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Bertie Marshall was born on St.
Vincent Street, Port of Spain in 1936, just as experimentation with a
new instrument made from discarded and stolen steel drums began. His early
childhood days were spent roaming around John John and Success Village,
Laventille.
He got an old ping pong from
Tokyo steelband and tried to retune it, using his harmonica as a guide.
That was at age 14.
By 18, he began tuning pans,
after being guided by other tuners like Carl Greenidge. He was dissatisfied
with what he called the inferior tone of the ping pong and was accused
of spoiling many a good instrument in attempting to achieve the harmonic
tuning of the steelpan.
By 1956 though, Bertie Marshall
had established harmonic tuning, and also introduced the Double Tenor
as a new addition to the range of instruments in a steel orchestra. By
stretching the belly of a tenor, he created a High Tenor or Soprano pan
with a new range of notes starting at low F rather than low B.
Out of Success Village, Marshall
led the Metronomics Steel Orchestra, moving on to the Armed Forces Steel
Orchestra and then onto the legendary Laventille Highlanders. Under his
guidance the Highlanders introduced several innovations, including the
six bass in the road orchestra, the invention of canopies to protect the
fragile pans from the weather, and also to gain greater control of the
sound to the orchestra. They are also remembered for the attempts at popular
music, and introducing steelpan to the church.
In 1965, Bertie Marshall attempted
to introduce electronic amplification to Highlanders, but lack of financial
support brought the work to an end.
In 1970 he became resident tuner
for the world renowned Desperadoes Steel Orchestra. There, in collaboration
with Rudolph Charles, they created the quadraphonic, six pan and twelve
bass, and popularised the use of the strobe tuner in the tuning of steelpans.
He is hailed as being responsible for Despers' perfect tone.
In 1982 Marshall travelled to
Sweden with representatives of the steelband movement and CARIRI, where
they successfully located a machine for adaptation to the process of sinking
the pan, but again, lack of funding put an end to this other seminal piece
of research.
Whether he is hailed as a scientific
researcher or madman of the pan world, Bertie Marshall's contributions
to the standardisation of the steelband are unquestioned and invaluable.
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