Artist Bio:
Trinidadian singer Mighty Sparrow (Slinger Francisco) is the best known and most highly regarded of all calypsonians. With a career that spans over half a century, he has taken calypso all over the world. He has produced dozens of albums and singles throughout his decades of continuous travel and has won all the major awards. He has been the Calypso Monarch of Trinidad eight times and won Road March (the most popular tune played by bands on the streets of Carnival) eight times. He has also won the International Calypso King of Kings competitions on two occasions. He has been honored repeatedly with commendations including an honorary doctor of arts from the University of the West Indies in 1987, Trinidad's Chaconia Gold in 1993 (one of his country's highest honors) and New York City Mayor Ed Koch declared a Mighty Sparrow Day in 1984.
Born in Grenada, Mighty Sparrow was raised in Port of Spain, Trinidad, and started singing in a church choir. Early on he had a love of pop, jazz and R&B. He started singing calypso as a teenager. With his 1956 hit "Jean and Dinah," Sparrow proclaimed his dominance. "Yankee gone, Sparrow take over now!" was a reference to the declining presence of U.S. servicemen in Trinidad after World War II and a bravura assertion of his own skills in every forum. Many of his early songs were political commentaries that showed support for the PNM party of Dr. Eric Williams who led the country to independence from England in 1962.
A consummate entertainer, Sparrow performs everything from risqué songs and wry humor to political commentary. Among his countless well-known calypsos are "Ten to One Is Murder" (about a street fight), "Federation" (on the collapse of the West Indies Federation in 1961), "Obeah Wedding" (about a romantic encounter involving magic), "Sir Garfield Sobers" (a tribute to the cricket great), "Martin Luther King for President" and "Capitalism Gone Mad." Almost every year he has issued an album, and bands and calypsonians plying the tourist trade throughout the Caribbean have covered his hits.
From the mid-1950s to the 1970s Sparrow was a headliner at the Young Brigade tent every Carnival season in Trinidad; the tent was renamed Sparrow's Young Brigade. He also regularly toured the Caribbean as well as England and the U.S. Because of his frequent trips to America, Sparrow eventually bought a home in New York. Much of his recording has been done there, too, and he uses it as a base for his constant international touring—and as source for his songs, singing calypsos on American politics and society. For many years he has been the star of Mother's Day concerts in New York. When soca came in, Sparrow adapted and recorded soca tunes as well; he even won the Monarchy with his "Both of Them" in 1992. He occasionally went outside calypso and soca to record albums of ballads such as Only a Fool that have proved very popular as well.
In 2000 Sparrow decided to assert control over his back catalog, which was spread over many labels, by issuing his millennium series of albums filled with both new and old recordings. The collection already has more than 30 releases. In 2003, he released his first gospel album, Redemption, and donated the profits from 10,000 copies to the Grenada Hurricane relief effort. He now often includes at least one gospel number in his concerts.
Sparrow is featured prominently in two recent documentary films, Calypso Dreams and Calypso at Dirty Jim's. For his 70th birthday, he performed a series of concerts in Trinidad during the summer of 2005. That was followed by the rerelease of some of his first recordings on Smithsonian Folkways, First Flight: Early Calypso From the Emory Cook Collection, and a tour as one of the Masters of Caribbean Music across the East Coast, sponsored by the National Council for Traditional Arts. —Ray Funk
