I remember somebody telling me, I only had to hear the open bars of your intro, and I started running home for Colin So Showcase. He said, That piece of music, boy. A lot of people didn't know it was the middle part of um thing, you know. That one is my tune. I said, You create that piece of music. I said, No, boy, that's the that's for mom thing. I said, What I don't go back and listen to the tune. I didn't pick that up.

SPEAKER_04: 2:23:55

Yeah. But that is the middle break of this melody suite. Less than Paul. Of course, of course.

SPEAKER_01: 2:24:02

Listen, less than you. But the song not written by the vein, though. Of course, it's the vean's composition. And less than arrangement.

SPEAKER_04: 2:24:12

Was all less done. Of course, of course. All less done. That was less than doing his thing. Less than used to have a way to tell me. See that song you have, I had to go down in the stone to get the chords. The getting horns. To get the horns. He said, I'd go down in the stone for that. And that man would come back and put some horn lines on a song. You talk about creativity. Yeah. I just see he called them fellas inside editing. He said, Less than we're gonna kill me tonight. It's just half a blow. You better call your wife and tell him come and meet them tomorrow morning. But you had a play this accurate for me.