David Cuffy

Pel­ham God­dard and Roots will be cel­e­brat­ing their 40th an­niver­sary as a mu­si­cal ag­gre­ga­tion with a pre­sen­ta­tion at Un­der the Trees at The Nor­mandie in St Ann's to­mor­row. Themed Our Car­ni­val Sto­ry, the func­tion is named af­ter an 80s hit from an al­bum that al­so in­clud­ed se­lec­tions that in­clud­ed Jun­gle Fever and Cal­abash, two of the band's pop­u­lar num­bers vo­calised by David Rud­der.

The event, pro­duced by JVMP (Ju­nior, Von­rick, Mal­colm, Pel­ham) Pro­mo­tions in col­lab­o­ra­tion with The Nor­mandie, will be a nos­tal­gic trip down mem­o­ry lane of mu­sic com­posed by God­dard who has been an in­stru­men­tal pres­ence on the evo­lu­tion of West In­di­an mu­sic for four decades, and has made a last­ing im­pact as a song­writer, arranger and pro­duc­er.

In ad­di­tion to the host band de­liv­er­ing a range of songs from its ex­ten­sive, 40-year-old reper­toire, the func­tion will be served with per­for­mances by David Rud­der, 3Canal, and Roger George (who will ren­der the songs of Chris "Tam­bu" Her­bert). Ad­mis­sion fee is $400 per per­son.

The band's his­to­ry re­veals that with spon­sor­ship in Ju­ly 1977 from New York-based record pro­duc­er Rawl­son Charles, Char­lie's Roots was launched to­geth­er with Pe­ter Min­shall's 1978 Car­ni­val band Zo­di­ac that was the start of a long re­la­tion­ship of mu­sic and mas be­tween Min­shall and God­dard. As well, Char­lie's Roots was the first so­ca band to play at Madi­son Square Gar­den in New York at its Moth­er's Day show, and was the first lo­cal mu­sic band in­vit­ed to start Car­ni­val in Ja­maica.

God­dard, of­ten re­ferred to as "the Road March Mae­stro," holds the lo­cal record for pro­duc­ing the most Car­ni­val Road March­es that in­clude No, No We Ain't Go­ing Home; Free Up; Bahia Girl; The Ham­mer; This Par­ty Is It; Bac­cha­nal La­dy; Re­bec­ca; Ethel; So­ca Bap­tist; More Tem­po; So­ca Jam; Get Some­thing and Wave; and Bac­cha­nal Time.

This was re­vealed at a me­dia launch held at The Nor­mandie last week Wednes­day where a few of the orig­i­nal roots mem­bers were present.At the start of the launch, in­stead of the usu­al prayer, a gospe­lyp­so by Chris "Tam­bu" Her­bert, an orig­i­nal mem­ber of the band who has now con­vert­ed to Chris­tian­i­ty, was played.

Ju­nior Hut­son in his wel­come re­marks promised that come Jan­u­ary 9, at the event, pa­trons will ex­pe­ri­ence the best mu­sic fete to come, since 40 years of the band's mu­sic will be con­densed to un­fold the sto­ry of Roots.Head­lin­ing the cast will be David Michael Rud­der with Roger George, 3Canal, Mori­cia Ca­gan and Nigel O'Con­nor.

Nik­ki Cros­by gave a brief of the band. She re­called that in 1976 a group of stu­dio mu­si­cians known as Sen­sa­tion­al Roots Record­ing Or­ches­tra, work­ing out of K&H Stu­dio in Sea Lots, Port-of-Spain, and led by Pel­ham God­dard came to­geth­er to pro­mote so­ca.

With names like An­tho­ny Voisin, Von­rick May­nard, El­don Oliv­er, Clarence Ross, Lam­bert Philip, Kei­th More and oth­ers, the unit pro­duced hits like Sav­age by Mae­stro (Ce­cil Hume), Drink A Rum re­make by the Lord Kitch­en­er (Ald­wyn Roberts), More Tem­po and The Ac­tion is Tight by ca­lyp­so Rose (McArthur Lewis).

At that time one of its pro­duc­ers, Rawl­ston Charles of Char­lie's Records of Brook­lyn, New York, to­geth­er with El­lis Chow Lin On, man­ag­er of K&H Stu­dio de­cid­ed to bring the band on the road to per­form so­ca mu­sic live.

The band re­leased its first al­bum KH Car­ni­val Mu­sic with Pel­ham God­dard and Char­lie's Roots in 1977, and made a hit with the win­ning road march, More Tem­po.Roots was al­so part of Mae­stro's Ram­page al­bum re­leased that year.

Af­ter Car­ni­val, with in­stru­ments and sound equip­ment pur­chased by God­dard and Chow Lin-on from Char­lie's, NY, and the align­ing to a spon­sor Wit­co, the ag­gre­ga­tion of­fi­cial­ly be­came Man­hat­tan Char­lie's Roots.

Chris "Tam­bu" Her­bert was the first lead male vo­cal­ist while Wendy Prescott, was the first fe­male front lin­er when the band was launched in Ju­ly 1977.The fol­low­ing year it linked with Pe­ter Min­shall 1978 band Zo­di­ac, thus forg­ing a re­la­tion­ship be­tween mu­sic and mas. Both bands cre­at­ed a huge im­pact on the road.

Man­hat­tan Char­lie's Roots was then in­vit­ed to take part in Grena­da and Guyana Car­ni­val along with Kaiso­ca cul­tur­al shows by pro­mot­er Neil Chan, while it con­tin­ued to record names like Duke, Ra­jah, Joe Tem­po, Singing Francine and Bri­go.

God­dard stat­ed at the launch that for them it was from stu­dio to fetes. He added that in the be­gin­ning they got licks for on­ly play­ing so­ca but that was their mis­sion and even­tu­al­ly peo­ple came around and were just wait­ing to hear their lat­est record­ing played in fetes.

He said: "Our band was formed to pro­mote so­ca mu­sic to the rest of the world. We played on­ly so­ca mu­sic whether peo­ple knew it or not." Their sec­ond al­bum � Sun­shine and You � fea­tured Carl and Car­ol Ja­cobs, Robin Imamshah, Steve Sealy, Col­in Stephens and Jude Bethel.

Af­ter play­ing mu­sic for Min­shall's Car­ni­val of the Sea for Car­ni­val 1979, the band toured the Caribbean, Cana­da and NY, main­ly to spread the gospel of so­ca.Then in 1980, a song for Min­shall's Dance Macabre, Blue Boy's (now Su­perblue) So­ca Bap­tist and Pen­guin's Look the Dev­il Dey were all pro­duced by Char­lie's Roots.

Lat­er that year David Rud­der joined the band and in 1981 made a hit with Jun­gle Fever, a song com­posed for Min­shall's band of the same name. From there on there was no stop­ping that mas and mu­sic re­la­tion­ship, as Min­shall com­posed Cal­abash for his next pre­sen­ta­tion of the same name, sung by Rud­der, while com­po­si­tions for Min­shall's pre­sen­ta­tion of Callaloo and Riv­er were done by God­dard and Roots.

God­dard said: "We played non-stop in Min­shall bands. From when we left the mas camp to when we reach back." Pop­u­lar as he was, Tam­bu went on to tour the Caribbean from Guyana to Ja­maica mak­ing waves.From 1980 to 1990 Roots backed all top lo­cal ca­lyp­so and re­gion­al bards for car­ni­val.

Some time in 1986, the band to­geth­er with David Rud­der was signed to Warn­er Broth­ers and from then, did pro­mo­tion­al tours to Eng­land, Italy, France, Fin­land, Swe­den, Hol­land, Bel­gium, Brus­sels and Ger­many, as well as across Amer­i­ca and Cana­da re­peat­ed­ly.

And dur­ing the pe­ri­od 1986 - 1995, Roots were in­volved in a num­ber of projects. One, on the in­vi­ta­tion of By­ron Lee, they were was the first T&T band to play at Ja­maica's very first car­ni­val. And dur­ing those years too, the band al­so shared stage with in­ter­na­tion­al groups such as the Jack­son 5 in 1978, Bar­ry White, Kool and the Gang, Third World, Steel Pulse, Mi­a­mi Sound Ma­chine and KC and the Sun­shine Band.

Show­time on Sat­ur­day is 7 pm.