Goodnight Ladies and Gents - The Creole Music of Lionel Belasco

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Belasco was the Scott Joplin of calypso: he composed West Indian music from folk sources, which he found on his many travels throughout the islands, and was the first person to popularize calypso outside of Trinidad. Piano player, bandleader, composer, and entrepreneur, Belasco recorded more West Indian songs before World War II than any other performer.

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In the world of Calypso, Lionel Belasco is an iconoclast. He was born in Barbados; his father was a Sephardic Jew who sang baritone and played the violin, his mother a Trinidadian who classically trained the young pianist in their various homes in Barbados, Venezuela (whose music is highly in evidence in his work), and eventually Trinidad. But the young musician had a penchant for the local music and the local sports like stick fighting, and when he decided to become a professional, all of these images collided to create one of the most unique Calypsonians of any era. Classical piano, violin that crosses easily between Beethoven and European folk fiddle styles, and not a little of the "sweet band" jazz of American bands like the Paul Whiteman Orchestra are brought together by Belasco to great effect in these recordings made mostly in New York City, a place where he became something of a star in the '20s and '30s. The musicians are a star-studded lot: vocalist Wilmouth Houdini, violinist Cyril Montrose, and guitarist Gerald Clarke pepper these recordings, punctuating and counterpointing the structured songs of Belasco with a looser jazz feel. An added bonus on this 27-track collection are a number of solo performances and short interviews with Belasco in 1961, where he retells his story and explains the music. His songwriting was legend, his voice a charm, and his music some of the best of the era. --Louis Gibson

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