DESCRIPTION:
The official birth of calypso was 1912, when Lovey's String Band recorded the first identifiably calypso genre song while visiting New York City. In 1914, the second calypso song was recorded, this time in Trinidad, by chantwell Julian Whiterose, better known as the Iron Duke ( see) and famous stick fighter. Jules Sims would also record vocal calypsos. The majority of these calypsos of the World War I era were instrumentals by Lovey and Lionel Belasco (see). Perhaps due to the constraints of the wartime economy, no recordings of note were produced until the late 1920s and early 1930s, when the "golden era" of calypso would cement the style, form, and phrasing of the music.