Ray Funk

Among this year's hon­orees for Sun­shine Awards Hall of Fame, which will be held on Oc­to­ber 3 in Man­hat­tan, is the leg­endary so­ca mu­sic arranger and key­boardist Frankie McIn­tosh.

Since the mid-1970s, McIn­tosh has arranged over 2,500 songs and led record­ing ses­sions with al­most every im­por­tant ca­lyp­son­ian and so­ca artist in the Caribbean. He is a mem­ber of the elite pan­theon of arrangers, in­clud­ing Ed Wat­son, Le­ston Paul, Clive Bradley, and Pel­ham God­dard, who helped forge the rev­o­lu­tion­ary so­ca style in the late 1970s and ear­ly 1980s.

For many McIn­tosh's award is long over­due. St Vin­cent and the Grenadines leader Dr Ralph Gon­salves not­ed, "He is a Caribbean mu­sic icon who has ren­dered ex­cep­tion­al ser­vice as a mu­si­cian, arranger, and pro­duc­er. He has un­selfish­ly con­tributed his tal­ents to mold and help de­vel­op younger Caribbean artists." His coun­try has al­ready giv­en McIn­tosh the rare ho­n­our of putting him on a stamp.

Dr Hol­lis Liv­er­pool, the ca­lyp­son­ian Chalk­dust, who worked with McIn­tosh on nu­mer­ous record­ings re­flect­ed: "Frankie is one of those Caribbean ge­nius­es whom we of­ten take for grant­ed. As a Ca­lyp­son­ian on the stage, if I hap­pen to glimpse him as a mu­si­cian in the band, I know my ca­lyp­so per­for­mance will reach close to per­fec­tion."

Frankie McIn­tosh was born in Kingstown, St Vin­cent in 1946. His fa­ther, Arthur McIn­tosh, led a pop­u­lar dance or­ches­tra, the Melo­tones. The band played pri­mar­i­ly in­stru­men­tal dance or­ches­tra­tions of ca­lyp­so, Latin, and Amer­i­can stan­dards, but mem­bers gath­ered at the McIn­tosh home on Sun­day af­ter­noons for jazz jam ses­sions.

Frankie took pi­ano lessons as a young­ster start­ing at age nine, then joined his fa­ther's band at age ten and formed his own band by age 14. Af­ter grad­u­at­ing high school and teach­ing in An­tigua for three years, Frankie McIn­tosh mi­grat­ed to New York and be­gan study­ing mu­sic at Brook­lyn Col­lege in 1968.

While earn­ing a bach­e­lor's de­gree in mu­sic at Brook­lyn Col­lege and an MA in mu­sic at New York Uni­ver­si­ty, he played key­boards with sev­er­al Caribbean and Amer­i­can R&B groups, and he jammed with lead­ing New York jazz mu­si­cians. He trained un­der many lead­ing mu­si­cians in­clud­ing John Lewis of the Mod­ern Jazz Quar­tet and Chopin ex­pert Zenon Fish­bein.

McIn­tosh's first for­ay in­to ca­lyp­so came in the sum­mer of 1976 when Beck­et, a St Vin­cent ca­lyp­son­ian who had re­cent­ly re­lo­cat­ed to New York, ap­proached him about tight­en­ing up sev­er­al of his ca­lyp­so arrange­ments for an up­com­ing Man­hat­tan boat-ride en­gage­ment.

The two hit it off, and short­ly af­ter McIn­tosh arranged his first ca­lyp­so record­ings for Beck­et's 1977 Dis­co Ca­lyp­so al­bum, which in­clud­ed Beck­et's most pop­u­lar song, Com­ing High. To­day the piece is con­sid­ered clas­sic ear­ly so­ca, and is wide­ly ad­mired for McIn­tosh's in­ge­nious use of ad­vanced har­monies, so­phis­ti­cat­ed jazz so­los, and rhyth­mic break/groove sec­tions.

Granville Strak­er, Brook­lyn's pre­miere record pro­duc­er at the time, was high­ly im­pressed with the Beck­et record­ings, and in 1978 ap­proached McIn­tosh about ar­rang­ing for his la­bel. The two Vin­cen­tians would go on to forge a mu­si­cal al­liance that would last for decades.

McIn­tosh be­came mu­si­cal di­rec­tor for Strak­er's Records, or­gan­is­ing the house record­ing band and ar­rang­ing for dozens of Strak­er's ca­lyp­so­ni­ans in­clud­ing Chalk­dust, Shad­ow, Ca­lyp­so Rose, Win­ston Soso, Pos­er, Lord Nel­son, Singing Francine, Duke, King Welling­ton, and oth­ers. He would even­tu­al­ly go on to arrange for Brook­lyn's oth­er ma­jor ca­lyp­so/so­ca la­bels, Char­lie's Records and B's Records.

As the mu­sic moved in­to the 1980s McIn­tosh emerged at the fore­front of the new so­ca style, with arrange­ments fa­mous for their in­no­v­a­tive horn lines, catchy syn­the­sis­er fig­ures, and so­phis­ti­cat­ed har­mon­ic set­tings.

Though McIn­tosh main­tained his per­ma­nent res­i­dence in Brook­lyn, his in­flu­ence was felt through­out the Caribbean. Clas­sic ca­lyp­sos that won the Trinidad Ca­lyp­so Monarch for Chalk Dust in 1981 (Things That Wor­ry Me) and 1989 (Chauf­fer Want­ed), and the Road March for Spar­row in 1984 (Doh Back Back) and for Duke in 1987 (Thun­der) fea­tured McIn­tosh arrange­ments.

McIn­tosh is held in the high­est es­teem by mu­si­cians and singers alike. Ca­lyp­so King of the World Mighty Spar­row com­ment­ed: "Frankie's unique style and ap­proach for the task at hand puts him ahead of his time. His depth is un­fath­omable and he is a gift­ed mu­si­cian."

So­ca gi­ant Ex­plain­er re­called, "The great­est arrange­ment I ever had on any song was Frankie McIn­tosh's work on 'Lor­raine.' I met him in Brook­lyn around 1980 and gave him the ba­sic melody and the lyrics. What he gave me back was the whole song–he did the bass line, the horns, the chords, every­thing. Back then I wasn't even sure if we should even record it, but Frankie said 'trust me.' And it turned out to be my biggest song ever."

McIn­tosh brought a gen­uine­ly flex­i­ble, jazz-in­flu­enced sen­si­bil­i­ty to the record­ing stu­dio. Chalk­dust and oth­er artists re­call McIn­tosh be­ing much freer than old­er arrangers, al­low­ing mu­si­cians and singers more in­put, mod­i­fy­ing arrange­ments on the spot dur­ing ses­sions, and in gen­er­al leav­ing room for mod­est em­bell­ish­ments and im­pro­vi­sa­tion.

As McIn­tosh put it: "Oh yes, even when I go to a full score, it's nev­er like this is writ­ten in stone and we must stick to this. From the first date, if we are play­ing the rhythm sec­tion and I don't think a chord works I will change them. Or I would change the horn line or the bass line in a flash...I was al­ways open to ideas, as long as they worked.

"So in the stu­dio we might be play­ing a chart, and some­one like (trum­peter) Er­rol Ince might say, 'Frankie, do you mind if we do this in­stead?' I'd say play it and let me hear it. And if I liked it I'd say 'bang, go for it!'"

These days McIn­tosh con­tin­ues to arrange and per­form in New York, oc­ca­sion­al­ly tour­ing back to the Caribbean. He has been the head of the mu­sic de­part­ment at PS 270, The DeKalb School in Brook­lyn.

He has per­formed at pop­u­lar jazz fes­ti­vals like the Bar­ba­dos Jazz Fes­ti­val and the St Lu­cia Jazz Fes­ti­val. Re­cent­ly he has been heard around Brook­lyn with the tal­ent­ed Trinida­di­an pan­nist Garvin Blake, whose lat­est CD, Par­al­lel Over­tures, McIn­tosh arranged.

�2 Ray Allen is Pro­fes­sor of Mu­sic at Brook­lyn Col­lege, CUNY. He is ed­i­tor of Is­land Sounds in the Glob­al City: Caribbean Pop­u­lar Mu­sic in New York, and is cur­rent­ly work­ing on a book on the his­to­ry of Car­ni­val mu­sic in Brook­lyn. Ray Funk is a re­tired Alaskan judge who is pas­sion­ate­ly de­vot­ed to ca­lyp­so, pan and mas. He is the co-au­thor and pro­duc­er of The Ca­lyp­so Craze, a book/CD com­pi­la­tion re­leased on Bear Fam­i­ly Records last year and the co-au­thor of the just re­leased book on In­vaders Steel Or­ches­tra with Dr Jea­nine Re­my.

Ray Allen and Ray Funk

MORE IN­FO: The 27th Sun­shine Awards will be held at the AXA Eq­ui­table Cen­ter, 787 Sev­enth Av­enue at 51st Street, in Man­hat­tan on Oc­to­ber 3. For fur­ther in­for­ma­tion or to get tick­ets, call 201-836-0799 or in­fo@sun­shineawards.com.