SOTU #326 (Lonnie & Rose )

wee_ginga_yin

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This weeks ukulele challenge is to explore the musical genres of Skiffle and Calypso. The main artists are Lonnie Donegan and Calypso Rose. But you can cover anybody who has done songs in the Skiffle or Calypso styles.

You can find playlists of their music at.
Lonnie Donegan:
and Calypso Rose:

Here is a list of Traditional Skiffle songs
Other Calypso singers that you might like to explore

If you can... do alternate skiffle and calypso songs... that is to say if you do a Lonnie Donegan song then you must do a Calypso Rose song before going on to the next skiffle song and so on and so forth.

I hope you have a good week. All the best Rob.

Playlists
SOTU #326: Skiffle
SOTU #326: Calypso
 
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Really fun idea Wee_Rob

Now I gotta skiffle off to Biffalo....

or is that

Calipso off to Mixico?
 
alternate skiffle and calypso songs...

great challenge! my dad knows his skiffle, plus i bet he knows plenty of calypso songs too, i shall get him on board with my research this week, with his musical thinking cap!
 
Nice one!A challenge for me too.
Take some inspiration folks..one of the most unusual Calypso albums recorded was by Hollywood "hellraiser" actor Robert Mitchum. Called "Calypso - Is like so".While filming in Jamaica in the '50's he got enthralled with the music and subsequently recorded a Calypso album.
 
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If Lonnie Donnegan sung it, is it, by definition, a skiffle song?
 
alternate skiffle and calypso songs...

great challenge! my dad knows his skiffle, plus i bet he knows plenty of calypso songs too, i shall get him on board with my research this week, with his musical thinking cap!

Well I thought that the week might get top heavy with skiffle songs
so I thought it best to go with alternate genres so the Calypso does not
get left out.

SOCA is very happy music, for inspiration you could try the Mighty Sparrow
 
Nice one!A challenge for me too.
Take some inspiration folks..one of the most unusual Calypso albums recorded was by Hollywood "hellraiser" actor Robert Mitchum. Called "Calypso - Is like so".While filming in Jamaica in the '50's he got enthralled with the music and subsequently recorded a Calypso album.

That was a fun fact. I had look that up to see what he had done.
 
So glad somebody is bringing these genre's to light. Skiffle has such an amazing history - I don't know much about calypso but excited to hear and learn.
 
I'm probably a wee bit early getting this one yin...but I am at work and tend to have a busy morning, then a run to the airport and yada yada yada. This is my favorite Lonnie Song and the very first skiffle song that I was introduced to.

 
I'm probably a wee bit early getting this one yin...but I am at work and tend to have a busy morning, then a run to the airport and yada yada yada. This is my favorite Lonnie Song and the very first skiffle song that I was introduced to.

Welcome to the party. You have the honour of being the first to be added to the SKIFFLE playlist.
Great choice of song. Funnily enough my motto used to be (probably still is)
Never let good taste stand in the way of style
Everyone on SOTU has their own unique style and that is what makes the seasons
such a rich experience.

Thank for setting the mood for the seasons I think both skiffle and Calypso are real feel good music
and that is what we are aiming for this week. Thanks once again and I have updated the original post
to include the link to the skiffle playlist. Check it out.
 
Calypso vs Mento

I blame Harry Belafonte. He called his 1956 breakout album, consisting almost entirely of songs in the Jamaican mento style, Calypso!. And Jamaican musicians very definitely know on which side their bread is buttered. So when the cruise ships in the 1950s & 60s disembarked on the North Shore and their passengers asked for some of those calypso songs like Harry Belafonte sings, the hotel house bands would just wink at each other and sang them what they wanted to hear.

Ironically, Robert Mitchum's "Calypso, is like so", released a year later, & which sadly failed to trouble the compilers of the Billboard Top 100, is genuine calypso, well received by Trini calypsonians, coming about because he fell in love with the music while filming 'Heaven knows, Mr Allison' on Trinidad's sister island, Tobago.

At any event, the 1,2&,- &4& (DDu uDu) rhythm of Jamaican mento got re-baptised as 'calypso', or generic 'island' strum.

But calypso is native to Trinidad, not Jamaica. And Trinidad is some 1100 miles to the south-east of Jamaica, with a very different history and culture; and until the 1920s (with the inauguration of the West Indies Cricket Board, 1927), there was virtually no contact of any kind between the two islands. In the actual, Trini, calypso rhythm, it's the 2nd beat of the bar that's dropped, not the 3rd: 1,-&3,4, (D, uD,D). Say to yourself 'Walk! The big dog. Walk! The big dog.' and you'll be pretty much on the Trini calypso beat.

In point of fact, Trinidadian calypso tends to use all 8 1/8th notes in a bar of 4/4, so that it goes DuDuDuDu (Walk up to the big-ger dog-gie), but the essence (the pulse) is that 'Walk! The big dog.' rhythm, I mentioned earlier.
You can hear it to great effect in King Selewa's (a modern-day calypsonian, based in Marseilles of all places) cover of Lord Executor's (Philip Garcia's) 1937 calypso I don' know how the young men livin' - note though that this is an 'old-style' calypso in a minor key. Most 'modern' calypsos (say from Lord Kitchener onwards) are in a major key:



Read more about it here 'Calypso' strum - is it in fact a mento strum?'
 
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And the week is off... Working as an expat here in SE Asia, by circle of friends is much like the Seasonistas. I got friends from all over the world working with me here in Yangon. Kiwis, Aussies, South Africans, Poles, Canadians, Irish and of course, the English. Here's a song about the last battle between the USA and Britain, as sung by Lonnie, the Battle of New Orleans.

 
A font of knowledge Paul and I hope this information swings people to get involved with the
Mighty Lords Thanks for that. I had a fear that the skiffle would overshadow the calypso
but you exposition might just have remedied that.
 
Thanks Rob, I'll try and bring something along later - at the moment I'm still gunning for It's Too Darn Hot! for Andy's Season :)
 
A Lonnie D. First time I heard it was today. But it's one of those songs I know I'd like playing as soon as I heard it. It reminds me of a cross between "Wayfaring Stranger" and "keep your lamp trimmed and burning".
Some gratuitous harp included. Song in Dm harp in C - third position harp for those genteel harpists that walk amongst us.
Lonesome Traveler

 
And the week is off... Working as an expat here in SE Asia, by circle of friends is much like the Seasonistas. I got friends from all over the world working with me here in Yangon. Kiwis, Aussies, South Africans, Poles, Canadians, Irish and of course, the English. Here's a song about the last battle between the USA and Britain, as sung by Lonnie, the Battle of New Orleans.

You naughty little revolutionary. King George would have you incarcerated in the tower for that song.
You Americans don't fight fair. Hiding behind the bushes and taking pot shots at us. Who taught you
those guerrilla tactics, that is just not cricket Sir. The marquis of Queensbury would be most displeased
with your attitude towards fighting. Such sedition is not allowed in the Dorm. I am going to report you to matron.
 
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