Subject: RE: Lyr Req: Rum and Coca Cola
From:
Joe Offer
Date: 17 Jan 04 - 01:32 PM
There's a bit of a story behind the song. Apparently, it stems from a much earlier song. It would be interesting to see earlier versions.
Wasn't Morey Amsterdam a regular on one of those TV panel shows - What's My Line? or I've Got a Secret, or something like that? Here's the entry from The Great Song Thesaurus:Rum and Coca Cola, 1945. Spanish words by Clotilda Arias. English words, Morey Amsterdam. Music, Jeri Sullavan & Paul Baron. This song was first introduced at the Versailles night club in New York, and is possibly based on Lionel Belasco's "L'Annee Parisee" of 1906, published originally in Trididad. a plagiarism suit ensued in which Belasco's publisher sued the authors and won. Belasco settled for a large financial payment and sacrificed all future property rights of the song as well as writer credit.
See this review (click) of a Rounder collection of the songs of Lionel Belasco:Belasco or "Lanky", as his friends called him, was born in Port of Spain, Trinidad in 1881. Both his parents were musicians and Belasco himself was a child prodigy who played the piano and began composing at the age of 12. According to historian Sue-Anne Gomes in The Book of Trinidad, "By the time he was 16 he had written four hundred ballads, pastiches, waltzes, calypsos, sambas and rumbas and was also the leader of his own band."
Although he was classically trained, Belasco revelled in Afro-Trinidadian musical traditions like calypso, kalinda, parang and bele that were popular especially among rural folk in Trinidad. During an interview in the twilight of his life, he reminisced how after playing Beethoven and "all the heavy things", he would often steal away to the countryside to enjoy the "ceremonies and shangos ...done by the Yorubas, the African tribe that is chiefly in Trinidad from Nigeria." Trinidadian society is composed of descendants from Africa, Asia, Europe and the Middle East. Belasco incorporated all of the rich and varied aspects of this cosmopolitan mix to create his rhythmic and delightfully lyrical compositions. Belasco also had strong familial ties to neighboring Venezuela. Due to his frequent visits there, along with the sizable Venezuelan presence in Trinidad, he developed a deep fondness for that South American country's folk music. He composed so prolificly in that genre, that today many of his waltzes and joropos are still performed by Venezuelan artists and symphony orchestras.
As an extremely successful bandleader and soloist, Belasco toured and recorded extensively throughout the Caribbean, North and South America and Europe. It is also said that he was the first black solo instrumentalist to be recorded. The list of his appearances included Carnegie Hall, national broadcasting chains, and several motion pictures by Paramount and Columbia Pictures. Needless to say, his influence on generations of West Indian musicians was immense. Belasco was the first person to bring West Indian and many forms of South American music to sizable audiences outside of those territories. One of Belasco's earliest compositions entitled, L'annee Passee was recorded by The Andrew Sisters as Rum and Coca Cola in the early 1940s. That song eventually became a worldwide hit. The remarkable Lionel Belasco died in 1967 at the age of 85 in New York City.
There's another article about Belasco here (click):
BELASCO'S MUSIC LIVES ON By Kim Johnson
Sunday Express
June 20, 1999 Lionel "Lanky" Belasco was born around 1882 in Barbados. His mother, a Trinidadian, taught piano; his father was a Sephardic Jew who sang baritone, and played organ and violin. They moved to Trinidad when Belasco was a child, but as the family had Venezuelan relations, like many Sephardic Jews such as the de Limas, Belasco regularly spent time there. He also began to study music from young, being torn between the classical piano his mother taught, and the African rhythms he herd in the streets. As a teenager he straddled both worlds: on the one hand organizing his own band with school friends; fighting as a "zom camisole" or jacketman stickfighter, on the other. Once, Myler, a champion with the bois, broke Belasco's hand in a fight. "I used to do all the heavy things, but I like the bush music as I used to call it My mother would say very often to me, 'Don't bring that thing in here. Please don't play that music in here' I would go out to these jungles and they used to have cock fighting and stickfighting. Those things were prohibited by law but they get in these places," he told Leonard de Paur - himself an interesting character. By his late teens Belasco was travelling widely as a musician, absorbing other varieties of creole music, not only in the Caribbean but also in South America: "I went with the circus company to Brazil and Argentina. I went around with a magician, playing the piano and (being) assistant magician. When I was 16 or 17 I went up the Orinoco in the jungle all the way up to the Amazon." And yet, Belasco's instrument was the piano - not a thing for Carnival music of the streets. Instead, his band played for indoor dances of the elite. As early as 1903 "Belasco's Renowned String Band" appeared in the press. He played for parties at the Governor's House, and gave lessons to the Governor's daughter. Belasco continued travelling throughout the region, returning to Trinidad in 1914 to make his first recording for the Victor Recording Company. "Everybody will no doubt appreciate how fortunate we were in being able to obtain a repertoire of such beautiful local selections by Belasco's band," stated the company. "According to rumour", says Don Hill in his detailed CD notes on Goodnight Ladies and Gents: the creole music of Lionel Belasco, he taught the Governor's daughter other things on the piano. She was shipped back to England and Belasco had to flee to New York. In the Big Apple Belasco began recording like crazy. With Sam Manning he controlled the West Indian music scene. He accompanied vaudevillian Phil Madison. He cut piano rolls for the largest manufacturers. From the late 1920s he returned home for Carnival to learn the latest songs, which he would arrange and record back in New York, copyrighting many of them under his own name. Belasco also ran a piano store in Manhattan. Still, he wanted to return home, so he made a deal with Noor Gokool to manage a cinema Gokool was planning to build. They fell out, Belasco sued Gokool, lost the case and returned to the U.S. where he continued recording music. He published a booklet in 1943 that included "L'Année Passée", a tune he claimed to have written in 1907, although it was actually a Martiniquan folksong heard in Trinidad long before. It was, however, the melody for a song Invader sang that year in the Victory tent, "Rum and Coca-Cola" and which three Americans claimed they'd written for the Andrews Sisters. The song was a huge hit for the Andrews Sisters. Both Invader and Belasco sued for plagiarism and in 1950 won the case. Invader got $100,000, although Belasco's award isn't known. Belasco continued performing, making records and touring throughout the 1950s, and only slowing down in the 1960s. Early in 1867 he completed the music for a play written by a lawyer friend, Joseph Taubman, entitled The Rajah of the Islands. Shortly after, on June 24, Lionel Belasco died in New York at the age of 85. From NALIS, the National Library and Information System Authority of Trinidad and Tobago. Be sure to look at their music section.
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