Chalkdust recalls Sparrow’s faith at City Hall tribute

Ot­to Car­ring­ton

Se­nior Re­porter

ot­to.car­ring­[email protected]

A glimpse of Slinger “Mighty Spar­row” Fran­cis­co in his jock­ey shorts, qui­et­ly read­ing the Bible, was among the mem­o­ries Dr Hol­lis “Chalk­dust” Liv­er­pool shared as he paid trib­ute to his long­time friend and fel­low ca­lyp­son­ian dur­ing a spe­cial event at City Hall, Port-of-Spain, on Thurs­day.

Speak­ing at the Trinidad and To­ba­go Car­ni­val Mu­se­um’s Trib­ute to the Mighty Spar­row yes­ter­day, on the eve of Spar­row’s fu­ner­al cel­e­bra­tion to­day, Chalk­dust re­flect­ed on an oc­ca­sion when he vis­it­ed Spar­row’s ho­tel room in St Thomas to re­trieve a bor­rowed gui­tar.

“Every­body knows him on the stage, singing, en­ter­tain­ing. But they don’t know him in his jock­ey shorts,” he said.

“Spar­row read­ing the Bible.”

Chalk­dust said the im­age of the ca­lyp­so icon study­ing scrip­ture re­mained one of his clear­est mem­o­ries, re­veal­ing a side of the en­ter­tain­er rarely seen by the pub­lic.

He said he lat­er re­count­ed the ex­pe­ri­ence to a priest, who had ques­tioned whether Spar­row had sought for­give­ness for his sins fol­low­ing his bap­tism.

For Chalk­dust, the en­counter un­der­scored how lit­tle peo­ple tru­ly knew about the man be­hind the pub­lic per­sona.

He al­so re­mem­bered Spar­row of­fer­ing the prayer: “Lord, re­mem­ber me when thou shall come in­to thy king­dom.”

Vet­er­an jour­nal­ist Tony Fras­er mod­er­at­ed the Re­flec­tions on the Mighty Spar­row pan­el, which fea­tured Dr Rudolph Ot­t­ley, Dr Pel­ham God­dard and ca­lyp­son­ian Ann Marie Parks-Ko­jo (Twig­gy).

Spar­row died in New York on Sep­tem­ber 27 at the age of 91.

“There are so many mis­con­cep­tions about Spar­row that we need to set the record straight,” Chalk­dust said.

Among the sto­ries he shared was an in­ci­dent at a ho­tel pool where white guests re­port­ed­ly left af­ter a per­former from To­ba­go en­tered the wa­ter. Ac­cord­ing to Chalk­dust, an an­gered Spar­row re­spond­ed by uri­nat­ing in the pool.

Chalk­dust al­so high­light­ed Spar­row’s sharp busi­ness in­stincts. Dur­ing a trip to St Croix, the vet­er­an ca­lyp­son­ian ad­vised him to col­lect his per­for­mance fee be­fore tak­ing the stage.

“Go and get your mon­ey,” Chalk­dust re­called Spar­row telling him.

He fol­lowed the ad­vice and re­ceived his pay­ment. The next morn­ing, oth­er per­form­ers re­port­ed that au­thor­i­ties had seized the gate re­ceipts and they had not been paid. Hav­ing se­cured his earn­ings, Chalk­dust said he treat­ed the group to break­fast.

Spar­row’s fierce­ly com­pet­i­tive na­ture was an­oth­er re­cur­ring theme.

Be­fore per­for­mances for stu­dents in St Thomas, he would ask Chalk­dust how many songs he planned to sing.

“If I say I singing two songs, Spar­row singing three. You can’t up­stage Spar­row,” Chalk­dust said.

He al­so re­called Spar­row re­spond­ing to an in­vi­ta­tion to ad­dress a uni­ver­si­ty award cer­e­mo­ny by break­ing in­to a ren­di­tion of Salt­fish.

Twig­gy re­mem­bered a sim­i­lar dis­play of con­fi­dence at a show in East Or­ange, New Jer­sey. A pro­mot­er had ad­vised Spar­row that fe­male pa­trons were tired of hear­ing Salt­fish and rec­om­mend­ed he leave it out of the set.

In­stead, he per­formed the song and, ac­cord­ing to Twig­gy, women crowd­ed the front of the stage singing every line.

“This is one of the mem­o­ries I keep and I al­ways smile. I nev­er for­get,” she said.

She re­called Spar­row’s re­sponse af­ter­wards: “You want to tell me what to sing?”

Twig­gy al­so praised Spar­row’s cat­a­logue, nam­ing Ly­ing Ex­cus­es among her favourites. She re­mem­bered per­form­ing No Mon­ey, No Love and adapt­ing Elaine and Har­ry from a fe­male per­spec­tive.

Her mem­o­ries al­so in­clud­ed help­ing fea­ture Spar­row at Kaiso House while serv­ing on the ex­ec­u­tive of the Trin­ba­go Uni­fied Ca­lyp­so­ni­ans’ Or­gan­i­sa­tion (TU­CO), cel­e­brat­ing birth­days with him in Ju­ly, and vis­it­ing him and his wife, Rose, in New York in 2024 with her fam­i­ly.

For Twig­gy, the sad­ness of Spar­row’s pass­ing was tem­pered by grat­i­tude.

“The man lived a full life. Nine­ty-one, we give thanks and praise for that,” she said.

“He lived a full life and he did it his way.”

Dur­ing au­di­ence con­tri­bu­tions, Al­lan “Broth­er Mu­da­da” For­tune re­called know­ing Spar­row since his teenage years, when he per­formed as Young Ca­nary.

Broth­er Mu­da­da re­mem­bered ac­com­pa­ny­ing Spar­row to a record­ing ses­sion at the Hilton.

“When there’s an er­ror, you had to play the whole thing again,” Broth­er Mu­da­da said, de­scrib­ing record­ing meth­ods of the era.

Grena­di­an at­tendee Irvin Fran­cis re­flect­ed on the in­flu­ence of Spar­row’s fa­ther and en­cour­aged fa­thers to think care­ful­ly about their chil­dren’s fu­tures.

“Fa­thers, we need to have vi­sions for our chil­dren,” he said.

A vis­i­tor from Mar­tinique, who said he had trav­elled to Trinidad for Spar­row’s fu­ner­al, spoke of the ca­lyp­son­ian’s en­dur­ing in­flu­ence in Mar­tinique and Guade­loupe.

“Spar­row is an ex­am­ple. We have to fol­low this ex­am­ple,” he said.