Word: houdini
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Dates: during 1940-1949
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Stone Cold Dead is the biggest Calypso hit since Rum & Coca-Cola (TIME, Jan. 29, 1945). It is also the first big success of 45-year-old Wilmoth Houdini, a Brooklyn-born Trinidad Negro who lives in Manhattan's Harlem half the year, the other half in Trinidad. Houdini, who has recorded 800 Calypso songs, expects to make $40,000 from...
...Wilmoth Houdini (real name: Edgar Leon St.-Clair) calls himself King of Calypso, a title sought after by rivals with such imposing titles as The Lord Executor, The Lord Invader (Rum & Coca-Cola), The Senior Inventor, King Radio, Attila the Hun, The Growler and The Caresser. All of them are old hands at dashing off musical comments on world affairs and local scandals, in Latin-African rhythms as insistent as radio commercials, and in the oddly distorted British accent of the British West Indies...
...Houdini claims to have won every Calypso "war" since 1920. The Calypso Carnival held on the two days before Ash Wednesday is now a major tourist attraction in Port-of-Spain, with each of the rival kings setting up headquarters in bamboo tents, and challenging each other to sing-downs composed on the spur of the moment...
...Houdini's method is to rile his opponent by musical insults. He won his first war by being so insulting to two opponents at the same time that, after 45 minutes, they stopped to congratulate him on his virtuosity. His toughest battle was against the old Master, Lord Executor, until he found a fatal weakness to sing about: Executor's big toe had just popped out of his canvas sneaker...
...Clifford W. Ashley, "the simple act of tying a knot is an adventure in unlimited space." He never saw Houdini or a successful lynching. But he once halted an operation in Boston to see how the surgeon made his stitches fast...