Calypso History Month (October 2015)
Attached: The Andrews Sisters adaptation of Rum and Coca Cola
https://youtu.be/zGxL2uNr7bk
According to Lord Invader...
Calypso is the folklore of Trinidad, a style of poetry, telling about current events in song. Back home in the West Indies, Trinidad, where I'm from, it's a small island, I'm proud of it. I was traveling on a bus, someplace they call Point Cumana, a bathing resort, and I happened to see the G.I.s in the American social invasion in the West Indies, Trinidad. You know the girls used to get the candies and stuff like that, and they go to the canteens with the boys and so on, have fun. So I noticed since the G.I.s came over there, they really generally chase with soda, ordinary soda, but their chaser was Rum and Coke. They drink rum, and they like Coca-Cola as a chaser, so I studied that as an idea of a song, and Morey Amsterdam had the nerve to say that he composed that song back here.
The song became a local hit and was at the peak of its popularity when Amsterdam visited the island in September 1943 as part of a U.S.O tour.
Since the Yankee come to Trinidad
Calypso is the folklore of Trinidad, a style of poetry, telling about current events in song. Back home in the West Indies, Trinidad, where I'm from, it's a small island, I'm proud of it. I was traveling on a bus, someplace they call Point Cumana, a bathing resort, and I happened to see the G.I.s in the American social invasion in the West Indies, Trinidad. You know the girls used to get the candies and stuff like that, and they go to the canteens with the boys and so on, have fun. So I noticed since the G.I.s came over there, they really generally chase with soda, ordinary soda, but their chaser was Rum and Coke. They drink rum, and they like Coca-Cola as a chaser, so I studied that as an idea of a song, and Morey Amsterdam had the nerve to say that he composed that song back here.
The song became a local hit and was at the peak of its popularity when Amsterdam visited the island in September 1943 as part of a U.S.O tour.
Since the Yankee come to Trinidad
They got the young girls all goin' mad
Young girls say they treat 'em nice
Make Trinidad like paradise
The original lyrics to "Rum and Coca-Cola" written by Rupert Grant,another Calypso musician from Trinidadian who went by the stage name of Lord Invader.(The true credits for music and lyrics were restored in a plagiarism lawsuit won by attorney Louis Nizer the account of which can be read in his book,My Life in Court.)
