Ed Wat­son, a band­leader and arranger who played a key role in the de­vel­op­ment of so­ca mu­sic, died in his sleep yes­ter­day at the age of 93.

His fam­i­ly an­nounced his pass­ing in a Face­book post.

Pop­u­lar­ly known as Dr So­ca and the King of So­ca, Her­bert Ed Wat­son was born on Sep­tem­ber 3, 1930, the sec­ond of four chil­dren to Rod­dy and Em­ma Wat­son. 

He in­her­it­ed his mu­si­cal tal­ents from his fa­ther, who was a al­so band­leader, and played the flute and clar­inet. How­ev­er, Wat­son’s for­mal train­ing in mu­sic didn’t be­gin un­til he was 17 years old.

At age 24, he start­ed a band with a gui­tar play­er, a drum­mer and him­self on the pi­ano. The band even­tu­al­ly be­came Ed Wat­son and the Brass Cir­cle, a fix­ture on the ca­lyp­so cir­cuit for sev­er­al decades.

The band’s lead singers over the years in­clud­ed Ver­sa­tile, Er­rol Ashe and Singing Di­anne, who en­joyed suc­cess­ful so­lo ca­lyp­so ca­reers, record­ing a se­ries of hit songs through the 1970s and 1980s with dis­tinc­tive mu­si­cal arrange­ments by Wat­son.

Wat­son got his first break when his mu­si­cal arrange­ment for Wel­come New Lovers by Pat Boone was record­ed by Ma­jor Carr, own­er of Cook Caribbean Records, a record­ing stu­dio lo­cat­ed on Sackville Street, Port-of-Spain.

Lat­er, he arranged and record­ed in­stru­men­tal ver­sions of pop­u­lar ca­lyp­soes by The Mighty Spar­row, gain­ing ex­pe­ri­ence and re­spect in the lo­cal mu­sic in­dus­try.

By 1964, Wat­son was work­ing with Boyie Lewis and had arranged his first orig­i­nal song, Lit­tle Roger. The suc­cess of that record in­spired him to take the ar­rang­ing and record­ing busi­ness se­ri­ous­ly.

Wat­son worked with sev­er­al lead­ing ca­lyp­so­ni­ans, in­clud­ing Spar­row, Ca­lyp­so Rose, Ar­row, De­sign­er, Mer­chant and Ras Shorty I. He was al­so cred­it­ed with cre­at­ing the first chords of Lord Kitch­en­er’s block­buster hit, Sug­ar Bum Bum. A con­sid­er­able amount of the work on that song was done at Wat­son’s stu­dio, Cir­cle Records Lim­it­ed, lo­cat­ed at his home on Abbe Pou­jade Street, Care­nage.

He al­so arranged the mu­sic for the first ever chut­ney so­ca hit, Lord Shorty’s In­drani.

Wat­son stepped away from mu­si­cal per­for­mances af­ter be­ing di­ag­nosed with pan­cre­at­ic can­cer sev­er­al years ago, but af­ter beat­ing that ill­ness he con­tin­ued work from his home writ­ing mu­si­cal arrange­ments for ca­lyp­so­ni­ans for quite some time.

Fu­ner­al arrange­ments for Wat­son are be­ing fi­nalised.