FARRAKHAN THE
MIGHTY CHARMER
By Ray Funk
Sunday Express
Section 2
January 16, 2000
Pages 44 & 45
The controversial leader of the Nation of Islam, Louis Farrakhan,
was in the Fifties a leading calypso singer in the United States. Recently a new compact disc has been issued
that collects all 12 of his recordings as the Charmer issued on Monogram label,
The Charmer, Calypso Favorites 1953 - 1954, Bostrox Records
9908. The disc has been nicely re-mastered;
it sports generally good notes and the complete lyrics to the songs, two photos
of Farrakhan performing at the time.
Farrakhan
was born Louis Eugene Walcott on May 11, 1933 in the Bronx and was raised in
the West Indian community in the Roxbury section of Boston. His mother emigrated from St Kitts in the
Twenties. His father was a Jamaican cab
driver from New York but was not involved in his upbringing. His family moved to Boston in 1937. In high school he was both an honour roll
student and track star. He also had
shown musical talent from an early age, was an accomplished violinist and even
performed on the Ted Mack Amateur Hour.
At
age 16, he started his calypso career by appearing in a nightclub in Boston as
the Charmer. His mother came to watch
him but disapproved of his more suggestive calypsoes. According to biographer Arthur Magida, he had been inspired by
seeing the great New York calypso band of Gerald Clark (incorrectly identified
by Magida as Joe Clark) at a fund-raiser in Roxbury a year or two before. When it came time for college, he got a
track scholarship and went to Winston Salem Teacher's College in North Carolina
in the fall of 1950.
He
continued to play violin and organised his own calypso band and performed
around the school.
He
performed a song reflecting his political concerns whose lyrics have not
survived, "America is no Democracy."
He dropped out in the summer of 1953, returned to Boston and got married
and became a professional calypso singer.
The Charmer continued to appear in clubs for the next few years and it
is during this period that these recordings were made.
The
primary backup band for The Charmer at the time in the studio and in nightclubs
was a band of calypso musicians from the Virgin Islands; Johnny McCleverty's
Calypso Boys, who were based in New York at the time. This band later was joined by Johnny's brother Carl McCleverty
and called the Fabulous McClevertys. They
were a popular act in nightclubs during the Calypso Craze and recorded an album
on Verve. Their most memorable song was
the entertaining, "Don't blame it on Elvis (For shaking his Pelvis)."
The
Monogram label is not well known today and the history of the label is sketchy
at best. It was run by Manuel W Warner
and started in the late Forties and continued into the late Fifties. Monogram and its sister labels, Paragon and
Ritmo had the most extensive catalog of calypso released in the United States
in the Fifties. They featured
recordings by some of the most popular United States based calypso artists
like: Duke of Iron, MacBeth the Great, Trinidad legends like Lion and Kitchener
leased from British labels, steelbands, as well as calypso recordings from
Jamaica, the Bahamas, and even Panama.
While a smattering of these recordings had been reissued in the Sixties
or Seventies on budget calypso collections on the Request Sounds of the
Caribbean label, this is the first CD to reissue any that I am aware.
The
twelve selections feature a fascinating mix of the popular Trinidad calypsos
and original compositions. The popular
like "Ugly Woman", "Brown Skin Girl", "Mary Ann",
"Hold 'Em Joe" and "Take Me, Take Me." To popular calypsos, the Charmer often added
a distinctive twist to the lyrics.
"Take
me, Take me" had been recorded in 1935 by the Kiskadee Trio (Atilla,
Beginner, and Tiger) in the second expedition of calypsonians to New York. Its famous chorus gets changed.
The
geographic reference to the beach at Los Iros in Trinidad gets translated to
"lover's road" in Charmer's version and the beach in the song is now
Rockaway Beach rather than the one in Los Iros. This song was one that was quite popular in the Fifties. Versions of the song were recorded during
the 1957 Calypso Craze by both the Duke of Iron and Trinidadian born jazz
pianist Hazel Scott.
"Hold
'Em Joe" is given a unique twist.
One
of the songs that is new is "Stone Cold Woman" composed by Samuel C
Florman. Florman is not a calypso
singer or even a West Indian. Indeed,
he is a nationally known engineer and principal of a major construction company
in New York.
The
liner notes to the CD surmise that Farrakhan is the author of three selections,
"Is She Is, or Is She Ain't", "Don’t Touch Me Nylon", and
"Female Boxer" and that is quite possible. The most interesting is the first of these three, a topical
number on Christie Jorgensen, the subject of a series of sex change
operations. While such transsexual
operations have since become more common, this was the first to receive high
publicity.
The
last song on the album is the instrumental, "Trinidad Road March",
features Charmer on violin trading licks with Gusatav Civil, guitarist for the
McClevertys.
The
booklet notes to the CD have an unintentional inaccuracy. They incorrectly state that these are the
complete recordings that Farrakhan made as the Charmer. There is at least one other, Tico 1070, New
York Carnival/Rookoombay. There may be
more. The Charmer had recorded at least
demos in a local recording studio in Boston.
However, the Charmer's career was short lived.
Farrakhan
came to Chicago in February 1955 as part of Calypso Follies show at the Blue
Angel. While many night clubs would
decide to change décor and feature calypso in 1957 with the Calypso Craze after
Belafonte's million selling album, the only night club that declared an all
calypso revue and had featured various calypsonians since the Fifties in the
United States was the Blue Angel whose influence in bringing calypsonians to
the US has not been documented. After
the Charmer, the Blue Angel would feature first The Mighty Panther and then
Lord Christo.
But
it was not the Blue Angel that would serve as the important turning point for
him but another event during his stay. While
in Chicago, he attended a lecture by Elijah Mohammed, leader of the Nation of
Islam. It would eventually lead in the
next few years to his abandoning his career as a calypso singer and becoming a minister,
Louis X, head of the Nation of Islam's Temple No. 11 in Boston. From there, he would eventually become Louis
Farrakhan and the leader of the Nation of Islam.
The
Charmer compact disc can be ordered directly from the label's website, www.bostrox.com or by calling 888-229-2239.