The Duke of Iron was a calypsonian

Calypsonian

A calypsonian , originally known as the chantwell is a musician, from the Anglophone Caribbean, who sings songs called calypso. Calypsos are musical renditions having their origins in the West African griot tradition...

, nightclub

Nightclub

A nightclub is an entertainment venue which usually operates late into the night...

 and concert entertainer, and recording artist from the 1930s through the 1960s. He was renowned for his bawdy

Ribaldry

Ribaldry is humorous entertainment that ranges from bordering on indelicacy to gross indecency. It is also referred to as "bawdiness", "gaminess" or "bawdry"....

 humor, crisp diction

Diction

Diction , in its original, primary meaning, refers to the writer's or the speaker's distinctive vocabulary choices and style of expression in a poem or story...

, and confident vocal mannerisms. His clarity in pronouncing English lyrics helped him achieve tremendous popularity with American audiences.

Anderson was a native of Trinidad

Trinidad

Trinidad is the larger and more populous of the two major islands and numerous landforms which make up the island nation of Trinidad and Tobago. It is the southernmost island in the Caribbean and lies just off the northeastern coast of Venezuela. With an area of it is also the fifth largest in...

, and moved with his family to New York in 1923. In the 1930s he was a featured vocalist with the Caribbean-styled big band

Big band

A big band is a type of musical ensemble associated with jazz and the Swing Era typically consisting of rhythm, brass, and woodwind instruments totaling approximately twelve to twenty-five musicians...

 Felix & His Krazy Kats. He performed at a conference of folklorists in Canada during the 1930s, for which he was billed as "An Authentic Interpreter of the Kaiso

Kaiso

Kaiso is a type of music popular in Trinidad and other Islands of the Caribbean such as Grenada, St. Lucia, Barbados and St. Kitts & Nevis which originated in West Africa, and later evolved into Calypso. Kaiso songs are generally narrative in form and often have a cleverly concealed political...

.".

Anderson became a headliner on the New York club scene, which included a ten-month stint at the Village Vanguard in the 1940s. He also participated in the legendary 1946 Calypso At Midnight concerts produced by Alan Lomax

Alan Lomax

Alan Lomax was an American folklorist and ethnomusicologist. He was one of the great field collectors of folk music of the 20th century, recording thousands of songs in the United States, Great Britain, Ireland, the Caribbean, Italy, and Spain.In his later career, Lomax advanced his theories of...

 at New York's Town Hall

The Town Hall

The Town Hall is a performance space, located at 123 West 43rd Street, between Sixth Avenue and Broadway, in New York City. It seats approximately 1,500 people.-History:...

 auditorium. In the latter part of the decade he often performed at the Caribbean Club on Seventh Avenue, New York, along with Wilmoth Houdini

Wilmoth Houdini

Frederick Wilmoth Hendricks , best known as Wilmoth Houdini,was a prominent calypsonian.-Life:...

 (billed as "King Houdini").

During the 1950s and 1960s, he performed at Carnegie Hall

Carnegie Hall

Carnegie Hall is a concert venue in Midtown Manhattan in New York City, United States, located at 881 Seventh Avenue, occupying the east stretch of Seventh Avenue between West 56th Street and West 57th Street, two blocks south of Central Park....

, the Apollo Theater

Apollo Theater

The Apollo Theater in New York City is one of the most famous, and older, music halls in the United States, and the most famous club associated almost exclusively with Black performers...

 in Harlem

Harlem

Harlem is a neighborhood in the New York City borough of Manhattan, which since the 1920s has been a major African-American residential, cultural and business center. Originally a Dutch village, formally organized in 1658, it is named after the city of Haarlem in the Netherlands...

, and at many leading nightclubs, such as the Village Gate

The Village Gate

The Village Gate was a nightclub at the corner of Thompson and Bleecker Street in Greenwich Village, New York.Art D'Lugoff opened the club in 1958, on the ground floor and basement of 158 Bleecker Street. The large 1896 Chicago School structure by architect Ernest Flagg was known at the time as...

, the Jamaican Room and the Calypso Room. He appeared in the film Calypso Joe (Allied Artists Pictures, 1957) with Angie Dickinson

Angie Dickinson

Angie Dickinson is an American actress. She has appeared in more than fifty films, including Rio Bravo, Ocean's Eleven, Dressed to Kill and Pay It Forward, and starred on television as Sergeant Suzanne "Pepper" Anderson on the 1970s crime series Police Woman.-Early life:Dickinson, the second of...

. He regularly returned to Trinidad to keep up with current trends in calypso, and performed and recorded many annual Carnival

Trinidad and Tobago Carnival

The Trinidad and Tobago Carnival is an annual event celebrated on the Monday and Tuesday before Ash Wednesday.Carnival in Trinidad and Tobago is the most significant event on the islands' cultural and tourism calendar, with numerous cultural events running in the lead up to the street parade on...

 hits.

He died in 1968 at age 62.

Jazz saxophonist Sonny Rollins

Sonny Rollins

Theodore Walter "Sonny" Rollins is a Grammy-winning American jazz tenor saxophonist. Rollins is widely recognized as one of the most important and influential jazz musicians. A number of his compositions, including "St...

, who recorded a number of Caribbean

Caribbean

The Caribbean is a crescent-shaped group of islands more than 2,000 miles long separating the Gulf of Mexico and the Caribbean Sea, to the west and south, from the Atlantic Ocean, to the east and north...

-styled instrumentals, composed and recorded a piece entitled "Duke of Iron" in his memory.

Recording career

The Duke of Iron recorded singles and albums for a variety of labels, including Decca, Virgin Isle-Supertone, Varsity, Paragon, Stinson and Folkways

Folkways Records

Folkways Records was a record label founded by Moses Asch that documented folk, world, and children's music. It was acquired by the Smithsonian Institution in 1987, and is now part of Smithsonian Folkways.-History:...

 (both for Moses Asch

Moses Asch

Moses Asch was the founder of Folkways Records. Asch ran the label from 1948 until his death...

), Monogram, Prestige/International, and RCA Victor.

He was notorious for humorous, ribald calypsos, like "I Left Her Behind For You," "Miss Constance" ("she said: I may be small, and yet/I can take on any runner when the track gets wet"), "The Naughty Fly," and "The Postman" (who has "the longest route in town/they know he rings the bell whenever he comes round"). He also wrote topical songs about radio commentator Walter Winchell

Walter Winchell

Walter Winchell was an American newspaper and radio gossip commentator.-Professional career:Born Walter Weinschel in New York City, he left school in the sixth grade and started performing in a vaudeville troupe known as Gus Edwards' "Newsboys Sextet."His career in journalism was begun by posting...

 and the New York Mets

New York Mets

The New York Mets are a professional baseball team based in the borough of Queens in New York City, New York. They belong to Major League Baseball's National League East Division. One of baseball's first expansion teams, the Mets were founded in 1962 to replace New York's departed National League...

 baseball

Baseball

Baseball is a bat-and-ball sport played between two teams of nine players each. The aim is to score runs by hitting a thrown ball with a bat and touching a series of four bases arranged at the corners of a ninety-foot diamond...

 team.

Anderson played cuatro

Cuatro (instrument)

The cuatro is any of several Latin American instruments of the guitar or lute family. The cuatro is smaller than a guitar. Cuatro means four in Spanish, although current instruments may have more than four strings....

 and was an exceptional pianist. His brother George "Boysie" Anderson played flute

Flute

The flute is a musical instrument of the woodwind family. Unlike woodwind instruments with reeds, a flute is an aerophone or reedless wind instrument that produces its sound from the flow of air across an opening...

, clarinet

Clarinet

The clarinet is a musical instrument of woodwind type. The name derives from adding the suffix -et to the Italian word clarino , as the first clarinets had a strident tone similar to that of a trumpet. The instrument has an approximately cylindrical bore, and uses a single reed...

 and saxophone

Saxophone

The saxophone is a conical-bore transposing musical instrument that is a member of the woodwind family. Saxophones are usually made of brass and played with a single-reed mouthpiece similar to that of the clarinet. The saxophone was invented by the Belgian instrument maker Adolphe Sax in 1846...

, and recorded with Cecil on several of his later albums.

Some sources allege that Anderson, as the Duke of Iron, made the first calypso recording in 1914. Anderson was eight years old at the time. The recording in question, titled "Iron Duke in the Land," was made by calypso pioneer Julian Whiterose. Although calypsos had originally been sung in French, by the time "Iron Duke" was recorded calypsonians had developed the art singing in English.

Family History

Father: James Bernard Anderson also known 'Nolly'

Mother: Margaret Gladys 'Tickie' Anderson born in Antigua, Settled in Trinidad, moved to NYC, died in St Thomas 197?

Paternal Grandfather: James Bernard Anderson

Sister: Carmen Duhon nee Anderson

Brothers: George 'Boysie' Anderson, Leonard Slyvestre Anderson (b.1917 d.2003),he played saxophone with his brothers but not professionally.

External links

• The Duke of Iron at Best of Trinidad
• The Duke of Iron at Calypso World
• The Duke of Iron biography and discography