Search - Alan Lomax :: Calypso at Midnight

Yankee Dollars

Lawrence Waldron | New York City, USA | 01/08/2000

(5 out of 5 stars)

"Alan Lomax, the esteemed musical anthropologist is the host and organizer of this truly outstanding concert, recorded at New York City Town Hall in 1946. Lomax was the Ry Cooder of his time (a la Buena Vista Social Club fame) and was praised for his field recordings of ethnic music from all over the world. You can tell he was definitely in contact with the 3 giants of Calypso featured here, well before the Town Hall concert. Between songs, there is a very natural and amusing verbal exchange between Lomax and Lord Invader, Duke of Iron and Macbeth. This is a truly fantastic piece of musical history and a foot-thumping one at that. It is mischievously infectious to hear an American audience break out in song during the chorus of Rum and Coca Cola, a song that indicts Americans for their cultural invasion of the West Indies during World War 2 (which had just ended a few months ago). ...Drinking Rum and Coca Cola, Down at Point Cumana... (where the American soldiers from the local base would hang out)...Both Mother and Daughter, Working for their Yankee Dollar... These are local women who won't even wave at you if you grew up with them but every night they're drinking Cuba Libres with the Yankee soldiers! Invader's song is impossible to resist and was remade several times by American singers. Duke of Iron's Ugly Woman was also an American favorite, remade I believe, by Bing Crosby. The song admonishes that if you ever want to be happy ...From a logical point of view, Marry a woman uglier than you... This CD is the first part of 2 recordings, the other: Calypso After Midnight is the second half of the same concert. The 2 together are the most charming and amusing concert recordings I've heard from so long ago and their release is highly praiseworthy."