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Sunday, March 30, 2025

Sparrow to get OBE

by

20151014

The Mighty Spar­row (Slinger Fran­cis­co) has been be­stowed the Or­der of the British Em­pire (OBE).Cur­rent­ly in Trinidad, the Ca­lyp­so King of the World will re­ceive the award in his birth­place, Grena­da, on Oc­to­ber 22, the T&T Guardian has been told.

The hold­er of the Or­der of Trinidad & To­ba­go, this na­tion's high­est award, achieved in 2014, Spar­row was award­ed the Hum­ming Bird Medal (Sil­ver) in 1969 and the Cha­co­nia Medal (Gold) in 1993. He al­so re­ceived an hon­orary PhD from the Uni­ver­si­ty of the West In­dies in 1987.

In 2013, he re­ceived a Life­time Achieve­ment Award from the Gov­ern­ment of T&T. In 1977, the gov­ern­ment of Nige­ria award­ed Spar­row with a chief­tain­cy ti­tle and named him Chief Omo Wale of Ikoyi.

Spar­row was born in the fish­ing vil­lage of Grand Roy, Grena­da, on Ju­ly 9, 1935, and his moth­er brought him to T&T at the age of two. He won his first Ca­lyp­so King ti­tle in 1956, singing Jean and Di­nah. He won the ti­tle on sev­en sub­se­quent oc­ca­sions and the Road March ti­tle eight times.

Com­ment­ing on his lat­est achieve­ment, Spar­row said, "This is tru­ly an ho­n­our. When I ac­tu­al­ly re­ceive the award I will then know how I val­ue it in com­par­i­son to the oth­er awards I have re­ceived."

Re­vert­ing to his usu­al hu­mor­ous side, he added, "I doubt that (Prince) Phillip will be fly­ing to Grena­da to give me the award. You know when we reach a par­tic­u­lar age we can­not be jet­ting off around the globe as we once did. I guess Phillip is now spend­ing much more time in Buck­ing­ham Palace."

Spar­row's Phillip My Dear, record­ed in 1983, has be­come one of Spar­row's most pop­u­lar and re­quest­ed ca­lyp­soes. Spar­row record­ed this song af­ter an in­ci­dent on Ju­ly 9, 1982, in which a man man­aged to climb up to the roof and get in­to Buck­ing­ham Palace for the sec­ond time in a month. But that time he al­so man­aged to get in­to Queen Eliz­a­beth II's bed­room, where the Queen was sleep­ing alone.

This lapse in se­cu­ri­ty caused a big scan­dal in Britain at the time, and in­spired Spar­row to write a song very loose­ly based on the event.


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