11/14/2011

The Talbot Brothers


Despite of it's northern location, Calypso was introduced in Bermuda during the 40's as modern post-war aviation brought tourism in the islands.  The Talbot Brothers was at this time and for twenty years the trinidadian music indisputed ambassadors, mostly for white tourists in search of exotica.



 Five real brothers plus a cousin, they came with a particular Calypso instrumentation,
using a remarquable self made upright bass (as jamaicans use the marimbula for mento/calypso), accordion , harmonica and a Martin T18 tiple as mento players mostly use a small banjo.
Brian "Dick" Talbot is not well heard in the records, melted with the three guitars his tiple strumm is not clearly discernable but we have an exception with this "atomic" track from 1957:



At my opinion the sound engineer located Dick near from the microphone such as the voice / maracas .
A typical bouncy calypso strumm is played with an alternative mute/stroke right hand technique.

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