Hartley Neita
DURING THE 1940s and 1959s, there were at least twelve night clubs in the Corporate Area which featured live orchestral music some for two nights (at week ends); others up to six nights weekly.
These orchestras were of various sizes from trios led by Frankie Bonnitto, to twelve-man bands led by Roy Coburn, Eric Deans, and Ivy Graydon. The latter, the only female dance-band musician at the time, played at Springfield in eastern Kingston. Coburn led a jazz dance band at the Bournemouth, also in eastern Kingston, while Deans played at the Colony in Cross Roads. Other bands included Whylie Lopez, George Moxey, Milton McPherson, Baba Motta, Cliff Beckford, Redver Cooke, Baron Lewis and Don Hitchman. Sonny Bradshaw's sessions at Silver Slipper in Cross Roads brought out the teen-age crowd with their jitterbugging, buggy-riding and other dance steps of the time.
MATINEE SHOWS
These orchestras also played before the matinee shows at the Carib and movies in Cross Roads, or before the first night shows at the Palace and other movie houses. In addition to the music at these night shows, there were also what was called "other acts" and which included belly dancing by Madame Wasp, Madame Sugar Hips and Madame Temptation. The bands also played for the Opportunity Hour contests promoted by Vere Johns, and which unearthed many top talents in singing and dancing.
The Corporate Area lost many of its musicians, such as Bertie King, Ossie DaCosta, Wynton Gaynair, Joe Harriott, Coleridge Goode and Ben Bowers, who migrated to Britain where they became well-known stars and were invited to accompany American orchestras when they went on tour of Europe. Many of our musicians, such as Cecil Lloyd, Billy Cooke, Leo Wilson, Lennie Hibbert and Janet Enwright also went to Montego Bay and later Ocho Rios to play in the hotels. For three months each year the winter tourist season these musicians were not heard of, as the hotels at the time did not welcome Jamaican guests.
We had great individual jazzmen at the time. The Mecca at which they performed was the Bournemouth. Coburn's orchestra included Gaynair, Tommy McCook, Don Drummond, Vernon Muller, Raymond Harper, Fitz Colash and Roland Alphonso. The band played there twice each week, with the stage sometimes having 30 musicians. These included Harold 'Little G' MacNair, Ernest Rnglin, Lloyd Adams, Seymour 'Foggy' Mullings, Con Allison and Cluet Hamilton.
As late teenagers and early twenty-year-olds, we took the bus and tram to Outlook Avenue on these nights, walked to the Club, and after the dance ended (11:00 p.m. on Wednesdays and 1.00 a.m. on Friday nights) we walked home to Vineyard Town, Cross Roads, Beechwood Avenue and elsewhere in the Corporate Area. No gunman or rapist ever harmed the girls.
It was also the glory age for singers. There was Archie Lewis who migrated to England during the early '40s and became Britain's most popular singer. Some, as Winston Roach did, patterned the style of Nat King Cole, but there were other great song stylists, such as, Sheila Rickard, Blossom and Louise Lamb, Francisco Francis, Buddy Ilgner (whose voice had echoes of Frank Sinatra), Carlyle Heywood, Hubert Porter and Mercedes Kirkwood,
There were also the mento and calypso singers. Lord Flea and Lord Fly ruled the roost, along with Count Lasher. They added spice to the glory.
