The 1940s were one of those significant times in Trinidad
and Tobago's history. In a very real sense, they marked the end of an epoch,
and the commencement of another. The period that came to an end was 'the old
time days'. A slow-paced, patois-speaking island, where everybody certainly
knew everybody else, and where the events of the day passed from mouth to ear
with the easy familiarity of village life.
There was a club called the 'Long Tom Cigar Smoking Club of
Almond Walk' that met early every morning outside Mouttet's on what is now
Broadway, smoke, drink coffee, and talk about the latest news. This club,
mentioned in Bodu's '....' and referred to by Col. Collens is worth knowing.
Old-time calypsonians like Executor belonged there, as well as the Jones' of
Duncan Street who were first to play 'dragon mas', but also such luminaries as
old Mr. Gaston-Johnson and José Bodu. They ran old-time Carnival. ... Carnival
competition downtown was the event!
Our story begins around 1903. It concerns a young girl of a
prominent creole family. Well brought up, gentle, she had attended the Catholic
Convent for young ladies in Port of Spain. Soon after leaving school, she met a
man. He was from an entirely different background, and was described by people
who knew his as "ne'er do well" and "just a common man in the
street".
Distracted by passion, blind with love, she left her home
and moved in with this person and lived with him for some time. After a years
or so, he put her out on the streets and she became a lady of the night, a
streetwalker. Naturally in a small community, that was sensational!
Those were the circumstances around which a song was
created. The song was called "L'année passée". The composer was
Lionel Belasco. Forty-odd years later, with the world at war, this melody with
new lyrics became one of the most popular songs of the war years. It celebrated
a lifestyle, the change in the overall society of our island. It was called
"Rum and Coca Cola", and was rendered by the Andrew Sisters, the most
famous singing group of the day to perhaps millions of servicemen all over the
world.
The composer, Lionel Belasco, was the most accomplished
musician in Trinidad. Growing up in Duke Street, he had lived from his
childhood in a musical environment. His mother had been a concert pianist and
music teacher. He started to composed at the age of 12, and had written over
the years hundreds of waltzes, ballads, pasillos, calypsos and rumbas, becoming
the foremost composer in the West Indies. Belasco toured a lot with his own
band from Cuba to Belize. The American Victor Recording Company recognised his
talent and in 1914 sent technicians to Trinidad to record his band at the
London Electric Cinema, which later became the Astor. Belasco later appeared at
Carnegie Hall and Grand Central Palace, on National Radio and in several motion
pictures made by Paramount. He was a serious artist, but never lost his
whimsical charm and sense of humour. He still thought that a woman's extended
hand was for kissing, not for shaking.
During his stay in the United States, Lionel, or 'Lanky' as
he was known, had made the acquaintance of an impresario by the name of Maurice
Baron. Together, they produced many songbooks and collections of written music,
which they published and copyrighted in the 1910s in New York.
It was suggested in court that "Rum and Coca Cola"
had been lifted from a song in a folio published by them, entitled 'Calypso
Songs of the West Indies'. The legal task before the lawyer representing Baron
and Belasco was not an easy one. The charge was plagiarism - that a literary or
musical work has been stolen from its real creator. When physical or tangible
property is stolen, it changes hands. The owner is no longer in possession of
it. But when a melody is copied, the owner still has it, and so has the thief!
Furthermore, the 'stolen goods' can be disguised by some changes and be
presented as an original work. After all, there are only 7 notes in the
diatonic scale and 12 notes in the chromatic scale, and in spite of coincidence
and the miracle of infinite permutations, one can always demonstrate a prior
similarity to a least a snatch of a few lines. To win a plagiarism suit, the
plaintiff must establish no merely some similarity with his own prior work, but
substantial copying therefrom, as one legal expert put it. And this was precisely
what was undertaken in the Baron and Belasco case by the New York firm of
attorneys at law. What ensued was to be a landmark case. Baron's and Belasco's
lawyers were not bothered with the lyrics of the song, whose origins were not
their concern per se.
Lord Invader is credited as having written the words for
"Rum and Coca Cola". When Belasco was asked why he did not take
action against Lord Invader, he replied that "he was a brother".
Perhaps Lanky and Invader met on Broadway one morning and decided that a sad
thing was happening, and remembered 'L'année passée' as history repeating
itself? In any event, the case was the music. Maurice Baron had written the
harmony for "L'année passée". In court, he pointed out that it had
sixteen chords and that "Rum and Coca cola" had fourteen identical
chords, in the same places and in the same consecutive order.
But most significant of all of the chords written by him was
one that was 'musically harsh', so to speak. It was deliberately made so to
give a dramatic effect to the French world 'fille' (little girl) in
"L'année passée", and thus emphasized the contrast between an
innocent girl and the streetwalker she became in the following year, an event
that had occured in 1903.
The same dissonant or out chord was found in the identical
same spot in "Rum and Coca Cola". There was no reason for its
existence there. the copier had left his calling card. The song had been first
sung by Jeri Sullovan at the Versailles Night club in New York. It made an
impact. The Andrews Sisters recorded it and 200,000 copies were sold, citing
Mory Amsterdam as the composer on the record jacket. Maurice Baron and Lionel
Belasco won their case, and were paid handsomely.,
The war years, from 1939 to 1945, were a watershed period in
Trinidad and Tobago, one which were marked by the lyrics of these two calypsos:
"Since the Yankees come to Trinidad
They have the young girls going mad.
The young girls say they treat them nice
Make Trinidad like Paradise.
They buy Rum and Coca Cola
Go down Point Cumana
Both mother and daughter
Working for the Yankee dollar."
The Mighty Sparrow sang ten years after the war:
"Well the girls in town feeling sad,
No more Yankees in Trinidad,
They going to close down the base for good,
Dorothy have to make what she could.
All of them who use to make style
Taking anything with a smile."
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