C A L Y P S O
I guess most young people associate "calypso" music with Harry Belafonte and songs such as "Dayo" (the "Banana Boat Song"). I first became acquainted with the genre in the middle 1940s when the Andrews Sisters recorded "Rum and Coca Cola." In addition, I had a neighbor who had spent some time in Trinidad when he was in the navy, and who had accumulated a good-sized collection of 78 RPM calypso recordings.
Rum and Coca Cola was a huge hit for the Andrews sisters, even though the four major radio networks of the day (NBC-Red, NBC-Blue, CBS, and the Mutual Broadcasting Company) banned the song from being played on any of their nation-wide stations. However, I remember hearing it on the radio all the time. I guess I must have been listening to local Los Angeles stations, and was unaware of the network ban.
The reason for the ban, so the story goes, was that a hard liquor (rum) was mentioned, a nationally advertised product (Coca Cola) would be getting free advertising, and some of the suggestive lyrics (...mother and daughter working for the Yankee dollar...) had the censors rather nervous.
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Those were fairly Puritan times, compared with what's heard on the radio nowadays (not to mention what's seen and heard on prime time TV and in the movies).
Another interesting thing about the song was the fact that the spicy lyrics were attributed to Morey Amsterdam (Buddy Sorrell on the Dick Van Dyke Show). Amsterdam claimed the song was an original, composed by him and a couple of fellows who came up with the melody.
However, some song writers in Trinidad sued them for plagiarism, and were able to prove they had written the song many years earlier, albeit with some slight differences in the melody and the lyrics. You can learn more about this by typing Rum & Coca Cola Composers into any search engine.
In any case, I've always thought it was a very cute song and have always enjoyed hearing it.
These selections have been created (sequenced) on an electronic keyboard connected to a PC,
and saved as computer MIDI files.
The files can be copied to a CD, but will not work
in a regular audio CD player or "boombox."
However, they can be played via any standard computer.
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Miscellaneous Music
