A London Calypso Compilation

London Is the Place for Me Various Artists (Honest Jon's Records)

If City of Spades had a soundtrack, it certainly would have been the sassily insouciant calypso that swept into postwar Britain with the immigrants who populate MacInnes' book. Calypso, too, was a wackily distorted mirror, celebrating the era's great events and odd mundanities with outlandish panache and humor. (Those mundane eccentricities of mid-50s Britain would soon be given one of the catchiest and most apt theatrical monikers of the 20th century?"kitchen sink.")

London's calypso scene?long overshadowed by other, later Caribbean musical exports such as ska, rock steady and reggae?now has been compiled on London Is the Place for Me. The disc has the whiff of a time capsule to it, with songs celebrating Queen Elizabeth II's coronation and Ghanaian independence. Yet, this music's brash forthrightness and undeniable charm make London Is the Place for Me more than a mere history lesson. These songs possess an exuberant friction sparked by cultural clashes filtered through a sophisticated musical sensibility.

Calypso arrived in Britain almost a decade before MacInnes' book appeared. It was carried there?along with a group of West Indian veterans of World War II and other assorted immigrants?on the Empire Windrush. The ship docked in the UK on June 21, 1948, and along for the ride were two men who became calypso's first British celebrities: Aldwyn Roberts (known as "Lord Kitchener") and Egbert Moore (who bore the moniker "Lord Beginner").

Kitchener is the better known of the two artists, due mostly to his astounding success later in life as a Trinidadian carnival king. (Kitchener won the island's "Road March" title 10 times in the years after 1963.) In fact, Kitchener was already a calypso star in the Caribbean when he stepped off the boat. He quickly became a celebrity in the UK too, peddling songs such as "London Is the Place for Me" and "My Landlady" ("On the walls she stick up a notice/No lady friends, not even a princess").

In fact, the collection's title song became one of Kitchener's trademark compositions. Its deadpan opening and closing (a piano plunking out the chimes of Big Ben) bookend a ragged shuffling rhythm and goofily exaggerated view of London's charms ("I have every comfort and every sport/And my residence is at the Hampton Court"). Even taken at face value, it remains an inspired bit of nonsense. Kitchener's other eight songs on the collection possess a similar melody and fluency (one song even celebrates bebop with snippets of quotation eerily close to "sampling"), but he occasionally employs them in a more sardonic manner. For instance, on the deceptively lilting "If You're Not White You're Black," Kitchener assails 50s-era racism with a contemptuous sneer:

Your father is an African

Your mother may be Norwegian

You pass me when you say goodnight

Feeling you are really white

Your skin may be a little pink

And that's the reason why you think

The complexion of your face

Can hide you from the Negro race

That's pretty strong stuff for any sort of pop song in 1953. Yet, as good as the Lord Kitchener songs are?and most of them are not available elsewhere, despite his fame?the true revelation on London Is the Place for Me is Lord Beginner, whose five tracks on the collection are astounding. Lord Beginner's voice is deeper and more insistent. His songs don't sport the sheer fluency of Kitchener's work, but they often prove to be more musically intricate and clever. For instance, his take on race in Britain, "Mix Up Matrimony," is a marvelous syncopated essay on racially mixed marriages, with a chorus chanting "incorporate and amalgamate" behind Beginner as he slyly notes that racial segregation will end because:

Mixed marriage is the passion

And the world is saying so

Lovers choosing partners

Of every kind you know

This is freedom from above

So what they're thinking of

Is to grab the one that they love

Beginner's tunes are more bound up in their time than Kitchener's songs are, but the bizarre touches of brilliance in each composition push the listener past the fading sepia of their occasion. "Victory Test Match" is the singer's subtly rollicking tribute to the West Indies' stunning 1950 cricket victory over England, which opens with Beginner's charmingly odd incantation, "Cricket, lovely cricket!" Or check out the swirling rush of woodwinds that seeks to mimic a storm on Beginner's "Jamaica Hurricane," discomfiting the listener until the expected calypso strum and rhythm suddenly swoop in.

Kitchener and Beginner dominate London Is the Place for Me, contributing 14 of its 20 tracks. Yet there are other gems, including the mellifluous (and not so aptly named) Mighty Terror's wryly somber "No Carnival in Britain" and Young Tiger's po-faced tribute to the pomp and ceremony of royal Britain, "I Was There (at the Coronation)." The latter song giddily piles on the details of the size of the crowd and the formal titles of attendees at Elizabeth II's crowning ("The Duke of Edinburgh, dignified and neat/Sat beside her as Admiral of the Fleet") until the tune nearly topples under its own unabashed glee.

One of the offbeat byways of the collection is that it also features a song ("Aguiti") by Lord Invader ("Rupert Grant"), who's better known as co-author of the Andrews Sisters' 1944 hit "Rum and Coca Cola." Initially Invader wasn't credited for the lyrics to the massive U.S. hit, which had been swiped and copyrighted by comedian Morey Amsterdam. Invader and the author of the song's music later sued for plagiarism and won substantial damages, but only after a lengthy battle in the U.S. courts.

The historical import of Kitchener and Beginner's music is difficult to underestimate. They paved the way for other Caribbean music to come to Britain and elsewhere, and London Is the Place for Me is a missing link in the chain from Caribbean folk music to dancehall. But the ambling charm of these songs has considerable appeal beyond their historical value. Yes, it's great summer music, but what makes it amazing is that it was conjured in the kitchen sink of cold and gloomy 1950s Britain.

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