Mighty Sparrow

Mighty Sparrow
Birth name Slinger Francisco
Born (1935-07-09) July 9, 1935
Grand Roy, Grenada
Genres Calypso, Soca
Occupation(s) Musician, producer, song-writer
Instruments Vocals
Years active 1949–present
Labels Balisier, RCA, National, Recording Artists, Warner Bros., Charlie's, B's, Ice
Associated acts Byron Lee and the Dragonaires
Website mightysparrow.com

Slinger Francisco ORTT CMT OBE (born July 9, 1935), better known as Mighty Sparrow, is a calypso singer, songwriter, and guitarist of Trinidadian citizenship. Known as the "Calypso King of the World", he is one of the best-known and most successful calypsonians. He has won Trinidad's Carnival Road March competition eight times, Calypso King/Monarch eight times, and has twice won the Calypso King of Kings title.

Career

Slinger Francisco was born in the fishing village of Grand Roy, Grenada, West Indies on July 9, 1935. He moved to Trinidad with his mother, his father having relocated there in 1937.[1][2] He grew up in Port of Spain. He began singing as a small child, but his love of calypso was discouraged while at Newtown Boys Catholic School, where he sang in the choir.[1][2] At the age of 14 he joined a steel band comprising neighbourhood boys, and performed with the band at Carnival.[1]

He received his performing name "Little Sparrow" during his early career, as a result of his energetic stage performances:

Your calypso name is given to you by your peers, based on your style. In the old days they tried to emulate British royalty. There was Lord Kitchener, Lord Nelson, Duke. When I started singing, the bands were still using acoustic instruments and the singers would stand flat footed, making a point or accusing someone in the crowd with the pointing of a finger, but mostly they stood motionless. When I sing, I get excited and move around, much like James Brown, and this was new to them. The older singers said "Why don't you just sing instead of moving around like a little Sparrow." It was said as a joke, but the name stuck.[3]
— Mighty Sparrow

After a couple of years he changed his stage name to "Mighty Sparrow".[1][4] On leaving school he began working for the government Control Board, but continued to perform calypso, which became the better paid of the two, and his residency at the Lotus Club made him a star locally.[1]

Calypso King
Mighty Sparrow's "No Money No Love"
One of Mighty Sparrow's more well-known songs
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His first performance as a carnival singer came in 1954 with "The Parrot and the Monkey". In 1955, Sparrow made his first recordings "Missing Baby (Ruby)" "High Cost of Living" and "Race Track" for Vitadisc, which were included on the Royalties of Calypso Kingdom compilation a few years later. In 1955 and 1956, he also recorded "Give The Youngsters A Chance", "Family Size Coke", "Goaty", "No Doctor No", "Clara Honey Bunch" and "Yankee's Back Again" for GEMS, "Jean And Dinah" and "The Queen's Canary" for Kay, and "Sailor Man" for Veejay Special Ace.

In 1956, Sparrow won Trinidad's Carnival Road March and Calypso King competitions with his most famous song, "Jean and Dinah" (aka "Yankees Gone", a song celebrating the departure of US troops from Trinidad).[5] A live performance of "Yankees Gone" was included in the album Jump Up Carnival in Trinidad.[5] His prize for winning the Calypso King title was $40.[5] In protest of the small sum (the winner of the Carnival Queen beauty contest won $7,500), he wrote the song "Carnival Boycott" and attempted to organize other singers to boycott the competition.[5] About half of the singers followed, including Lord Melody.[3] Sparrow claims credit for succeeding improvements in the conditions of calypso and steelband musicians in Trinidad, as well as the formation of the Carnival Development Committee, a musicians' assistance organization.[6] Sparrow refused to officially participate in the competition for the next three years, but he continued to perform unofficially, even winning another Road March title in 1958 with "P.A.Y.E." He did perform at the 1957 carnival in the Young Brigade Calypso Tent, where the four songs he performed were recorded and later released on the album Calypso Kings and Pink Gin.[5]

Sparrow went on to have local hits in 1956 and 1957 with singles such as "Jack Palance", "No Doctor No", and "Sailor Man", before beginning a musical slanging match with Lord Melody, each releasing singles attacking the other.[7] The rivalry went on for several years.[7] In 1957, Sparrow recorded his first album, Calypso Carnival 58, released the following year on the Balisier label.[7]

He again boycotted the carnival in 1959, choosing instead to tour extensively, and early that year released the album Sparrow in Hi Fi before signing a deal with RCA, for whom he recorded eleven albums between 1960 and 1964.[7]

Taking calypso abroad

Calypso music enjoyed a brief period of popularity in other parts in the world during the 1950s. Trinidadian expatriate Lord Kitchener had helped popularize calypso in England, and Sparrow also found some success there. In the United States, interest in calypso was sparked largely by Harry Belafonte's 1956 album Calypso, the first LP to sell over one million copies.[8] In January 1958, Sparrow, along with longtime rival Lord Melody, travelled to New York City seeking access to the American music audience.[9] Sparrow had already been recording with Balisier and Cook Records, and with Belafonte's help[10] he also began to record for RCA Victor. He did not achieve the success he had hoped for; he said in a 2001 interview, "When nothing happened for me, I went back to England and continued on with my career."[10]

In 1960 Sparrow returned to the Calypso Monarch competition, winning his second Kingship and third Road March title with "Ten to One Is Murder" (an autobiographical song about an incident in which Sparrow allegedly shot a man)[11] and "Mae Mae". He also began recording for his own label, National Recording.[3] He won the Road March title in 1961 with "Royal Jail" and won his third Calypso King title in 1962 with "Model Nation" and "Sparrow Come Back Home".[7] He won further titles in the 1960s and 1970s and continued to enjoy great popularity in Trinidad. He recorded prolifically, with forty albums released in the 1960s and 1970s.[7] In the latter half of the 1960s his recordings began to be released in the United Kingdom.

In 1968 he recorded the album Sparrow Meets the Dragon with Byron Lee in Jamaica.[7] Their version of "Only a Fool Breaks His Own Heart" gave them an international hit in 1969, earning a gold disc upon its re-release in late 1977 igniting a #2 hit record in 1978 in the Netherlands.[7] [12]

He had his greatest success internationally in the 1970s, starting with the album The Best Of, featuring live recordings in Brooklyn, New York of Sparrow favorites.[13] In 1974 he recorded the album Hot and Sweet for Warner Bros. in Miami, and the following year reunited with Byron Lee for the Sparrow Dragon Again album.[7] He had a big hit in 1977 with "Crawford", a tribute to sprinter Hasley Crawford, and that year embarked on a tour of west Africa, during which he was given the honorary Yoruba title Chief Omo Wale of Ikoyi.[14] In 1978 he recorded the album Only a Fool in London for Trojan Records.[14]

Soca

As soca began to supplant calypso in popularity in Trinidad during the late 1970s and early 1980s,[3] Sparrow embraced the hybrid of Calypso and cadence with the local (Chutney) music.[14] In 1984 he won his eighth Road March title with the soca-influenced "Doh Back Back". Also around this time, he began to spend at least half the year in New York City, finding an apartment in the West Indian neighborhoods in Jamaica, Queens.[3] In 1985 he performed at the carnival's King of Kings show alongside Lord Kitchener, Lord Melody, and Black Stalin, taking the "King of Kings" title and the $10,000 first prize.[14] He would later win the title for a second time.[15] His last major title came in 1992, with "Both of Them" and "Survival" winning him the Calypso Monarch title.[16] He made an appearance at the Reggae Sunsplash festival in 1993.[14] Although less active since the mid-1990s, Sparrow continued to write, perform, and tour into the 21st century;[17] in a 2001 interview he mentioned that he had been singing and performing a "Gospel-lypso" hybrid.[10] In 2008, he released a song supporting Barack Obama's presidential campaign, "Barack the Magnificent".[18] He also did a remake of his "Congo Man" song with fellow Trinidadian Machel Montano on the Flame On album.

In 2010 he left the stage in a wheelchair after a performance in Trinidad, and later that year was hospitalised after suffering an inguinal hernia while performing in Maryland.[18][19] He made a full recovery and continued to tour internationally.[18] He has been hospitalised several times with complications of diabetes.[20] In September 2013 he was due to receive a lifetime achievement award from the Trinidad & Tobago consulate in New York, but was admitted to a New York hospital where he fell into a coma for two weeks before regaining consciousness.[20][21][22][23]

He returned to public performance in January 2014 with a forty-minute set at a bar in Brooklyn, New York.[24] At the end of the year he was voted 'Express Individual of the Year 2014' by the Trinidad Express.[25]

Lyrics

Sparrow's lyrics are famous for being witty, ironic, and ribald. He sings flirtatiously of the attractions of Hispanic women in "Margarita", and of East Indian women in "Marajhin".[26] He tells some outrageously frank tales of sexuality in "Mae Mae", "The Lizard" and "Big Bamboo". And there is humorous commentary on West Indian culture to be found in "Obeah Wedding" and "Witch Doctor". Robert Christgau called his controversial song "Congo Man" "a wildly perverse piss-take on African roots, interracial revenge, interracial sex, male-female relations, and cannibalism".[27] The 1965 song was criticized for its attitudes toward women and Africans, and banned from radio airplay until 1989.[28]

Sparrow also frequently comments on social and political issues in his songs.[29][30] During his early career he was a supporter of Eric Williams and his People's National Movement (PNM),[11] which formed in 1955 and led Trinidad and Tobago to independence in 1962;[31] songs such as "Leave The Damn Doctor Alone" and "William the Conqueror" mentioned Williams directly, while others such as "Federation" (blaming Jamaica for the breakup of the short-lived West Indies Federation), "Our Model Nation" (celebrating Trinidadian independence), and "PAYE" (supporting the PNM's pay-as-you-earn tax system) echoed PNM positions. Sparrow did express discontent in 1957's "No, Doctor, No", but it was comparatively mild, and aimed at holding PNM politicians to their promises rather than replacing them. Sparrow cleverly combined political criticism with sexual innuendo in his mid-1960s song "BG Plantain", which decried the ban levied by PM Williams on imported plantain from British Guiana (BG); plantain, a large banana-shaped vegetable, is a staple of West Indian cuisine, and Sparrow praised the BG plantain as larger, sweeter, and superior to the home-grown Trinidadian variety.

Sparrow's mid-1960s hit "Sir Garfield Sobers", celebrating the great Barbadian all-rounder cricketer, who starred for West Indies teams, anticipated by a decade the knighthood that Garfield Sobers would actually receive in 1975.[29] Sobers is generally regarded as the greatest all-rounder in cricket history. This song's first verse:

"Who's the greatest cricketer on Earth or Mars?
Anyone can tell you, it's the great Sir Garfield Sobers!
This handsome Barbadian lad really knows his work.
Batting or bowling, he's the cricket King, no joke!
Three cheers for Captain Sobers!"

In more recent times Sparrow continues to incorporate social issues into his music. "Crown Heights Justice" is a plea for peace and understanding in the wake of the 1991 Crown Heights Riot in Sparrow's adopted home of New York City. The themes of peace, tolerance, and concern for the poor show up repeatedly in songs such as "Human Rights" (1981), "Capitalism Gone Mad" (1983), and "This Is Madness" (1995).

Discography

Live albums
Major compilations
Compilation appearances

Major awards and honors

Carnival Road March titles

Year Song
1956 "Yankees Gone"
1958 "P.A.Y.E."
1960 "Mae Mae"
1961 "Royal Jail"
1966 "Melda (Obeah Wedding)"
1969 "Sa Sa Yea"
1972 "Drunk And Disorderly"
1984 "Doh Back Back"

[32]

Calypso King/Monarch titles

Year Song 1 Song 2
1956 "Yankees Gone" none
1960 "Ten to One Is Murder" "Mae Mae"
1962 "Sparrow Come Back Home" "Federation"
1963 "Dan Is the Man (In the Van)" "Kennedy"
1972 "Drunk and Disorderly" "Rope"
1973 "School Days" "Same Time, Same Place"
1974 "We Pass That Stage" "Miss Mary"
1992 "Both of Them" "Survival"

[16]

Notes

  1. 1 2 3 4 5 Thompson, p. 184.
  2. 1 2 Harris
  3. 1 2 3 4 5 j.poet (1994). Sparrow. In Hot Like Fire [CD liner notes]. London: Ice Records.
  4. ↑ Broughton et al (2000), p. 512.
  5. 1 2 3 4 5 Thompson, p. 185.
  6. ↑ Biography from Sparrow's official page.
  7. 1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9 Thompson, p. 186
  8. ↑ Harry Belafonte article at Donald's Encyclopedia of Popular Music
  9. ↑ Rohlehr, Gordon (2005). "First Flight: Early Calypsos of the Mighty Sparrow". In First Flight: Early Calypsos from the Emory Cook Collection. CD liner notes, p. 8. Washington, DC: Smithsonian Folkways Recordings.
  10. 1 2 3 Interview with the Mighty Sparrow by Ital-K 2001
  11. 1 2 Delblond (2003)
  12. ↑ Chart history of "Only a fool" credited to The Mighty Sparrow with Byron Lee & the Dragonaires in the Dutch Top 40; the record spent 30 weeks on the hitlist, however not in a single run: it entered in June 1969, spending just 3 weeks on the charts peaking at #31, and upon re-entering in the last weekly chart of 1977, it spent another staggering 27 weeks in the charts, peaking at #2 for 5 consecutive weeks in the spring of 1978.
  13. ↑ Thompson, p. 188
  14. 1 2 3 4 5 6 Thompson, 187
  15. ↑ Guilbault (2007), p. 154.
  16. 1 2 Thompson, p. 5.
  17. ↑ Dunlevy, T. (2006), "Mighty Sparrow still sings", Montreal Gazette, October 7, 2006. Retrieved September 15, 2013.
  18. 1 2 3 Richardson (2010).
  19. ↑ "Mighty Sparrow recuperating after surgery", Jamaica Observer, July 30, 2010. Retrieved September 15, 2013
  20. 1 2 "Sparrow fighting", Trinidad Express, September 9, 2013. Retrieved September 15, 2013.
  21. ↑ "False reports of Mighty Sparrow's death", Jamaica Observer, September 12, 2013. Retrieved September 15, 2013.
  22. ↑ "T&T's New York Consulate confirms Sparrow is alive", Trinidad Express, September 12, 2013. Retrieved September 15, 2013
  23. ↑ "Mighty Sparrow now conscious and responsive, relatives say", Jamaica Observer, September 17, 2013. Retrieved September 18, 2013.
  24. ↑ "Sparrow hits road again", Jamaica Observer, 23 January 2014. Retrieved 24 January 2014.
  25. ↑ "The Birdie Soars", Jamaica Observer, January 1, 2015. Retrieved January 2, 2015.
  26. ↑ Broughton et al (2000), p. 529.
  27. ↑ Robert Christgau's Consumer Guide
  28. ↑ Mighty Sparrow article at Donald's Encyclopedia of Popular Music
  29. 1 2 Guilbault (2007), p. 75.
  30. ↑ Hebdige, Dick (1987) Cut 'n' Mix, Routledge, ISBN 978-0415058759, p. 23.
  31. ↑ Broughton et al (2000), p. 513.
  32. ↑ Thompson, p. 6.

References

Further reading

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