While visiting Ben "Bad Science" Goldacre's flat in London recently, he played me some fantastic cuts off a compilation LP titled "London Is The Place For Me: Trinidadian Calypso In London, 1950-1956." This incredible music hit the global scene during the massive Caribbean migration to the UK starting around 1948. I know next-to-nothing about Calypso, but one signer I was somewhat familiar with is the famous Aldwyn Roberts, aka Lord Kitchener. (Indeed, the record Ben played me was named for Kitchener's best-known song.) Kitchener emigrated to London from Trinidad, via Jamaica. Amazingly, just as Kitchener's boat, the Empire Windrush, pulled into the British harbor on June 22, 1948, a journalist interviewed him about his fledgling career as a singer. As Ben said when he sent me this clip, "It's such a great and improbable thing to have on film. Some guy, getting off a boat, who is shortly to become massively famous, singing into your BBC microphone."
