Os­win Rose

The pass­ing of Joey Lewis, my good friend, sig­nals the end of an era which in­clud­ed many well-known band­lead­ers and dance bands that graced the dance halls of T&T. We re­mem­ber fond­ly venues like Tav­ern on the Green, Lo­tus Restau­rant, Por­tuguese As­so­ci­a­tion, Per­se­ver­ance Hall (both in Mar­aval and Freel­ing Street, Tu­na­puna), the fa­mous "Oven" in Ari­ma, the Olive Lodge in Arou­ca, Palms Club in San Fer­nan­do, St Paul Street Com­mu­ni­ty Cen­tre be­hind the bridge, Hi­malaya Club, Port Ser­vices Club, Maple Club (Green Cor­ner), Guardian Sports Club, To­co Boys' and Girls' As­so­ci­a­tion, and Ho­race Gor­don's for­mer res­i­dence in Tu­na­puna (on­ly on Car­ni­val Fri­days). We call those names, and the next sound from our mouth link­ing them is most like­ly to be Joey Lewis.

Joey stood tall among many old­er band­lead­ers be­cause of the poise, con­fi­dence, and ma­tu­ri­ty that be­lied his age dur­ing the em­bry­on­ic stages of his mu­si­cal de­vel­op­ment. The same could be said of my oth­er friend, Er­rol Ince, who com­posed the leg­endary "Gaza Strip" and record­ed it for the Kay La­bel at Nel­son Street, home of "Bo­lo"" Christo­pher's Record­ing Stu­dio. Many el­ders at that time would have de­scribed Er­rol and Joey as "forced ripe" young­sters among "big men." How­ev­er, they both de­fied tra­di­tion and ex­pec­ta­tion, and be­came suc­cess­ful in their re­spec­tive en­deav­ours.

For Joey to have shared the stage with old­er mu­si­cians and band­lead­ers like Cyril Di­az, Sel Dun­can, Fitz Vaughn Bryan, Cito Fer­min, Ron Berridge, Ed Wat­son, the Bona­part Broth­ers, John­ny Gomez, Pe­te De Vlugt, Nor­man "Tex" Williams, John Bud­dy Williams, Nev Samp­son and the Wat­so­ni­ans, Joe "Chet" Samp­son, Choy Am­ing, Cyril Ramdeo, Wat­ty Watkins, Ray Sylvester, Mano Marcelin, and Clarence Cur­van was in­deed an ac­com­plish­ment. He would lat­er share the stage with younger mu­si­cians of the com­bo era such as An­dre Tanker, Bert Bai­ley, Kalyan, Moon­rak­ers, Rock­er­fellers, Vic Lange, An­cil Wy­att, Sil­ver Strings, Es­quires, John­ny Lee and the Hur­ri­canes, Five Fin­gers Com­bo, Casanovas, Am­bas­sadors Com­bo, Jar­vo Bros, Sol­id Sev­en Com­bo, and Group So­lo. And let us not for­get his vis­its to Canaan, To­ba­go, three times a year.

But it was Joey's in­sa­tiable ap­petite for record­ing mu­sic that placed him head and shoul­ders above oth­er bands in re­la­tion to his work eth­ic and high vol­ume of pro­duc­tiv­i­ty. As for my­self, I am in pos­ses­sion of over a hun­dred 45 rpm vinyl records and count­less Long Play al­bums record­ed by Joey.

I first pur­chased a record by Joey Lewis at Alexan­der Bain's record shop on Park Street while I was still a stu­dent at St Mary's Col­lege, in the late 50s. If my mem­o­ry serves me cor­rect­ly, the two se­lec­tions were On Wings of Song and Say­onara, on the Trop­i­co La­bel. But pri­or to that, Joey had record­ed En­dear­ing Young Charms, and Si­len­cio, this lat­ter on the RCA La­bel at Strand Cin­e­ma with Leslie Lucky-Sama­roo. Over the years, Joey record­ed un­re­lent­ing­ly: Joey's Saga, El Reloj, Peanut Ven­dor (al­so cov­ered by Sel Dun­can on his first al­bum), One of the Boys, a Joey com­po­si­tion, Shrine at the Top of the Hill, (on the LP Tops in Trinidad), If the Boy On­ly Knew, Don't Take Away Your Love, Ce­les­ta Ai­da, and Aca­pul­co 1922 in which Fred­dy Har­ris, for­mer­ly with Clarence Cur­van, would ex­e­cute one of the best ex­tem­po gui­tar so­los ever record­ed in Trinidad. On Joey's se­lec­tion Vuela Vuela La Palo­ma, he de­lib­er­ate­ly ut­tered the words, "Ah want ah cig­a­rette," prob­a­bly to in­ject hu­mour in­to the stu­dio record­ing. And if you ever had the op­por­tu­ni­ty to see Joey in a live per­for­mance, the show­man­ship of the tim­bale play­er Bil­ly Green, was some­thing you would al­ways re­call. Green was the quin­tes­sen­tial show­man who was al­ways will­ing to pro­vide his own sideshow at a time when the lead "gui­tar man" was the "star boy" of the show.

A dis­tin­guish­ing fea­ture of Joey's ca­reer was his as­so­ci­a­tion with Frisco Tor­re­al­ba, the li­brar­i­an at Ra­dio Guardian from the 50s to well be­yond the 60s. Tor­re­al­ba pro­vid­ed ge­o­graph­i­cal re­minders of Trinidad by com­pos­ing se­lec­tions such as San­gre Grande, Ch­aguara­mas, and Las Lo­mas, among oth­ers. Joey him­self played Shan­ty Town Saga with a back-up group called The Saints. The flip side of that 45 rpm was Ay Que Voy Hac­er, show­ing Joey's grow­ing ob­ses­sion with Latin mu­sic, a fact borne out by the high per­cent­age of Latin-based record­ings in his reper­toire.

Joey's LP record Latin Caribbean was pat­terned af­ter the Stan­ley Black al­bums, Cuban Moon­light and Trop­i­cal Moon­light. Be­cause of the ro­man­tic and re­lax­ing na­ture of the mu­sic, young lovers of the day re­ferred to Joey's al­bum as "rent-a-tile" mu­sic, where you danced on one tile for the du­ra­tion of the se­lec­tion. Joey al­so record­ed I Won­der Who's Kiss­ing Her Now, a gem of a pi­ano se­lec­tion, which was backed by his in­stru­men­tal ren­di­tion of Lord In­ven­tor's Ah Want Ah Dress.

One of the things I will al­ways re­mem­ber about Joey was the inim­itable man­ner in which he would pro­nounce "for," or, for that mat­ter, most words be­gin­ning with the let­ter "f." His de­liv­ery was not as strong, say, as the late Lord Kitch­en­er's, or Ca­lyp­so Rose's, or that of the late Squib­by. Sure­ly my for­mer St Mary's col­league, the hum­ble and down-to-earth His Grace the Arch­bish­op, Fr Joseph Har­ris, would ap­pre­ci­ate this joke as will oth­er CIC school­mates Bing Davis and Archie Thomp­son. Over the years, Arch­bish­op Har­ris and Joey main­tained their com­mon touch, equal­ly the case with Prime Min­is­ter Dr Kei­th Row­ley.

It was al­so a joy to hear Joey say "hel­lo, hel­lo," if he was try­ing to cap­ture your at­ten­tion in the course of an an­i­mat­ed dis­cus­sion, or if sweet ole talk was in progress. Ad­di­tion­al­ly, I will al­ways re­mem­ber go­ing to 21 Leo­taud Street in Gon­za­les to "mac­co" his prac­tice ses­sions in the ear­ly days. An­oth­er note­wor­thy fea­ture of that great man was his abil­i­ty to har­ness hu­man re­sources with such cred­itable lead­er­ship qual­i­ties. To that end, it might be un­sur­passed on this side of the globe, or in the rest of the world for that mat­ter, for a leader to have sus­tained lead­er­ship of a mu­si­cal ag­gre­ga­tion for over 60 years.

It is of­ten­times said that to every suc­cess­ful man there is a great woman be­hind him. In this re­gard, his af­fa­ble, po­lite, pleas­ant, and per­son­able wife, Judy, was no ex­cep­tion. Over the years, Judy was un­wa­ver­ing with her ded­i­ca­tion and at­ten­tion to Joey. In­deed she was the con­sum­mate wife.

Some years ago, the pres­i­dent of the T&T Folk Arts In­sti­tute in New York, Leslie Slater, pro­duced a com­mem­o­ra­tive CD, Mu­sic Mak­ers Ex­tra­or­di­naire, in which some of the orig­i­nal mas­ters were ex­tract­ed from col­lec­tions. That al­bum fea­tured two of Joey's works, Vuela Vuela La Palo­ma, and In a Monastery Gar­den. In the lin­er notes, Slater de­scribed me as a preser­va­tion­ist be­cause of the ex­pan­sive na­ture of my col­lec­tion of Trinidad mu­sic and ca­lyp­so. Equal­ly, I would like to anoint Judy as the preser­va­tion­ist and archivist of the Joey Lewis mu­sic port­fo­lio. In­deed her pas­sion­ate in­volve­ment with her hus­band's pas­sion for mu­sic was no­tice­ably very in­tense, al­most fa­nat­i­cal and un­re­lent­ing.

Suc­ces­sion plan­ning in mu­sic dy­nas­ties in T&T has not yet been a suc­cess­ful fea­ture. In the case of the Lewis fam­i­ly, there was a sib­ling pres­ence in that Son­ny, Boyie and Joey all had their own or­ches­tras. An­oth­er broth­er, Randy, played on the Ram­blin Rose LP. As such, the pass­ing of the lead­er­ship ba­ton now falls in the hands of his son, Jer­ry. Old-fash­ioned dance mu­sic in T&T is now and en­dan­gered en­ti­ty. The pos­si­bil­i­ty of any or­ches­tra record­ing post-Car­ni­val in­stru­men­tals no longer ex­ists pri­mar­i­ly be­cause of the lack of mu­si­cal con­tent and tal­ents. Jump and wave mu­sic, by virtue of the ab­sence of a sus­tained melod­ic line, imag­i­na­tion, in­ge­nu­ity, and a brass-in­fused mu­si­cal id­iom, is not like­ly to mo­ti­vate com­pe­tent old-fash­ioned mu­si­cians.

At one time, dance­hall mu­sic was over-sub­scribed with all the fa­mous brass and reed play­ers. Ad­di­tion­al­ly, pira­cy con­tin­ues to be that non-mo­ti­va­tor to many mu­si­cians and ca­lyp­so­ni­ans. I will add that I use the term "ca­lyp­son­ian" in re­la­tion to the by­gone era, which is not meant to en­com­pass "en­ter­tain­ers" of this un­event­ful time. In that re­gard, the late Ras Shorty I may have been prophet­ic when he record­ed La­trine Singers.

One would hope that the Min­istry of Cul­ture would ac­quire the works of Joey, the way it did in the case of Spar­row, for the pur­pose of teach­ing prop­er old time mu­sic to in­mates or oc­cu­pants of the Youth Train­ing Cen­tre, the In­dus­tri­al Schools or or­phan homes. Sure­ly, the re­sources of Er­rol Ince could be utilised since, as the se­nior mu­si­cal states­man, his es­tab­lished skill as a mu­si­cian and arranger could go to­wards scor­ing all those gems of Joey.

Pal Joey, now that you are in the heav­ens, con­tin­ue to play your mu­sic above with the an­gels and archangels when you're not rest­ing in peace.

(The writer was head of the Con­sumer Af­fairs Di­vi­sion of the Min­istry of In­dus­try, Com­merce, and Con­sumer Af­fairs from its in­cep­tion in 1977 to 1998)