ALRIC FARRELL
THE GREAT PRETENDER
1918 - 2002
Trinidad Guardian
January 31, 2002
Page 4
Lord Pretender (Alric Farrell), who died on January 22, was given a good send-off by the London Guardian, which published an obituary on January 26.
Peter Mason's obituary was headlined "Calypso's last great exponent of extempo singing".
The obituary said: "Even when he began singing in the calypso tents of Trinidad and Tobago before the second world war, Lord Pretender, who has died aged 84, stood out as a master of extempo, then regarded as the highest form of calypso, in which performers make up verses about subjects shouted from the audience."
As a new generation of calypsonians began to drop this "exhilarating" art, wrote Mason, Pretender "emerged as its greatest exponent, and virtually sole guardian."
Until cancer of the larynx prevented him from singing, said Mason, Pretender was loved for improvising new verses when called back for encores.
"He never entered the annual extempo competition, instituted in the hope of reviving the discipline in Trinidad, because, by general consent, he would have spoiled the party for everyone else. No one could match is ability to conjure up humorous, and perfectly scanned, verses from nowhere."
Mason reported that Pretender made his first appearance in 1929, aged 12, at the Redhead Sailor in Corbeaux Town.
"He sang a calypso of his own composition about the ghost of a young girl named Jane - and never looked back. After a five-week tour with the calypsonian Executor, for which he was paid 60 cents and two bags of oranges, his profile began to rise significantly in the mid-1930s."
Though initially tagged "the Boy Wonder", he soon went by his schoolyard nickname of Pretender, which he had given himself as a dramatic sobriquet while pitching marbles.
But, noted Mason, his popularity as a singer did not, however, impress his grandmother, who brought him up after his mother went to live in the United States.
"Mindful of the scandalous reputation of calypsonians, she would often stride into a tent and haul him off stage. 'I'd get two clouts in the face,' he once said. 'My grandmother would say: 'You disgracing the family'."
Mason quoted the "rousing and popular" wartime calypso, "Ode to the Negro Race" with which Pretender won his first competition:
God made us all and in him we trust /
So nobody in the world is better than us.
But it was his happy-go-lucky postwar compositions, Mason concluded, that won Pretender most acclaim. One of them, "Que Sera Sera", helped him win the calypso monarch competition in 1957.
Mason said Pretender's most famous song, "Never Ever Worry", was often cited as one of the classic calypsoes of all time.
Calling it a neat summary of Pretender's philosophy, Mason said it was frequently updated after its first recording in 1961, and featured in the US road movie Cadillac Ranch (1996).
But Pretender's financial returns from his career were meagre, said Mason.
"He lived, as a single man with no children, in a public housing scheme in Port of Spain, and was given some relief shortly before his death when the government allowed him to stay there rent-free." During his later years, he survived on a pension from his time as a dock worker.
Of his last few years, Mason said Pretender appeared on-stage until the mid-1990s, and died at the height of the build-up to the 2002 Carnival season, "still nurturing a hope that he would be well enough to show off his unrivaled extempo skills in public once more."