The Mighty Sparrow flies again!
ONLY A SELECT few have been interviewed by MOJO 50 years after their death was first reported, and if knight of the realm Paul McCartney is the most famous, he shares that honour with genuine royalty, Trinidad’s Calypso King of the World, 85-year-old Slinger Francisco, AKA Mighty Sparrow.
It was all Big Mouthed Lillian’s fault – in 1970 she said she’d seen Sparrow’s funeral on television. “People would say, ‘I heard you died,’” he says, sitting in his living room in New York. “‘Hey, you alive, what’s going on?’” He launches into one of his biggest numbers, Sparrow Dead: “I hear he have yellow fever/Something in the bladder… Who kill de Sparrow? Nobody know.” “What is it, 2020?” he laughs. “Sparrow still alive!”
And, clearly, kicking, with a new album of vintage favourites, Live At 85!, to talk about as well as a future slot at Glastonbury and the songs he is currently writing. Covid-19 is a fruitful topic, but unlike Presidents Kennedy and Obama, Donald Trump does not inspire a man who has been making hits out of current affairs since his first smash, 1956’s Jean And Dinah, offered his services to working girls lamenting the US Navy’s departure from Trinidad.
That year, Sparrow was crowned Carnival Calypso King for the first time, collecting a paltry $40. Twelve months later, he refused to defend his title, releasing Boycott Carnival instead. “The people who were organising everything, I don’t think they had much respect for calypso,” he says.
With other headline acts joining the boycott, the carnival committee capitulated and, thanks to Sparrow, calypso became a serious international business, with Harry Belafonte’s Calypso LP selling a million and sparking a worldwide phenomenon.
Present on Live At 85!, Jean And Dinah also opened Robert Mitchum’s celebrated 1957 LP Calypso – Is Like So… “And up ’til now I didn’t get no money from the Robert Mitchum people,” protests Sparrow, “and I need help, you know. I don’t mind getting paid late. Send it to me. I’m in Queens, the postman knows me, apartment 6U.”
The 1960s belonged to Sparrow and his sparring partners Lord Kitchener (between 1963 and 1976, they won all but one of the Carnival Road March songs of the year) and Lord Melody (“My good buddy,” Sparrow says of a man he frequently claimed had a “face like a crocodile” in the proto rap battles – “picong” – that hyped their shows). Sparrow has rarely stopped working since, writing, recording and touring the world. For a man well into his ninth decade, he looks strong and healthy – could his self-proclaimed virility be more than typical calypsonian bragging? To quote one of his songs, Bois Bande, back at him, does he have any advice for any readers who feel they might be losing their vitality?
“You want me to tell you my prescription?” guffaws Sparrow. “The Viagra people would get mad! You want me in trouble?” Then, in a sly whisper: “Wait, I’ve got your number, I’ll call you later and tell you.”
“The Viagra people would get mad!” MIGHTY SPARROW