Pe­ter Ray Blood

There's laid back. There's cool. There's easy lis­ten­ing, and then there's Oliv­er "Stumpy" Chap­man. The vet­er­an vo­cal­ist re­cent­ly re­leased a CD in North Amer­i­ca which is a com­bi­na­tion of all.

Ti­tled A Life of Words & Mu­sic, the disc com­pris­es 11 of Chap­man's com­po­si­tions, plus two tracks by Wins­ford "Jok­er" Devine and Samuel Archer, as well four bonus tracks and remix­es.

Pro­duced joint­ly with Samuel Archer, Chap­man sought some of the best in the mu­sic busi­ness for this CD. For in­stance, it in­cludes live horns and over­dubs by renowned trum­peter Eti­enne Charles and some back­ground vo­cals are pro­vid­ed by the high­ly ac­claimed Kei­th "De­sign­er" Prescott.

Baron might be "the sweet so­ca man" but, on this CD, Chap­man is a "sweet love man," as most of his com­po­si­tions ac­tu­al­ly con­sist of lyrics of en­dear­ment clear­ly meant too im­press and woo the ladies. He is al­so se­ri­ous on a few, like his cov­er of Devine's Progress and the heart-wrench­ing Be­hind Bars. But, songs like I'm Miss­ing Your Smile, Girl Don't Say No, I Ap­pre­ci­ate You and Pret­ty Lit­tle Thing are def­i­nite heart­string-tug­gers.

The bonus tracks/remix­es are I Can't Be­lieve It, I Will be your friend and Pret­ty Lit­tle Thing.

"I be­gan singing be­fore Moses," joked Chap­man when he vis­it­ed the T&T Guardian last week. He be­gan singing at 17 with the for­ma­tion of The Sparks, one of the most pop­u­lar singing groups in the 60s-70s. Back then the lo­cal live en­ter­tain­ment cir­cuit was very alive with pop groups like The Strollers, Blue Veils, Host of Oth­ers and The Sparks. "We went pub­lic when I was 19," said Chap­man. "Back then, Tony Wil­son (T&T-born vo­cal­ist of the British band Hot Choco­late) was our vo­cal and mu­sic coach. The com­ing out of The Sparks co­in­cid­ed with the birth of our na­tion."

Chap­man re­called sev­er­al mem­o­rable mo­ments with The Sparks. One of them, he rem­i­nisced was the re­lease of the sin­gle Don't Climb Pick­er Tree in 1973, writ­ten by the late Frankie Atwell. "We all knew that song would be a hit and it was. That was a mem­o­rable mo­ment of my ca­reer. An­oth­er mem­o­rable mo­ment was in the ear­ly 70s when news­pa­per jour­nal­ist Patrick Chokolin­go em­braced The Sparks up­on his re­lease af­ter a short pe­ri­od in prison."

The Sparks changed its name to Wild Fire, com­pris­ing Cy­lan Charles, Ter­ry Col­ly­more, Lennox James, Clif­ford Wil­son and Chap­man. "We changed the name be­cause at the time The Sparks was re­al­ly gain­ing mo­men­tum and we were look­ing to make it in­ter­na­tion­al­ly. Tony wrote to us from Eng­land to say that the record com­pa­ny, RAK Records, re­alised there was an­oth­er group with the same name, with a hit in Lon­don at the time. It was Tony who came up with the name Wild Fire. The name change hap­pened dur­ing Car­ni­val when we were per­form­ing at Kitch­en­er's ca­lyp­so tent. We changed the name, pro­mot­ed the name and every­thing worked out great. Our first hit was Come on Down. This was fol­lowed by We Are All God's Chil­dren, Old Man Riv­er, Try Mak­ing Love and many more. Not all our songs were num­ber one but they were all chart rid­ers."

Chap­man mi­grat­ed to the Unit­ed States to "per­ma­nent­ly" re­side there in 1987. He said: "I wasn't com­fort­able in the States so I went to St Thomas in 1995 as I was look­ing for some­where warmer to live. Even­tu­al­ly I re­turned to Trinidad and stayed here for a few months and then re­turned to New Jer­sey in 1998 and lived there un­til this year."

Chap­man was on a sev­en-year hia­tus from mu­sic be­fore pro­duc­ing A Life of Words & Mu­sic. He said: "Dur­ing that time I was do­ing all kinds of things, in­clud­ing pro­duc­ing a doc­u­men­tary. Be­fore A Life of Words & Mu­sic, I pro­duced an­oth­er CD ti­tled From the Pen of Oliv­er Chap­man. That al­bum had tracks by artistes singing my com­po­si­tions; peo­ple like Car­ol Ad­di­son and Ju­nior By­ron.

"There are still some things I still want to do mu­si­cal­ly and they're all in my head for the mo­ment. I have so much un­pub­lished work but it's all on quar­ter-inch tape. Tech­nol­o­gy has changed through the years so I will have to re­turn to the States to trans­pose that work.

"An­oth­er thing I would like to do is have some of the young singers do my work. As a mat­ter of fact, all of the peo­ple who have ever done my work have been younger than me. Of the young peo­ple out there that I've heard among those who have im­pressed me by their singing tal­ent have been Kei­th "De­sign­er" Prescott, Roger George and Patrice Roberts. I am still learn­ing the names of some of the new singers so there are oth­ers I have heard but can't re­mem­ber their names."

Pro­fes­sion­al­ism is the hall­mark of this CD, in­clu­sive of its pro­duc­tion, pho­tog­ra­phy, mem­o­ra­bil­ia of au­to­graphed pens and a 2014 di­ary, and over­all pack­ag­ing. This one is a def­i­nite col­lec­tor's item.

tracks:

A Life of Words & Mu­sic.

I'm Miss­ing Your Smile

Hard Life

Girl Don't Say No

These Are the Chang­ing Times

Sun­day Morn­ing

Progress

I Ap­pre­ci­ate You

Be­hind Bars

Dance Par­ty

O How I Wish

A Sto­ry On­ly I can Tell

Make the World Bet­ter

I Can't Be­lieve It

I Will be your friend

Pret­ty Lit­tle Thing