Inviting (entirely intentional) comparisons with the Buena Vista Social Club, Calypso @ Dirty Jim’s sees a stellar cast of Calypsonians reunited for one last jolly to recreate the now long disappeared club in Trinidad. The club, like the songs, was once populated by sailors, better-off locals, prostitutes and of course the top names in Calypso.

Sparrow celebrates the falling prices of personal favours following the expulsion of the US Naval base and kindly offers to keep up employment levels if not prices, “Yankee’s gone, Sparrow takes over now!” in ‘Jean and Dinah’. The other side of the coin is presented by Calypso Rose’s ‘Rum and Coca Cola’. A song made famous by the Andrews Sisters but here, returned to its unsanitised form, detailing how, “both mothers and daughters [are] working for the Yankee dollar.”

For witty shaggy dog stories, you would need to go a long way to better the tale of ‘Shame and Scandal in the Family’ as related by Relator. A poor boy keeps falling in love with girls only to find out each time that they are really his father’s illegitimate daughters. I won’t spoil the ending but let’s just say his mother comes to the rescue with her own revelation.

Two views of life in London are offered by Relator and Mighty Terror. Relator sings the Lord Kitchener song ‘Nora’ detailing his homesickness and demanding a response from ‘Nora’. While Mighty Terror paints a more positive picture of the, “lovely city by name in London.” Not lovely enough as it turned out, a few years later he packed his bags.

And “double ententes” as sexual euphemisms were known don’t get much more obvious than Bomber’s second contribution ‘Doctor Kitch’. “I said, ‘it is your fault, you must be told. The needle must have slipped in the wrong hole.’ I push it in, she pull it out… ‘Doctor Kitch, It’s terrible, I can’t stand the size of your needle.’”

Finally, you can catch the cast of Dirty Jim’s at the Barbican in London on June 23, ‘06 and if you can’t make it, watch out for the film.

Calypso @ Dirty Jim’s is out now on EMI. Irritatingly, it is Copy Controlled so it is a pain to put it on your iPod.

Link: www.calypso-at-dirty-jims.com