Calypso Awakening: From The Emory Cook Collection [Original recording remastered]

Calypso Awakening (Artist) | Format: Audio CD

Product Details

• Audio CD (September 26, 2000)
• Original Release Date: September 26, 2000
• Number of Discs: 1
• Format: Original recording remastered
• Label: Smithsonian Folkways
• ASIN: B00004X0L2
• In-Print Editions: MP3 Download
• Average Customer Review: 4.9 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (10 customer reviews)
• Amazon Best Sellers Rank: #207,974 in Music (See Top 100 in Music)

Editorial Reviews

From Rhythm Magazine

During the late 1950s, calypso music in Trinidad was undergoing changes that reflected the island's political ferment. During that fertile period, Emory Cook, one of the pioneers of high-fidelity recording, was producing a sizeable and varied collection that he released on his labels. Cook was quite enamored of calypso, at least partly for its improvisational qualities, and he went out of his way to record more or less spontaneous musical and vocal interactions in their natural settings. The 21 tracks on this release draw from nine Cook Records albums to present some wonderfully uninhibited performances. Included here are rousing performances by Mighty Sparrow and Lord Melody, both individually and as a duo singing picong melodies (consisting of friendly impromptu insults, otherwise known as versifying). There are also humorous and ribald songs, as well as Commander's masterpiece of irony called "No Crime, No Law." -Paul-Emile Comeau

Product Description

A flourishing of Calypso creativity, a dramatic period in Trinidad's history and an audio engineer inspired these exciting tracks, originally released on Cook Records between 1956 and 1962. Emory Cook used innovative recording techniques to capture the active interplay between calypsonians and their audiences. We hear classic song-duels between calypso legends like The Mighty Sparrow and Lord Melody, lively steel band processions, and a wide range of provocative calypso songs about life, love and politics. Live and studio recordings from Trinidad. 32 page booklet presents notes, song texts, Cook discography, bibliography. 67 minutes.

Customer Reviews

Most Helpful Customer Reviews

13 of 13 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars Full of energy!, December 17, 2003

By 

"Gimpy" Peach Johnson - See all my reviews

This review is from: Calypso Awakening: From The Emory Cook Collection (Audio CD)

This CD is a remarkable achievement, both musically and technically.

Musically, this is the real stuff--calypso music recorded on location in Trinidad by Emory Cook in the mid-1950s. It is vibrant, exciting music, reminiscent of early jazz. Although the lyircs to these pieces often critique very real social and political problems at the times ("Federation" and "No, Doctor, No"), others are bursting with humor ("Booboo Man"). Still, I find that this CD always puts me in a good mood. It's a great disc to pull out on a dull rainy day to spice things up a bit.

Technically, this CD is nothing short of amazing. These are not your typical historical field recordings. Emory Cook founded his own label, Cook Records (under which these titles were originally released) to show off his technical expertise in sound recording. These recordings are the ultimate in hi-fi! And, they are among the earliest stereo recordings. Long before it was possible to capture a stereo signal in one groove on records, Cook developed a type of record that required a double tonearm to track two separate grooves on different parts of the record. Each groove contained one channel of musical information, so when played simultaneously on a properly modified turntable, they provided the listener a true stereo recording-this in the early 1950s. The folks at Smithsonian Folkways (which acquired the Cook label in the early 1990s) have done an outstanding job remastering these stereo recordings for CD, and the result is a very enjoyable listening experience.

The accompanying booklet is also excellent, with extensive notes about the musicians and selections, printed lyrics, and photographs. Definitely recommended.

9 of 9 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars Gangsta Calypso, July 26, 2003

By 

Lawrence Waldron (Queens, NY United States) - See all my reviews
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Amazon Verified Purchase

This review is from: Calypso Awakening: From The Emory Cook Collection (Audio CD)

This commercial release from the Smithsonian vaults a la the Cook Collection is a treasurehouse of some of the 50's hottest. There is a good sense of the spontaneous Calypso Tent experience, which as the magazine blurb above points out, was Cook's recording forte.

But we can easily forget that Calypso originated as a music to accompany stick fighting. Bongo Man (Bongo Night) by Wrangler might remind us of this with its frantic beat. But the lyrics on two of these songs is noteworthy. In Carnival Celebration, Small Island Pride makes himself out to be a Carnival hoodlum "To show you I aim for trouble, on mih right hand is mih steel knuckle." He goes on to tell us he's got an icepick in his left pocket and a fighting stick under his jacket. This guy is armed to the teeth and by the end of the song, he declares his willingness to die. In fact, he says, "I done pay off mih lawyer, so he could pay off mih undertaker."
Indeed, there were such characters stalking the Carnival back then and we find more and more of them the further we go back into Carnival's rebellious past. We can trace fighting songs all the way back to Africa but they have never occurred in such great profusion as in corporate Hip Hop.
The other unfriendly, but side-splitting, tune on here is the Picong Duel between Sparrow and his then boss, Melody, who ran the Tent that Sparrow sang in. The extemporaneous insults fly and you can decide who wins. Here's another pan African trend that's shown up in today's Hip Hop. The parallel is heightened further by the fact that this is not quite a friendly duel.
Because Sparrow would eventually leave Melody's employ and over the next few years would release a string of insulting tunes about Melody, among them Madame Dracula about Melody's wife. Check that one out on Mighty Sparrow volume 4. On that same CD, the last verse in Simpson (the Funeral Agency Man) also takes a potshot at Melody's ugliness.
No, the beef between these two guys, from all I've heard as a boy in Trinidad, was quite real. But no one ever got physically hurt.

6 of 6 people found the following review helpful:

4.0 out of 5 stars A journey in time and space, September 7, 2005

By 

Mr. B. M. Woy "bryan woy" (France) - See all my reviews
(REAL NAME)   

This review is from: Calypso Awakening: From The Emory Cook Collection (Audio CD)

I ordered this CD after hearing a BBC Radio 4 documentary about the pioneering sound recording engineer Emory Cook earlier this year. The extract played was of Lord Melody singing "Boo boo man" in a calypso tent in 1956. I had never heard any recorded version of the song before as far as I knew, but I recognized it straight away and was overcome by a wave of nostalgia, because my mother used to make me and my sister laugh by singing it when we were children in the 1950s. I suppose she had heard the Harry Belafonte version on the radio.
Anyway, I was very happy to receive the CD, and enjoy listening to it. The exceptional quality of the sound recording in a "live" situation transports the listener in time and space, and you can imagine yourself as part of the audience in a calypso tent in Trinidad in the 1950s. The 30-page accompanying booklet is also very informative, including bibliography, discography, and the words to all the songs. Altogether an excellent product, of the quality one expects from the Smithsonian Institution.