Pe­ter Ray Blood

Vet­er­an mu­si­cian Syl Dop­son, 92, suc­cumbed to pneu­mo­nia on Mon­day night. His son Wayne, known in ca­lyp­so cir­cles as Doppy, said his fa­ther de­vel­oped pneu­mo­nia around Christ­mas and died at St Clair Med­ical Cen­tre. Wayne, the third of Dop­son's chil­dren, is now the el­dest sur­viv­ing child, as his two old­er sib­lings have died.

Wayne said: "Syl came to Port-of-Spain from San Fer­nan­do quite young, at the age of 16. He lived in a house that was op­po­site to what is now known as Irvine Park, on Irvine Street.He be­gan play­ing foot­ball as a child with a ten­nis ball. He be­gan play­ing with Sport­ing Club, then with Notre Dame. He even­tu­al­ly played with Sham­rock, un­til 1959, when the team won every ma­jor tro­phy to be con­test­ed for. Syl de­cid­ed to re­tire on a high note."

Dop­son rep­re­sent­ed Trinidad while play­ing for Sham­rock and toured Eng­land with the team in 1953.Just as Dop­son was pop­u­lar in the sport­ing cir­cuit he was al­so pop­u­lar in mu­sic, es­pe­cial­ly ca­lyp­so mu­sic. Wayne re­called: "Even while he was in­to foot­ball, he was in­to mu­sic. He be­gan with Pat Castagne's jazz band named Crazy Cats, play­ing clar­inet."

Dop­son sub­se­quent­ly formed his own band, Kaiso All Stars, dur­ing the '60s."The band re­mained ac­tive un­til about ten years ago, when all its mem­bers died, leav­ing on­ly Syl," said Wayne.Kaiso All Stars record­ed two al­bums dur­ing the '70s named Kaiso 1 and Kaiso 2, com­pris­ing main­ly vin­tage ca­lyp­soes. For many years, it was the res­i­dent band for ex­tem­po ca­lyp­so com­pe­ti­tions.

Vet­er­an me­dia prac­ti­tion­er and a friend of Dop­son, Mervyn Telfer, said: "Syl was very easy­go­ing but didn't tol­er­ate non­sense. He was a ded­i­cat­ed fam­i­ly man and was a se­ri­ous per­fec­tion­ist about his mu­sic."He was an ex­pert cu­a­trista and clar­inetist and was out­stand­ing as a mu­si­cian of ca­lyp­so and parang. He was one of the key mu­si­cians who pro­vid­ed mu­sic for a tele­vi­sion show I host­ed back in 1963, named The Lime, on TTT. He played the first time parang mu­sic was aired on any elec­tron­ic me­dia in this coun­try.

"When we restart­ed the ex­tem­pore com­pe­ti­tion, with the late Amin Mo­hammed as NCC chair­man, Syl and the Kaiso All Stars pro­vid­ed mu­sic for the first three years of the com­pe­ti­tion, which was a part of Viey la Cou, staged at Queen's Hall."One of Dop­son's quirks was that he very rarely played his spe­cial­ly made pur­ple­heart and ma­hogany cu­a­tro, us­ing in­stead a Venezue­lan cu­a­tro to play in pub­lic, keep­ing his spe­cial in­stru­ment safe­ly at home.

Speak­ing fond­ly of his fa­ther, Wayne, a for­mer Queen's Park Crick­et Club ca­lyp­so monarch and a mem­ber of TU­CO's Kaiso House, said: "Syl wasn't big on food. He used to say he wished that his stom­ach had a zip that he could un­fas­ten to put food in."His loves were mu­sic and the lit­tle piece of lawn in front his home on O'Con­nor Street, Wood­brook. He was ex­treme­ly proud of his work on that lawn and would take an en­tire morn­ing to groom it."

Dop­son is sur­vived by his wife, Ophe­lia, 90, two daugh­ters and Wayne. Fu­ner­al arrange­ments will be pub­lished this week.