If we can take as a given the horrors of Minister Farrakhan's politics, Peace, and get past it just long enough to talk about the music...

The song had a certain life. It turned up in Bermuda (if I remember correctly, in the hands of the none-too-talented but prolific goodtime band The Talbot Brothers) as "Is You Is Or Is You Ain't."

A natural for calypso, that story -- also celebrated in calypsonian Lloyd Thomas' "Sex Changing."   

Charmer aka Farrakhan had a light agile tenor, a kind of nervous manner with a song. Good band behind him. He had a kind of professional polish, and while not among the best of his time -- not a good time for calypso, either, the 50s -- despite (or because of?) its Belafonte breakout -- he was a pretty good performer.

OK, OK, about the politics...

Many will perhaps wish Farrakhan had stayed a calypso singer. That he did good things for black consciousness and black pride in the early days, though, cannot be denied.

It is a pity that his originally good initiative degenerated into a killer cult (as, after all, has right wing Christianity and a bunch of other "good causes"). And, to agree wholeheartedly with his worst detractors:

How doubly tragic it is that, due to Farrakhan's hatred, we no longer have Malcom X around. Imagine him here today, to say the necessary truths about the New Orleans tragedy...and a host of other issues important to America and the world!!!