?In­nis Fran­cis

Blessed with the gift of sound, Clyde Pierre has com­posed a di­ary of songs and de­cid­ed to share his tal­ents with the rest of T&T. He has pro­duced a CD of songs, and he's had a life­time of love and loss to serve as in­spi­ra­tion. Five decades ago, Pierre mi­grat­ed to the UK and served in the British army as a sol­dier un­til 1971. Pierre shared the joy of pro­duc­ing three chil­dren with a British woman named Jean Guy-Pierre–but he claimed he was robbed of a full re­la­tion­ship with her and their chil­dren, due to the racial dis­crim­i­na­tion that was per­va­sive in those days. Pierre said he lat­er fa­thered three chil­dren in New York, where he mi­grat­ed af­ter say­ing "bon voy­age" to Britain in 1971. He said proud­ly, "My three chil­dren are Dion, Michelle and Ban­ieele Pierre." But he still re­grets los­ing touch with his three UK chil­dren.

The 66-year-old San Fer­nan­do man is still hope­ful that some­day, he would meet and be able to em­brace his long-lost off­spring once again. De­spite the pain of sep­a­ra­tion and the re­grets caused by a painful past, Pierre de­cid­ed to move on with his life–and mu­sic was part of that jour­ney. At one point, he thought he'd found his niche in ca­lyp­so, but with his bari­tone voice, bal­lads af­ford­ed him pop­u­lar­i­ty with the mass­es. Grow­ing up, Pierre said he en­joyed the mu­sic of Jim Reeves, Otis Red­ing, Aretha Franklin, Elvis Pres­ley, Nat King Cole and Al Green. He says, his all time favourite was Tom­my Ed­wards. Now, Pierre has launched a four-track mi­ni al­bum–With Love from Clyde Pierre.

He says it is a pre­view to a com­plete al­bum of songs he plans to launch in the near fu­ture. The se­lec­tions on the mi­ni al­bum con­sist of Tom­my Ed­wards' It's All in the Game, Li­onel Richie's Three Times a La­dy, Jim Reeves' For the Good Times and a reg­gae med­ley of Un­chained Melody, He'll Have to Go and Love me Ten­der. All the songs, Pierre said, were arranged and pro­duced by Cal­ly Pan­tor, with back­ground vo­cals pro­vid­ed by Na­tal­ie Yorke. He said in the past he penned worked for Can­di Hoyte, De Lamo, Singing So­nia and By­ron Lee and The Drag­o­niares. He al­so lent vo­cals, dur­ing the po­lit­i­cal cam­paign sea­son, to the Con­gress of the Peo­ple (COP); his songs, My Coun­try and Wake Up were per­formed at var­i­ous meet­ings.

Pierre is an ac­tive Cott mem­ber and roy­al­ties for all cov­er ver­sions have been paid in ac­cor­dance with the laws of the land. Now a se­cu­ri­ty of­fi­cer with Guardia Se­cu­ri­ty firm, Pierre says he has no de­sire to com­pete at any lev­el of com­pe­ti­tion or to be­come a mem­ber of any ca­lyp­so tent, any time soon. "Com­pe­ti­tions are not good. How can you have the same judges for dif­fer­ent types of ca­lyp­soes and then judge all the cat­e­gories and come to an ul­ti­mate win­ner? "Too many young peo­ple get dis­ap­point­ed with the com­pe­ti­tions and it is a tra­di­tion­al thing. "Not me, com­pe­ti­tions are not for me," he said.