Neville Jules was the or­gan­is­er supreme of Trinidad All Stars; he was the cap­tain who mem­bers lis­tened to, not be­cause he was a “bad­john” (“but I could take care of my­self”) but be­cause he ex­ud­ed au­thor­i­ty and re­spect from All Stars pan­men.

El­lie Man­nette with In­vaders placed the band on the steel­band map. He pound­ed the pans in­side to cre­ate the mod­ern in­stru­ment. El­lie mi­grat­ed and trained gen­er­a­tions of pan­men in Amer­i­ca.

An­tho­ny “Tony” “Muff-Man” “Skip” Williams–Sun Val­ley, North Stars and Pan Am Jet North Stars (PA­JNS)–is the sci­en­tist supreme of tun­ing and cre­at­ing pans. He was mas­ter arranger, com­pos­er, in­no­va­tor, leader, and a man as­cribed the ti­tle by many I spoke with as “ge­nius of the steel­band.”

For the gen­er­a­tions whom we have robbed of the knowl­edge of Williams, let’s set down a few mark­ers which tell the sto­ry of the man who de­vel­oped, ar­guably, the great­est steel­band yet to in­ter­pret the ca­lyp­so, Eu­ro­pean clas­sics, jazz, among oth­er forms of mu­sic.

First, the most colour­ful and in­ter­est­ing of his so­bri­quets: Muff-Man. He had a full head of hair with the muff pro­ject­ing to the front. Of­ten he wore a felt hat styl­ish­ly fit­ted over the muff. “It was con­sid­ered a vagabond style in them days, and my own was big,” he said chuck­ling to him­self. “Now I am hear­ing about Ras­ta style”; he again seem­ing to de­light in a bit of self-ac­cred­it­ed delin­quen­cy.

In his time from the late 1940s through the 1950s in­to the 1960s as leader, arranger, com­pos­er, tuner and in­no­va­tor, Muff-Man con­vert­ed North Stars (it was first North­ern Stars) in­to the cel­e­brat­ed Pan Am Jet North Stars, ini­ti­at­ing steel­band spon­sor­ship.

Un­der his lead­er­ship, Pan Am Jet North Stars won the pre­cur­sor com­pe­ti­tion to Panora­ma in 1963 (The Best Road March Steel­band Com­pe­ti­tion) play­ing Spar­row’s “Dan is the Man in the Van”. In the fol­low­ing year (1964) PA­JNS won the first Panora­ma com­pe­ti­tion which was or­gan­ised by the new­ly formed Steel­band Pan As­so­ci­a­tion of George God­dard, with Kitch­en­er’s “Ma­ma This is Mas”. In the year af­ter, the band placed sec­ond to Guin­ness Cav­a­liers.

Williams and the band felt they were robbed and that was their last ap­pear­ance in that com­pe­ti­tion.

In the 1962 Mu­sic Fes­ti­val at Queen’s Hall, Williams arranged, and with his band played the “Voic­es of Spring”, still con­sid­ered one of the great­est of ren­di­tions of Eu­ro­pean clas­sics by a steel band.

Assisted by caregiver Yoland Thomas, Anthony Williams, second from right, has his hands cast in cement.

Dion Roach

“Af­ter I heard a record­ing of the mu­sic of a fa­mous Vi­en­nese con­duc­tor, a friend sent the sheet mu­sic for me from abroad. We prac­tised the piece for six months, six to eight hours every day,” Williams told me, seem­ing­ly still feel­ing the rigours and joys of tak­ing the band through the “Voic­es of Spring”.

“The re­ac­tion to “Voic­es of Spring” was very good. From the time we played that, every­body said ‘you’re a win­ner’. The main ad­ju­di­ca­tor from Eng­land, Prof North­cote said: ‘When mu­sic was in ex­is­tence your pre­ci­sion and close har­mo­ny are light to a mu­si­cal clar­i­ty and re­al or­ches­tral pur­pose. To­tal dy­nam­ics, ex­cel­lent­ly blend­ed through a few crescen­do ef­fects,’” the Muff-Man told me all from his live and rich mem­o­ry bank.

Next came the band’s vic­to­ry in the 1966 Steel­band Mu­sic Fes­ti­val; then it was with Franz Van Suppe’s “Po­et and Peas­ant”. The band tied with one of the pride steel­bands from Be­hind the Bridge, City Sym­pho­ny, with Philmore “Boots” David­son. But ac­cord­ing to en­ter­tain­ment jour­nal­ist, David Cuffy they were sep­a­rat­ed by the marks in the Test Piece, “In­ter­mez­zo in E Flat Ma­jor”–Brahms.

Af­ter the 1962 Mu­sic Fes­ti­val, North Stars be­came as­so­ci­at­ed with Pan Amer­i­can Air­lines through its lo­cal rep­re­sen­ta­tive, David De La Rosa. In time, the band be­came a flag-ship bear­er for the Amer­i­can air­line and con­vert­ed in­to Pan Am Jet North Stars. There is a sto­ry that Prime Min­is­ter Dr Er­ic Williams pre­ferred that the spon­sor should have been a lo­cal com­pa­ny, and the sto­ry goes too that West In­di­an To­bac­co was in­ter­est­ed in spon­sor­ship.

Of the ben­e­fits re­ceived from its spon­sor­ship by the Amer­i­can air­line were the sev­er­al flights made by the band through the Caribbean, the USA and South Amer­i­ca, reach­ing as far as Ar­genti­na. In the 1960s, the band pi­o­neered in tour­ing and play­ing at his­toric halls such as Madi­son Square Gar­den and the Lin­coln Cen­tre in New York.

Anthony Williams in his younger years.

Courtesy whensteeltalks.ning.com

Williams al­so broke new ground when he as­so­ci­at­ed his band first with the Mar­i­onettes Choir led by Joyce­lyn Pierre and then with the world-fa­mous Trinida­di­an-born (Tu­na­puna) pi­anist, Win­nifred Atwell. Here was this steel­band no more than a cou­ple of decades away from its birth with two-note bass pans play­ing in the grand mu­sic halls of the world with a great clas­si­cal and jazz pi­anist. Do we un­der­stand and ap­pre­ci­ate the ac­com­plish­ments of these mu­si­cal­ly un­trained and un­let­tered men and women?

To sub­stan­ti­ate that rant, Pan Am Jet North Stars mu­sic is record­ed on three great al­bums: Trinidad’s Lead­ing Steel Or­ches­tra, Ivory and Steel (with Atwell) and Sou­venirs in Steel. The piece I love most with Atwell is her com­po­si­tion, “Dev­il’s Daugh­ter” with the pan arrange­ments done by Williams.

The tech­ni­cal pu­ri­ty and play­ful flut­ter­ing over the notes by Atwell and the pow­er of the steel­band, in parts car­ry­ing the lead, and then the grum­bling of the drums in the back­ground telling of the dra­ma of the Dev­il’s Daugh­ter con­tin­ues to en­chant while I write.

How­ev­er, my per­son­al best love for North Stars mu­sic is its J’Ou­vert morn­ing (1956) arrange­ment and play­ing of “Puer­to Ri­co Mam­bo”–I wish I can squeeze it through in this for­mat.

The mu­sic was cap­tured out­side the Trans­fer Sta­tion (that’s the point where the tram­cars and trol­ley bus­es changed routes) Fred­er­ick and Park Streets. The mu­sic was record­ed by an RCA en­gi­neer. It’s the most be­witch­ing piece of mu­sic I ever heard at J’Ou­vert–and I am a great fan of Bomb Com­pe­ti­tion mu­sic–when the morn­ing is cool; when your legs feel on­ly to shuf­fle with your spe­cial la­dy in front of you, and thoughts of David Rud­der’s call for praise to the Almighty to bring ‘ah lit­tle mu­sic for the vi­bra­tions” to wash over you.

If you lis­ten care­ful­ly to the YouTube record­ing (Puer­to Ri­co Mam­bo) you will hear the call of “Zam­bie”, the prover­bial three times, a friend call­ing out to Neville “Zam­bie” Gaskin strum­ming his dou­ble sec­ond pan in North Stars.

Dr Anthony Williams dances during a performnce.

DION ROACH

The mak­ing of Williams the ge­nius

Williams is a na­tive of St James, where he still lives and re­cent­ly turned 90. Hail up the man. As to his for­ma­tive years, they were a com­bi­na­tion of ex­cit­ing boy­hood ad­ven­tures, dis­tanced from school work, and like many a boy of the time, he grew up in dif­fi­cult so­cial and eco­nom­ic con­di­tions; rough gua­va sea­sons.

His pri­ma­ry school ed­u­ca­tion came at the Mu­cu­rapo Boys’ School. “Af­ter school, we boys would go down by the sea in Co­corite. On Wednes­days, the head teacher took us to the Roy­al Vic­to­ria In­sti­tute. There we learnt geom­e­try, wood­work, Eng­lish class­es and ar­chi­tec­tur­al draw­ings.

“But I did not pay much at­ten­tion at school, the sub­jects did not in­ter­est me,” Williams shared. “I used to pay more at­ten­tion to Sun Val­ley and the mu­sic they played. When I went up there (Up­per Bournes Road) I was about 13 years old. I re­mem­ber too how a po­lice­man used to run down Sun Val­ley pan­men,” Williams said re­call­ing the days when steel­bands were out­lawed as be­ing “noisy” and a dis­tur­bance to pub­lic peace.

Aca­d­e­m­i­cal­ly, how­ev­er, Williams’ at­ten­tion and imag­i­na­tion were cap­tured and fired by a sci­ence teacher when he at­tend­ed night class­es at Tran­quil­li­ty School. “My sci­ence teacher was a white man from Eng­land. He taught me mu­sic from the book and a strobe tuner, and about har­mon­ics. I paid at­ten­tion, and then I be­came in­volved in Sun Val­ley and then North Stars,” said Williams, pick­ing up the en­er­gy in the con­ver­sa­tion.

He, like most boys of his so­cial class of the time, came from very poor cir­cum­stances. “I was the lit­tle boy that San­ta Claus for­got,” he says. “Yes, I used to get left­over food from the Break­fast Shed that was on Wright­son Road. I used to get things like black pud­ding and souse, ac­cra and float, but that was what was left back,” Williams says com­plete­ly with­out the pain of de­pri­va­tion. But it clear­ly was not easy for this pan sci­en­tist in the mak­ing: Where does ge­nius orig­i­nate from?

A painful sto­ry of his past brought tears to his eyes in the con­ver­sa­tion. “My moth­er. One day, we used to live at Nepaul Street,” where I con­duct­ed the in­ter­view with him, “we had a stand­pipe in front the house; she was go­ing to catch wa­ter; she pitch the buck­et on the ground and it hit an­oth­er girl. The mat­ter end up in court and the mag­is­trate sent my moth­er to St Ann’s Men­tal Home. Af­ter that I lived with my grand­moth­er. My moth­er died some time ago; once I want­ed to bring her home but it did not work out,” says Williams with much re­gret.

With a mea­sure of de­sire, he said he does not know much about his fa­ther, Os­car Williams, “just that he was a fore­man on the road; but we were nev­er close as he nev­er came by us.”

“My wife died. When she was alive, we used to lis­ten to Oral Roberts on the ra­dio, and we got a Bible from him,” which he grasped and re­quest­ed that we, my cam­era­man/pro­duc­er, Dion Bou­caud, and I read spe­cif­ic chap­ters and vers­es (he had lost his sight), one of the read­ings was from Deuteron­o­my 29, the sto­ry of the dis­obe­di­ent Jews. While we read a few of the vers­es he re­cit­ed them ver­ba­tim.

Williams re­spond­ed to my ques­tions and in­sert­ed his own thoughts in a kind of stream of con­scious­ness man­ner as he re­mem­bered and re­flect­ed on his ex­pe­ri­ences. At times I had to hang on, not lose fo­cus as he moved through the decades of his life, but once I caught up with his thoughts, they made ab­solute sense and he was crys­tal clear on them.

One of his re­flec­tions brought us to the 1950 steel­band com­pe­ti­tion at the Sa­van­nah. Sun Val­ley failed to even place, Casablan­ca won the com­pe­ti­tion play­ing “Noc­turne in E Flat”, South­ern Sym­pho­ny and All Stars filled the oth­er po­si­tions.

“So when that hap­pened the cap­tain of the band “Sire”–Sony Roach–and I al­ways re­mem­ber that night; he called a meet­ing of the band three days af­ter Car­ni­val and said he was dis­ap­point­ed with the band and he is go­ing to fin­ish with that. So the young fel­las in the band say we want to con­tin­ue. He said ‘al­right but not in this yard,’ which was his home yard. So we moved to an­oth­er yard low­er down Bournes Road,” Williams ex­plained.

The new band start­ed out as North­ern Stars, but that quick­ly changed to North Stars. He said most of the mem­bers of the new band “loved Eu­ro­pean mu­sic so we start­ed play­ing pieces such as “Come Back to Sor­ren­to” that we used to hear on Red­if­fu­sion.” Through the 1950s, the band de­vel­oped with Williams play­ing an in­creas­ing lead­er­ship role un­til he was made cap­tain. By that time, he had start­ed tun­ing pans and ar­rang­ing the mu­sic.

In 1951, the Trinidad All Per­cus­sion Steel Or­ches­tra (Taspo) was formed, with many of the lead­ing play­ers of the day in­clu­sive of Williams, Man­nette, Roach, Os­car Pyle and oth­ers, to go to the Fes­ti­val of Britain. The mu­si­cal di­rec­tor and arranger for the band was Lt Joseph Nathaniel Grif­fith, a Bar­ba­di­an.

“Lieu­tenant Grif­fith wrote all the parts for the pan and he taught us to read mu­sic. It was one of the great­est things to hap­pen to the steel­band. Lt Grif­fith in­tro­duced the chro­mat­ic sound to the band and by then we had reached a four-chord play­ing songs. He drilled us and even taught us how to speak prop­er­ly,” says Williams.

Sad­ly though, laments Williams, when Taspo re­turned, “the whole thing turn in­to ole mas and no­body was in­ter­est­ed in pan again. And for weeks George Yates and my­self used to go down Dun­can Street where Pro­gres­sive Ed­u­ca­tion­al In­sti­tute was to hold meet­ings, but very few peo­ple came be­cause cer­tain things went wrong with Taspo and mon­ey.”

The fa­mous Spi­der Web Tenor–cre­ation of An­tho­ny Williams. “I stud­ied sci­ence and math­e­mat­ics at Tran­quil­li­ty. Since the cir­cle was a per­fect math­e­mat­i­cal form every­one was show­ing the notes in cir­cu­lar fash­ion. In or­der to achieve the 29 notes on the SWT I need­ed room.

It took me years to find out how to tune the pan: I don’t think I have it per­fect­ed yet. I could not get an oc­tave. Stan­dard size drum al­lowed for 23 notes, I added six, I am work­ing on that now,” he said but he did ac­knowl­edge that his col­league Her­man “Rock” John­son al­so did a lot of work on the Spi­der Web Tenor.

“But I per­fect­ed the har­mon­ics with a strobe tune; that is when you hear a note it is the per­fect note not fun­da­men­tals of the fre­quen­cy,” he ex­plained to this non-mu­si­cian.

When the Pan Am North Stars hitched up with pi­anist Atwell af­ter her 1968 tour here, Williams says Atwell be­came con­cerned that we could go to mu­sic halls and find that the pan not blend­ing with the pi­anos. “She said al­right she will send a tun­ing fork for us to tune the pans with so that any­where we go the pans will match the pi­anos,” says Williams. How­ev­er, when the band reached New York, Williams said he had to fine-tune many of the pans to match the pi­anos.

Sev­en years ago he told me that he had not fin­ished his work on the Spi­der Web Tenor on which he had cre­at­ed 29 notes and was still ex­per­i­ment­ing–in his mind as his phys­i­cal con­di­tion did not al­low him to con­ceive of where he could sit­u­ate the ad­di­tion­al notes in the pan to make it the per­fect in­stru­ment.

Sad­ly, Williams and the band mem­bers, like all steel­bands and play­ers even to­day nev­er got the fi­nan­cial rec­om­pense they so rich­ly de­served; but these men and women who cre­at­ed the steel­pans and bands must nev­er be for­got­ten. In ad­di­tion to the Muff-Man, thanks to Neville “Zam­bie” Gaskin, Desmond “Yan­kee” Belle, Lennox Glas­gow whose home over­looked the Bom­bay Street head­quar­ters of the band, and the re­search work of Cyril Matthew for in­for­ma­tion for this fea­ture.

Not too in­ci­den­tal­ly, the spot on Bom­bay Street (one of the prac­tice yards of the band) re­mains des­o­late, not a mark­ing to say “Pan Am North Stars played here.”

We place lit­tle val­ue on our great­est cre­ations and cre­ators.

Hon­orary Doc­tor of Let­ters De­gree from UWI

Williams re­ceived an Hon­orary Doc­tor of Let­ters De­gree from the Uni­ver­si­ty of the West In­dies at its grad­u­a­tion cer­e­monies in Oc­to­ber 2016.