Blakie - the Warlord

January 19, 2005
By Bukka Rennie

Blakie took on everybody, from captain to cook. In his scheme of things, there were no sacred cows, no untouchables, no one who could possibly be beyond the sting of his tongue. Every man was "king," therefore elitist difference was removed from any concept of royalty, and each could face the other eye to eye and toe to toe.

Blakie certainly was no acceptor of status-quo. With one such as he there could be no wonder that his known calypso career began with controversy and controversy would be the order of the day throughout his active years of engagement.

Many are of the view that Steelband Clash of 1954 was his first recorded work and probably his best work. There is however a story that Blakie and Sparrow were good friends while doing prison time and while in jail they had collaborated on the composition of Steelband Clash and Blakie happened to be the one who was released first and sang it, winning the Road March acclaim of that year and launching thereby his career.

But as is the case with all controversy, there is another version of the story: it is alleged by some that Sparrow and Blakie also collaborated on the composition of Jean and Dinah while in prison and Sparrow was the one fortunate to sing and record it in 1956, winning in the process both the monarchy and the Road March of that year with accolades that a new genius of calypso had arrived.

But this is not a serious country, there is no culture of investigation in this place, so claims made are very rarely validated and the country is never the wiser and is always made poorer as a result.

Blakie, to my knowledge, never made direct claims to Jean and Dinah but he always said that the melody of Jean and Dinah was the melody of an advertisement jingle that he sang and he would proceed to sing it in its entirety with his usual mischievous smile and wicked laugh that the youths today would describe colloquially as "devious."

The deceased Mr Christopher of Kay Records would insist however that neither Blakie nor Sparrow composed Jean and Dinah, that it was a calypso that was purchased from some unknown and the only question was whether to give it to the older bard or the younger of the two who was still up and coming.

The younger won out. However there remained throughout the years a tension between Blakie and Sparrow that somehow seemed never to be quelled. The more Sparrow attained establishment status in calypso, the more the two seemed to be rankled by each other.

Blakie will constantly warn the country about "this Grenadian that will put allyuh in a monkey’s pants." There was a particularly vicious calypso by Blakie about Sparrow and Ronnie Williams, then chairman of the NCC, of which the least said the better.

Sparrow never answered Blakie in song. Never, yet the Warlord would not relent. When Bomber beat Sparrow to win the calypso crown, the Warlord would tell us in song that "Sparrow get dizzy and fall down." And in his typical style, Blakie’s chorus informed us as follows:

"...I could talk because I ent care/Allyuh have to hear/It was last year in the savannah/When he get beat by the Mighty Bomber/Who wasn’t dey coulda hear/And who was dey could see/So let he go and tell the people that it was robbery with V..."

He chided Sparrow for not congratulating Bomber and insinuated that, if he were Bomber, Sparrow would have been made to shake his hand by force.

I was fortunate to meet Blakie while growing up as a teen in the Petit Bourg/Mount Hope area. It was quite an interesting area at that time, particularly as it housed the Telco Recording Company in which Frankie "Merengue" Francis officiated as music director, a man whose musical hearing never ceased to amaze me.

He would stop the entire band and would tell the guitar man, "You playing F-sharp, when you should be playing G."

My friends and I frequented Telco and today our voices can be heard providing uninvited support to various artistes. We were the ones shouting "Slammer" as this Barbadian recorded his song about the "march monkey" (ie police) and sang, "... and de day he put he hand pon me/I go hit with mih mother mortar pestle..."

When Mighty Indian of Cedros came to record "...Trinidad have too much taxi/Trinidad come like New York city..." we were there shouting, "San Fernando by two!"

At times we were more disruptive than encouraging but Frankie was patient and he would simply start over: "Too much Taxi, take Old Lady or take Carriage!"-a ploy Frankie Francis preferred of substituting Whe-Whe symbols for numbers.

In those days Blakie lived with Calypso Princess on Irving Street, next door to Kelvin James, whom we visited regularly and soon there was interaction between us and the Josephs.

As all youths on the corridor in the early 1960s we were would-be paranderos and because we had no contact with authentic parang, could not sing the true Spanish songs, so we improvised as we moved from house to house and sang anything such as: No Rum Today, Magabone ent no sickness, In a Rolly Polly Calabash, etc.

We were the original people who did parang singing calypso and made up nonsense ditties, the forerunners of parang-soca. But from time to time we snatched a calypso from Blakie. That is how we came to be paranging one Christmas morning singing the Vincey Road March: "...Morning cock a-crow, cokeyoco, cokeyoco/Wake up gal, yuh nah hear de cock/Wake gal and put on yuh frock/Wake up gal and come ah we go/Morning cock a-crow..."

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