{"id":386,"date":"2011-09-10T04:50:34","date_gmt":"2011-09-10T04:50:34","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.quiliby.com\/all\/?p=386"},"modified":"2011-09-10T04:50:34","modified_gmt":"2011-09-10T04:50:34","slug":"%e2%80%9cif-chance-will-have-me-king-why-chance-may-crown-me-%e2%80%9d","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.quiliby.com\/all\/%e2%80%9cif-chance-will-have-me-king-why-chance-may-crown-me-%e2%80%9d.html","title":{"rendered":"\u201cIf chance will have me king, why, chance may crown me.\u201d"},"content":{"rendered":"

The following article was posted by Michael Eldridge<\/a> on August 14, 2011 on the site, Working for the Yankee Dollar.<\/a><\/p>\n

<\/a><\/p>\n

MacBeth the Great (Patrick MacDonald), probably at Renaissance Ballroom, July 1947 | From the William P. Gottlieb Collection of Jazz Photos, Library of Congress<\/span><\/p>\n

I keep coming across bits of trivia I can\u2019t believe I haven\u2019t stumbled upon before. \u00a0I already knew, thanks in part to Garl Jefferson<\/a>, something of how calypso shared fans and venues with bebop in late 1940s Harlem. \u00a0Turns out they even shared bills. \u00a0Here\u2019s a lovely anecdote from a famous piece previously unbeknownst to me, Paul Bacon\u2019s \u201cThe High Priest of Bebop: The Inimitable Mr. Monk\u201d (published originally in The Record Changer<\/em>\u00a0in 1949, it was reprinted in Rob Van der Bliek\u2019s Thelonious Monk Reader<\/a><\/em>):<\/p>\n

There is, in Harlem, a monstrous barn of a dance-hall called the \u201cGolden Gate\u201d; quite a number of affairs are produced there every year, and the usual system is to have two alternating bands working\u2013in the last few years the two bands have been one bop group and one Calypso band. \u00a0(There are a couple of remarkable calypso bands in New York, playing a real powerhouse music which is closer to Harlem in 1928 than Trinidad in any year.) The occasion I\u2019m thinking of took place there in 1947\u2026Macbeth\u2019s calypso contingent shared the stand with a bop sextet fronted by Monk; the boppers were second in line, so, after a long set by Macbeth, Monk\u2019s band wandered desultorily to the stand.<\/p>\n

Monk fussed with the piano, discovering that it was a pretty venerable instrument\u2026Close examination showed him that the pedal post was shakily attached; he jiggled the whole piano apprehensively, then shrugged his shoulders and concentrated on some music left behind by Macbeth\u2019s pianist.<\/p>\n

A little later I became aware that Thelonious was doing something extraordinary\u2026as I watched, mesmerised, I saw that he was yanking at the pedal post with all his might (first he kept up with the band by reaching up with his right hand to strike an occasional chord, but he had to apply himself to the attack on the post with both hands, and get his back into it, too). There was a slight crack, a ripping sound, and off came the whole works, to be flung aside as Monk calmly resumed playing. \u00a0He never looked at it again, but when Macbeth\u2019s man came back on the stand he stopped short, stunned. \u00a0It was obvious that here was a new experience, something outside the ken of a rational man; for the rest of the evening he looked upon Thelonious with a new respect.<\/p>\n

(Bacon,\u00a0the designer of dozens of classic albums for Blue Note and Riverside in the 1950s and\u00a0one of Monk\u2019s early journalistic champions\u2013jazz nerd and Down Beat <\/em>writer\/photograph Bill Gottlieb was another\u2013was interviewed at length<\/a> last year by Marc Myers for his blog JazzWax<\/em>.)<\/p>\n

<\/a><\/p>\n

Thelonious Monk at Minton’s Playhouse, ca. September 1947 | From the William P. Gottlieb Collection of Jazz Photos, Library of Congress<\/span><\/p>\n

So\u00a0Monk\u2019s Caribbean connection wasn\u2019t just second-hand. \u00a0He grew up in San Juan Hill, an African-American neighborhood on Manhattan\u2019s west side with a heavy West Indian presence<\/a>. \u00a0As Robin D. G. Kelley tells it in his magisterial biography of Monk<\/a>, \u201cWith the music, cuisine, dialects, and manners of the Caribbean and the American South everywhere in [San Juan Hill], virtually every kid became a kind of cultural hybrid,\u201d and on the radio, at block parties, and through his neighbors\u2019 victrolas, Monk inevitably \u201cabsorbed Caribbean music\u201d (23). \u00a0His drummer Denzil Best, co-composer of the calypso-inflected \u201cBemsha Swing,\u201d was the child of Bajan parents. \u00a0(\u201cBimsha\u201d is\u00a0a phonetic approximation of \u201cBimshire,\u201d one of Barbados\u2019 nicknames.) \u00a0\u00a0His admirer and sometime student Randy Weston recorded \u201cFire Down There<\/a>,\u201d a\/k\/a \u201cSt. Thomas,\u201d almost a year before Sonny Rollins did. \u00a0(In fact, Weston once told Rhashidah McNeill<\/a> that his waltz \u201cLittle Niles,\u201d composed in honor of his young son, was inspired by a \u201cswinging quadrille\u201d played for him by MacBeth.) \u00a0And while Monk\u2019s go-to bassist and Weston\u2019s childhood friend Ahmed Abdul-Malik, better known for his shared love (with Weston) of North African music, liked to tell people that his father was Sudanese, Robin Kelley claims that Abdul-Malik\u2019s given name was Jonathan Timm and that both his parents were from St. Vincent. \u00a0(The bassist covered \u201cDon\u2019t Stop the Carnival,\u201d a road march claimed by Lord Invader but associated with the Duke of Iron and Virgin Islands carnival, on his 1961 album\u00a0The Sounds of Ahmed Abdul-Malik<\/em>\u2013again, a year ahead of Rollins.) \u00a0I\u2019ve heard it rumored, moreover, that Abdul-Malik played for a time in MacBeth\u2019s band.<\/p>\n

<\/a><\/p>\n

MacBeth the Great, “Calypso Holiday” (Time Records S2144, 1961)<\/span><\/p>\n

As for MacBeth himself: born Patrick MacDonald in Trinidad, he made his first big mark as a performer singing with Gerald Clark\u2019s band at the Village Vanguard in 1940. The stylistic contrast between MacBeth and one of the other featured singers, Sir Lancelot, was marked; as the Afro-American<\/a><\/em> saw it, MacBeth \u201c[stole] the show.\u201d Short in stature, he nevertheless cut quite a figure: \u201cGayly dressed in red satin trousers, black loosely-belted tunic, casually draped black and green turban, the ends of which fall over his right shoulder, he sings the clever, clever words of the songs, shaking maracas.\u201d[1]<\/a> MacBeth recorded one tune, \u201cI Love to Read Magazines,\u201d with Clark for Varsity before the war, then more sides for Guild\/Musicraft in 1945, Asch\/Disc in 1946, Jade around 1949, and Monogram in the early 1950s. He participated in the famous \u201cCalypso at Midnight<\/a>\u201d concert at New York\u2019s Town Hall<\/a> in 1946 and subsequently organized his own twelve-piece orchestra. (\u201cMacbeth\u2019s Calypso Band\u201d also appeared on screen with Lord Invader in the \u201cPigmeat\u201d Markham vehicle House-Rent Party<\/a> <\/em>that same year.) \u00a0Besides playing in New York, where for many years he took part in Carnival balls in Harlem, Macbeth also performed up and down the East Coast. According to one account<\/a>, his band was in such demand that it sometimes had to be \u201csplit into two groups in order to fulfill engagements which were scheduled on the same night.\u201d\u00a0 After his death, the sides that MacBeth had done for Bob Shad<\/a>\u2018s Jade label were collected on a 1964 album called Calypso Holiday<\/em>, released\u00a0by the legendary producer, jazz fan, and A & R man\u2019s latest venture,\u00a0Time Records<\/a>. \u00a0<\/em>(Time was superseded by Mainstream<\/a>, which was eventually acquired by Sony Legacy, who may be behind a recent digital reissue<\/a> of MacBeth\u2019s Jade sides\u2013along with scores of other Mainstream titles.) \u00a0MacBeth\u2019s son Ralph MacDonald<\/a>, an accomplished percussionist and sometime arranger for Harry Belafonte in the early 1960s, got his start in his father\u2019s band.<\/p>\n

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Though it was Wilmoth Houdini<\/a> who crowned himself \u201cKing\u201d of the New York calypsonians, in July 1947 Houdini, the Duke of Iron, Lord Invader, and MacBeth the Great, along with \u201cdark horse\u201d the Count of Monte Cristo (the Duke\u2019s brother), staged a monarchy competition<\/a> at Harlem\u2019s storied\u00a0Renaissance Ballroom and Casino<\/a> to determine \u201cthe undisputed right to the title of Calypso King.\u201d \u00a0(I suspect that\u2019s where William Gottlieb\u2019s \u201cPortrait of Calypso<\/a>\u201d shots were captured.) \u00a0I don\u2019t know which of the rivals prevailed, or whether his victory was ever in fact disputed. \u00a0But of course MacBeth\u2019s kingly stature was implicit all along.<\/p>\n

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[1]<\/a> \u201cNew Kind of Singing: Calypso has Four Parts.\u201d Afro-American <\/em>\u00a022 June 1940: 13<\/p>\n

For original article: \u201cIf chance will have me king, why, chance may crown me.\u201d \u00ab Working for the Yankee Dollar<\/a>.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n

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The following article was posted by Michael Eldridge on August 14, 2011 on the site, Working for the Yankee Dollar. MacBeth the Great (Patrick MacDonald), probably at Renaissance Ballroom, July 1947 | From the William P. Gottlieb Collection of Jazz Photos, Library of Congress I keep coming across bits of trivia I can\u2019t believe I […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"ngg_post_thumbnail":0,"jetpack_post_was_ever_published":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_access":"","_jetpack_dont_email_post_to_subs":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_tier_id":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paywalled_content":false,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":"","jetpack_publicize_message":"","jetpack_publicize_feature_enabled":true,"jetpack_social_post_already_shared":false,"jetpack_social_options":{"image_generator_settings":{"template":"highway","enabled":false},"version":2}},"categories":[5],"tags":[142,397,148,143,146,70,147,144,149,145],"class_list":["post-386","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-music","tag-bebop","tag-calypso","tag-duke-of-iron","tag-gerard-clark","tag-houdini","tag-jazz","tag-lord-invader","tag-macbeth-the-great","tag-san-juan-hill","tag-thelonious-monk"],"jetpack_publicize_connections":[],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"jetpack_shortlink":"https:\/\/wp.me\/p4zx0X-6e","jetpack_likes_enabled":true,"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.quiliby.com\/all\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/386","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.quiliby.com\/all\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.quiliby.com\/all\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.quiliby.com\/all\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.quiliby.com\/all\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=386"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/www.quiliby.com\/all\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/386\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":390,"href":"https:\/\/www.quiliby.com\/all\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/386\/revisions\/390"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.quiliby.com\/all\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=386"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.quiliby.com\/all\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=386"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.quiliby.com\/all\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=386"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}