Kei­th An­der­son

Dix­ieland's Fab­u­lous Five - Mervyne Telfer, Cur­tis Pierre, (Cap­tain) Hady Lee, Bit­ly Car­pen­ten­er, and George "Georgie" Ng Wai got to­geth­er last Sat­ur­day to cel­e­brate a 50 year mile­stone. The Shay Shay Tien Restau­rant, cor­ner of Warn­er Street and Cipri­ani Boule­vard in Port-of-Spain rum­bled with ex­cite­ment, as cap­tain Cur­tis Pierre held court. Pierre is a unique char­ac­ter. He's jovial as a morn­ing sun and bright­ens con­ver­sa­tion with a punc­tu­a­tion of jokes... stale ones two. He's un­apolo­getic, but nev­er­the­less he can be tol­er­at­ed, boy­ish grin and all.

When the Fab­u­lous Five sur­viv­ing mem­ber of Dix­ieland (that toured Eng­land in 1961) get to­geth­er, 50 years of bond­ing shine through. They are more like broth­ers, the anec­dotes flow, and the ca­ma­raderie is sus­tained. Af­ter whip­ping In­vaders in the 1960 Mu­sic Fes­tive, the Dix­ieland" Lib­er­a­tors head­ed off for new fron­tiers. They were rid­ing high on a pan cloud. The tour took place in Eu­rope and Africa but was not with­out its ini­tial prob­lems.

With the help of im­pre­sario Son­ny Blacks, things soon fell in­to place. There were sev­er­al ap­pear­ances, An­glia­ TV, shows all over the place, BBC in­ter­views, and the Bon­homie in­creased. Per­for­mances with the Arthur Mur­ray school of dance soon fol­lowed. Life moved from strug­gle to suc­cess... af­ter suc­cess. The Dix­ieland was on a roll. The jew­el in the Dix­ieland's was when they were con­tract­ed to play at the Savoy's in Lon­don. It was a great mo­ment for these 19-year-olds who "lib­er­at­ed" the pan and pan­man plus took up the man­tle to spread the gospel of pan.

It was an aus­pi­cious day May 20, 1961 when the Dix­ieland board­ed the Mar­quis De Comil­has for Lon­don... stow­aways and all.