“Why don’t you bring back an old-time Ray Minor ... but what de hell you want me to sing about?”
It is so because of his capacity to engage his audience, to relate stories that we identify with and have the ability to sing along with him. His presentation style, his clarity of voice and diction, and the musicality of his melodies ring through, his lyrics having more than a tinge of humour to them. Relator–Willard “Bunny” Harris is one of us and we have loved him since he began singing on Aunty Kay (a teacher and groomer of talent through a couple of generations) more than 60 years ago.
His range of performances includes those of his straight-on compositions, colourful and humorous impersonations of other calypsonians and foreign singers attempting the calypso, and his ability to extempore and maestro-type guitar playing rolled into one entertainment package. If that’s not enough, his perennial Christmas songs which celebrate “Christmas is Yours, Christmas is Mine” … with “Bottle and Spoon man does be ringing out real tune,” are lasting contributions to the Trini Christmas lore in music.
On stage, Relator is decked off across performances in traditional colourful calypsonian wear, through the classic Black and White bow tie look, the casually elegant tan-coloured suits and the Al Jarreau beret when he extends into the jazz-like performances.
The bard’s biggest moment in calypsodom was the night/morning when he was declared Calypso Monarch 1980 at the “Big Yard”.
There was no denying him the crown with “Food Prices”—a turn of phrase, a slice of picong only understood by us: “If you brave and still going in the market I could tell you, you only taking basket … it’s better to buy corn and raise your own cock” an imaginative pun, encased in the Ray Minor, those haunting chords from which the calypso emerged with its pain of expression and pathos.
Relator was not as political as his contemporaries, Valentino and Black Stalin, but his second winning calypso advised the then “Doctor” of politics and government, Eric Williams, in power for 24 years, to “Take ah Rest”.
“All ah them who don’t want him to go, they get accustom to their free cokey oh co … ah rest for de Doc before the poor man fall down on de wuk ...” Apart from being prophetic, the calypso is a classic piece of political analysis.
Not too incidentally given the quality of his calypsoes and performance, Relator triumphed in the competition over King Austin with “Progress” duly recognised as one of the greatest of calypsoes.
However, Relator’s advice had a ricochet in the following year. He was denied a place in the touring team of champions of the Carnival to China; it was perceived by many to be payment for daring to tell PM Williams to “Take ah Rest”.
“I didn’t mind missing the tour, but what the hell they ban my calypso for … let me sell ah few records by Rhyner and the rest of PNM could go China,” was Relator’s response in the “China Syndrome” recorded in a melancholy blues.
“Apart from winning the monarchy, performing with Andy Narell and a full orchestra in Cologne, a cultural hub in Germany and recording the album, The University of Calypso, in New York where it was ‘magical’, was my best experience,” says Relator.
His favourite hit calypsoes, Gavaskar and Radio Stations are the most memorable, says the bard who proudly identifies himself as “a product of East Dry River, 90 and 70 Quarry Street”.
While the 1971 Indian Batsman, Sunil Gavaskar inflicted pain on West Indian bowlers and the team captained by the immortal Garfield Sobers, his Gavaskar, whom he met and had conversations with, was his best-known international calypso.
“I feel the picong in the song helped the West Indies to recover from that period when we were being regularly beaten; remember Clive Lloyd came out of that series,” said Relator 50 years after.
“A lovely day for cricket, blue skies and gentle breeze, the Indians are awaiting now to play the West Indies … It was Gavaskar, we real master just like ah wall we couldn’t out Gavaskar at all ...” You know the rest.
When the West Indian cricket generation turned into the greatest ever team, Relator sang a sequel with his cricket posse in the Concrete Stand at the Oval.
“These radio stations driving me mad, NBS Radio and Radio Trinidad, because of their operations today is only foreign artistes getting airplay, so I have come to the conclusion that these foreigners own we radio stations …”
Relator’s intervention was at a critical period when the colonial view prevailed that whatever came from outside, in this instance music, was better than our best efforts.
He does not claim credit for the consciousness passed on to the radio stations to love their own, but it surely happened; I witnessed the change.
Bunny’s first probing steps into the world of calypso came in school competitions.
“I always used to be doing rhymes. I can’t be sure as to where and how the talent for compositions came from,” he says.
Willard is the seventh child of the ten of his parents, Conrad and Ulga Harris. His father, as his name suggests, was Barbadian, and his mother was Trinidadian.
Fifth in line to register for Aunty Kay’s calypso competition, which he won, when those in front called their calypso sobriquets, “It struck me I had none; it just came to me ‘Lord Relator’”. After dropping the “Lord” in the time of consciousness, Relator stuck with that which fitted his calypso persona and style.
He tells an interesting story of collecting the $50 prize money from the sponsor of the competition, the Mighty Sparrow.
“I went down to Sparrow’s home in Petit Valley, collected my prize, took a taxi to the Oval, pay to watch cricket, bought a roti and a sweet drink and still ended up with $45.”
Maybe that triggered Food Prices. No, he says: “It was the mother of a then girlfriend who complained that “‘14 ounces of saltfish for three sixty-nine’”.
Relator’s father, a machinist at Tembladora, (one of those Bajan tradesmen who came here) “wanted me to follow in his path and did not want me to sing calypso—however, he lived long enough to be in the audience when I won the Monarchy and I saw him there”, Daddy Harris must have been pleased with the eventual outcome of his son and this calypso thing.
“My mother though had no problems with my singing, she wanted me to be a journalist; well, I became one in calypso,” says Relator with typical mischief in his voice.
“My first job after school at St Margaret’s Boys EC and Ideal High School both in Belmont was with Sabga and Sons on Henry Street selling cloth for the great sum of $15 a week,” says the bard indicating that “I was a good salesman and persuaded people to buy pants lengths.”
Early in his career, he entered a partnership with the Mighty Prowler, who was a messenger in a grocery at the corner of Quarry and Observatory streets, opposite La Cou Harpe. “I would compose and Prowler would sing.” Why did he not perform his songs? “Remember my father at that time did not want me to sing calypso?”
However, by 1965 he won the Buy Local Competition which set him off on his performing career at the calypso tents.
“I approached ‘Jazzy’ Pantin,” then co-owner-manager of Kitchener’s Calypso Revue to sing in the tent. “With Kitchener present, I said I wanted $150 per week,” he told Jazzy. “At that time the big singers were getting $500. I came up with my fee because I was the Buy Local King, no ordinary calypsonian. Jazzy started to query my request (he imitating Jazzy’s well-known slow droll) “eventually Kitchener say ‘give the man what he want’”, reproducing Kitch’s classic stammer.
“When we agreed, Kitchener said let we go and eat some Chinee food at Kong Chow to celebrate.”
The restaurant was then at the corner of Richmond and Park streets and famous for Chinese Pow, “that is where the deal was sealed”, says Relator.
That association with Kitchener “where I observed him up close, to understand the mastery of the Grandmaster makes him my number one calypsonian and an influence on my composing”, says Relator.
“I like how he can say things with the minimum of words, no overcrowding of words, he is measured in his lines throughout the verse and chorus and his melodies are sweet,” he says of his hero in calypso.
Relator also likes the humour of Cypher and the crystal clear lyrics of Lord Christo. Of the musicians whom he has sung with, Relator mentions Frankie Francis, Toby Tobias (drums) Errol Ince, Gene Lawrence (acoustic guitar) and Ron Reid on the bass.
Having spent approximately seven years at Kitchener’s Revue,
“I wanted to move on to do something different; and that is what led to Nostalgia,” a full-length calypso show at the then Holiday Inn where Relator, the multi-talented entertainer, presented something of his repertoire, expanded on his impersonations, demonstrated his skills at extemporising and played his guitar.
His first exposure to the instrument came from his elder brother Ruthven and while generally self-taught, at the tent he encountered the great Fitzroy Coleman—named amongst the first 100 jazz guitarists in the world.
“I would observe him playing chords and once when strumming alongside him, I was attempting to follow his lead, but at one point I just gave up. ‘Continue playing’, Coleman advised me.”
Relator finds humour in calypsonian guitarists among them, the Mystic Prowler and Chalkdust. He says calypsonian Viking analysed Chalkie’s guitar playing as: “if wrong chord could shock yuh, Chalkdust dead long time”, picong in kaiso. Relator, however, recognises that Bro Superior was his equal with the guitar.
An “unfortunate” event in the career of Relator occurred when he received the “toilet paper” treatment from the usually hard-to-please Skinner Park crowd.
“I was singing about Claude Noel winning the World Lightweight crown, but by the time I got to the semi-finals, Noel had lost the crown, I could not change then. I felt sorry for the audience as I had to duck bottle, paper, cans,” said the bard. But he did return to the Park after a few years.
Relator’s introduction to music of all kinds came through the triangular Rediffusion box on the wall. There he heard and enjoyed George Shearing, Joe Pass, Felonious Monk and Sammy Davis, the latter influenced his imitations.
Over the last few years, Relator fell into a slump, not performing “and I wanted to give it up but my personal friend amongst calypsonians, Short Pants, encouraged me to keep going”.
Recently, during its 80th-anniversary celebration, the Harvard Sports Club honoured the Relator and he once again performed on stage. His manager, Errol Peru, expects he will return.
