Black Music Sunday: Tricking and treating to the ‘Zombie Jamboree’ for Halloween

The 12 months Lord Intruder (Winston O’Connor) recorded “Jumbie Jamboree” because the B-side to his tune “Catastrophe with the Police.” He apparently had the phrases to the tune printed in a calypso e book previous to recording the tune a while later. Together with Lord Invader, Lord Intruder was one of many first well-known Calypso artists to grow to be higher identified and acclaimed outdoors of Trinidad. The 2 are sometimes confused as being the writer of the unique “Jumbie Jamboree.” Maybe probably the most attention-grabbing factor in regards to the tune is that whereas it’s usually attributed to Lord Intruder, the tune was penned by Conrad Eugene Mauge, Jr. … who might have additionally been one other pseudonym for Lord Intruder. Mauge was additionally a songwriter, PhD, and writer of a number of books. Data is hard to search out on this regard, but it surely all simply provides to the tune’s allure and legacy. […]

With tongue in cheek lyrics (“Zombies from all components of the island, a few of them was a terrific Calypsonians”) particularly mentioning sure Caribbean traditions (“though the season was Carnival, we get collectively in bacchanal”), it makes a kind of sense that the author is having some enjoyable right here.

It’s attention-grabbing to assume the tune we all know at present wasn’t initially wasn’t even about zombies. Actually, the tune was by no means meant to be about these brain-eating, lumbering zombies you see within the films. Initially, the tune was known as “Jumbie Jamboree.”

Although there is no such thing as a recording out there of Lord Intruder’s unique, there’s a recording of a really early 1953 model. I’ve to confess I went into shock after I found that the lead singer, often called “The Charmer,” was none aside from Eugene Walcott, who is thought to us at present as Louis Farrakhan. Richard Lei reported the story for The Washington Put up in 1995:

She knew him as “The Charmer,” and he definitely was that. A lean and good-looking younger man, with a touch of island breeze in his patter, he’d drop by Daisy’s desk on the neighborhood newspaper from time to time with a brand new publicity photograph, hoping to plug one in every of his upcoming calypso reveals. “Oh, honey, he was attractive,” remembers Daisy Voigt, who in these days wrote a teen column underneath the title Dizzy Dame Daisy. “He was as high quality as new wine. We have been all half in love with him. We thought he was nearly as good as Harry Belafonte.”

It was decrease Roxbury, Boston, the mid-Nineteen Fifties. Belafonte’s Caribbean sound was breaking big-time, however within the neighborhood, Voigt stated, The Charmer held sway. Everyone additionally knew him as Gene Walcott, the musical pleasure of the West Indian immigrant neighborhood served by the Boston Graphic weekly newspaper. In coming years, he would make information underneath one other title: Louis Farrakhan.

The calypso interval is not part of the Honorable Minister’s resume that is eagerly promoted by the Nation of Islam, however these early years assist to light up his character. Louis Farrakhan (born Louis Eugene Walcott) at all times wished to be a musician. The person has been drawing — and pleasing — crowds for the reason that age of 16, as each a calypso singer and a classical violinist.

Right here he’s in “Again to Again, Stomach to Stomach” as The Charmer with the Johnny McCleverty Calypso Boys:

Sue Rogers at BugJams wrote of “Zombie Jamboree”:

Like many “people” songs, there’s unclear copyright within the tune and plenty of traces are variable between variations. Whereas many variations set the tune in a New York, Lengthy Island or Woodlawn Cemetery, some place it in Kingston or an island cemetery. The third verse is probably the most variable with The Charmer’s model discussing the native meals at a earlier jumbie carnival parade whereas Rockapella’s model discusses zombies and King Kong invading varied New York Metropolis landmarks. The third verse of King Flash’s 1956 model additional discusses the feminine zombie’s romantic pursuit of the singer.

The folks singers who put the tune onto U.S. charts have been The Kingston Trio.

CompVid101’s YouTube notes defined a number of the background on the Kingston Trio’s commentary and the tune:

The unique Kingston Trio of Bob Shane, Nick Reynolds, and Dave Guard carry out one in every of their greatest identified and most beloved songs, “Zombie Jamboree,” from the group’s second album on Capitol Information, “…from the Hungry i” in 1958. The tune was written round 1953 by Winston O’Connor, a Calypso musician from Trinidad and Tobago who styled himself “Lord Intruder.” The droll introduction heard on this video by Trio member Dave Guard misidentifies the composer and group as “Lord Invader and his 12 Penetrators.” Guard was joking; whereas there was an precise Lord Invader within the calypso world, he did not write this specific tune, and there was by no means a band of that title on file.

The Kingston Trio began out as a gaggle most taken with performing calypso music, and their very title derived from the affiliation of “Kingston” with the Caribbean as a lot because it did from the vaguely Ivy League sound that it had as nicely. When the Trio’s recording of “Tom Dooley” turned a monster hit a couple of months after the “Hungry i” album was launched, Capitol Information determined to market the Kingstons as “people singers” – a label with which the Trio was at all times uncomfortable and which traditionalists resented. However as sole surviving unique member Bob Shane remarks, “After Tom Dooley broke out, Capitol Information got here to us with a terrific huge suitcase full of cash and stated ‘You boys are actually people singers.” We stated “You are rattling proper we’re!’ In spite of everything, we have been all enterprise majors in faculty.”

“Zombie Jamboree” has additionally been recorded by the calypso king himself, Harry Belafonte (although unusually three years after the KT) and extra not too long ago within the Nineteen Nineties by the vocal group Rockapella. 

Of the a number of covers of “Zombie Jamboree,” singer, actor, humanitarian, and civil rights activist Harry Belafonte might have recorded a number of the greatest variations of the tune a number of occasions, beginning in 1962.

RELATED STORY: Black Music Sunday: Celebrating Harry Belafonte on Worldwide Jazz Day