Although calypso music reached new audiences in New York during the late 30's and early 40's, it did not have a home base in the metropolitan area, a fact much lamented by its devotees. Also, some of its "away" games produced a mismatch of expectations as shown in this review of a Duke of Iron performance at the Apollo Theatre in early 1941. The reviewer was Brooks Atkinson, the theatre critic at the New York Times, and the show, which cost 50¢ to attend, was a revue called "Tropicana", staged by Trinidadian composer Donald Heywood.
Clearly what was wanted was a place run by and for the West Indian community where calypso would be assured of a fair hearing. No one wanted it more than a man named Boxil Jackson, a Trinidadian bandleader living in New York. In early 1944 he got an idea for a new kind of nightclub - one that featured all calypso, all the time. [1]
To bring this about he teamed up with another West Indian named Patrick McMorris. McMorris, a Vincentian, was widely admired in the immigrant community, holding down a day job with Standard Oil of New Jersey, and overseeing, in his spare time, the schedules of thirty different teams in the New York Cricket League. [2]
The two of them found a spot at 2387 7th Avenue, in the heart of the West Indian section of Harlem. The site was formerly occupied by a Chinese-American restaurant and dance hall known as The World. (Jackson’s band had played there.) Apparently they held over some of the kitchen staff - the club offered American, West Indian, and Chinese cuisine. At the grand opening on May 19, 1944 Jackson and McMorris revealed to the public a lavishly renovated interior with a V-shaped bar and oil paintings of tropical vistas on the wall. They called it the Caribbean Club.
The club quickly became one of the most popular nightclubs and function halls in Harlem. The place was huge - seating capacity of seven hundred - and what hours! It was open for breakfast meetings, luncheons, late afternoon "cocktail sips", all manner of banquets and testimonial dinners, followed by two floor shows - one at 10:30 PM, and one at 1:30 AM. All of this wrapped by a 4 AM curfew. As Invader later said in court regarding his job at the club, "I work up to three in the morning". [3]
Based on newspaper ads the club brought in the top calypso singers for engagements of several weeks. Besides Invader, the list included Lord Beginner, Wilmoth Houdini, Growling Tiger, the Duke of Iron, Sam Manning, and others.
Whatever credentials the big-name calypsonians brought to the club, they were not enough to upstage one of the other
performers on the bill - a young exotic dancer who called herself "Princess Nyoka". For months during 1944 and 1945 she held Harlem audiences spellbound with torrid interpretative dances such as "The Swan" and "The Flamingo". In her most widely discussed act, called "Forbidden Fruit", she played the part of a Haitian sorceress whose hypnotic enticements, backed by voodoo drums, coaxed a "dead" man to rise from his grave! [4]
Exactly when Invader started singing at the Caribbean Club is not known for sure. The first newspaper notice that I could find was on July 14, 1946, but based on court testimony it seemed that he must have been there earlier than that. Whatever the date it is clear that the club was an important hub of activity for him in the lead-up to the "Khan vs. Feist" courtroom action in December, 1946. The three-way phone conversations between himself, Sam Manning, and Harry Link probably took place at the club. (see "Invader at the Brill"). It is easy to imagine him at the V-shaped bar, receiving well-wishers, getting advice from all quarters about his legal strategy. At other times he may well have been in a back room, playing in the poker games which took back so much of his hard-earned money. (Invader claimed under oath that he was paid $100 a week at the club.) [5]
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On February 7, 1946 the club suffered a tragic loss from which it never really recovered - the death of its co-founder Patrick McMorris at the young age of forty-seven - the same age as Lord Invader at his death. The cause was hypertension. Boxil Jackson replaced him as president, but in doing so he violated one of the cardinal rules of the music business - a musician should never try to manage his own club. Jackson was no exception - he lacked the steady hand needed to keep things on an even keel. A prime example of this came the following October when he got into a heated discussion with Wilmoth Houdini about Houdini's lack of punctuality. The two of them came to blows and even Houdini could not escape a crushing left cross from Boxil which floored him and left him temporarily deaf in one ear. Houdini brought suit against the club and more scandals followed although the details are sketchy . What is clear is that the club closed for good in the spring of 1947.
It quickly reopened under new management and decor as the "Club Calypso". Lord Invader survived the regime change and appeared there often in the latter half of 1947. This was in the lead-up to "Baron vs. Feist" which was heard in November of that year. The last time Invader sang at the club, according to the pages of The New York Amsterdam News, was on January 31, 1948, after which he probably returned to Trinidad for the tent season.
The Club Calypso continued on into the 1950's but it was a tough sell. First of all the quality of the music thinned out considerably in the early 50's with many of the top calypsonians like Kitchener, Terror, and Lion deciding to relocate to England. Basically, the word "calypso" would not create any more excitement in the U.S. until the emergence of Harry Belafonte in the fall of 1956. On top of that the West Indian community in New York was slowly migrating away from Harlem to Brooklyn, where it remains concentrated today. Even more problematic was the basic insupportability of the "all calypso, all the time" formula. It has never worked. In Trinidad, at carnival time, the new crop of calypso songs are treated like new fashions or new wines. They are the excitement and the argument of the island. Played back months or years later in another season, in another country, by another vocalist, they just don't have the same meaning.
The last mention of the Club Calypso which I could find in the New York Amsterdam News was on September 8, 1951. It closed soon after that and was replaced by another eatery/dance hall known as the Dawn Casino. The location still had some meaning for fans of calypso - during the West Indian carnival and parade, which continued on upper 7th Avenue through the 1950’s, the reviewing stand was placed right in front. [6]
Disaster struck the Dawn Casino in late July, 1974 - the building next door, which housed the Better Crust Pie Co.. caught fire and the blaze spread down the block, from 140th St. to 139th. All the buildings had to be razed. The pie company quickly reopened across the street, but not the Dawn Casino. Today, there are just two low-density structures on the entire block, a fish market and a drive-thru McDonald’s.
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[1] This section was researched almost entirely by scanning the pages of the New York Amsterdam News via the keyword technology provided by Proquest Historical Newspapers. Please contact the author for specific citations. Other sources are noted where relevant.
[2] Wenzell Brown, writing in the NEGRO DIGEST, June, 1947 pp. 52-53 also mentions the involvement of Wycliffe Jackson, Boxil's brother, in the founding of the club. Brown is quoted in Donald Hill's, “’I Am Happy Just To Be In This Sweet Land of Liberty’: The New York City Calypso Craze of the 1930s and 1940s,” book chapter in Ray Allen and Lois Wilcken, eds., Island Sounds In the Global City, New York: Institute for Studies in American Music and the New York Folklore Society, 1998, p. 86.
[3] Khan vs Feist transcript, p.85
[4] The Pittsburgh Courier, September 30, 1944, p. 13
[5] Khan vs. Feist transcript, p.86
[6] New York Times, Sept. 8, 1959, p.31
