Pe­ter Ray Blood

Austin Lewis, 73, known in the ca­lyp­so world as King Austin, died Sat­ur­day morn­ing at the Port-of-Spain Gen­er­al Hos­pi­tal.

Austin's son, Mar­vin King, said his fa­ther had been bat­tling with Alzheimers for many years and added: "I was tak­ing care of him but then it be­came too dif­fi­cult for me to do so so I put him in a home. He fell ill there and was ward­ed at hos­pi­tal.

Hav­ing sang Wins­ford "Jok­er" Devine's Progress in 1980, King Austin was re­gard­ed as an icon in ca­lyp­so and placed sec­ond to Re­la­tor in that year's Na­tion­al Ca­lyp­so Monarch fi­nal. A mod­est and unas­sum­ing man, in one in­ter­view King Austin said: "I love every hu­man be­ing very much. It doesn't mat­ter where you are from. I love all the peo­ple." He sub­se­quent­ly sang Who Guard­ing the Guards, a ca­lyp­so which al­so en­joyed much crit­i­cal ac­claim.

King Austin ac­tu­al­ly be­gan in the ca­lyp­so are­na in 1976, singing with the CDC ca­lyp­so tent. He sub­se­quent­ly per­formed at oth­er tents rub­bing shoul­ders on the casts with bards like Mighty Spar­row, Lord Melody, Lord Nel­son, Bro Su­pe­ri­or and Chalk­dust.

High­ly ac­claimed song­writer Wins­ford "Jok­er" Devine said he is fur­ther sad­dened by King Austin's pass­ing as he was un­able to see him be­fore he died. He said: "I have been mean­ing to pass and check and check Austin where he used to lime on the Prom­e­nade. I met Austin through Kei­th Smith from the Ex­press. I had writ­ten Progress for Spar­row but he didn't sing it. Kei­th Smith in­tro­duced me to Austin and, from the time Austin heard Progress he loved it. I sent him to Semp Record­ing Stu­dio where it was record­ed. From the start Progress was an in­stant hit, win­ning six en­cores the first night Austin sang it in the tent.

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Mu­sic video sourced from Nico­las Elias Youtube page.

?Na­tion­al Ca­lyp­so Monarch mul­ti­ple ti­tle-hold­er Dr Hol­lis "Chalk­dust" Liv­er­pool said: "Blakie brought him (King Austin) to The Re­gal Tent and we ac­cept­ed him. I re­mem­ber King Austin to be a very hum­ble, qui­et and re­spectable hu­man be­ing. I re­mem­ber him al­ways smil­ing with his gold teeth shin­ing.

"King Austin re­al­ly loved Laven­tille and al­ways used used to boast about Laven­tille and its peo­ple. He was com­mit­ted to Laven­tille and would let every­one know that he was from there. Austin had a unique voice, one that will be missed in ca­lyp­so."

Af­ter the pop­u­lar­i­ty of Progress and Who Guard­ing the Guards, oth­er ca­lyp­soes record­ed by King Austin in­clud­ed The World To­day is a Ball of Con­fu­sion, Spe­cial Lov­ing, The World To­day, Time is Not Easy in the City, So­ca Tak­ing Over, Changes of Man, You Can't Please The Peo­ple and Keep It Com­ing.

In a Trinidad Guardian fea­ture three years ago, ca­lyp­so com­pos­er/arranger Alvin Daniell hailed King Austin as a philoso­pher by stat­ing: "King Austin's 1980 ca­lyp­so clas­sic Progress (Austin Lewis) sang to man's quest for de­vel­op­ment pos­ing very philo­soph­i­cal ar­gu­ments as to what con­sti­tutes de­vel­op­ment."

In a sur­vey pub­lished by Kaiso­ca In­ter­na­tion­al in Toron­to, Devine/Austin's Progress was list­ed num­ber one in the Top 100 Ca­lyp­soes of the 20th Cen­tu­ry, ahead of Mighty Sniper's Por­trait of Trinidad and Slave, sung by Spar­row.

Of his fa­ther, King said: "My fa­ther was a born and bred son of Laven­tille. His moth­er was one of the old­est cit­i­zens of Laven­tille and died at the age of 104 years, about four months ago.

"Dad­dy's on­ly friend is Rawle "Pele" Thomp­son and he was in the process of do­ing a trib­ute to King Austin on Sep­tem­ber 17 to as­sist with his med­ical ex­pens­es. We are still go­ing ahead with the trib­ute and it will be held at SWW­TU Hall in Port-of-Spain."

King said that fu­ner­al arrange­ments will be an­nounced short­ly.