Gene Lawrence - 1977 - Sunset To Sunrise

Gene Lawrence

1977

Sunset To Sunrise

01. Your Song

02. Sereno Sereno

03. My Cherie Amour

04. Papa Bois

05. After Sunrise

06. Feel Like Making Love

07. Marjorie

08. Men Capitan

Bass – Wayne (Barney) Bonaparte

Drums – Errol Wise

Keyboards – Gregory La Salle, Max, Robert Bailey

Keyboards, Synthesizer – Carl (Beaver) Henderson

Lead Vocals, Guitar, Twelve-String Guitar – Gene Lawrence

Gene Lawrence, is hailed as one of the Caribbean’s most versatile and accomplished musicians, and every musical thread he has woven throughout his illustrious career has turned into gold.

Born in St Vincent, he has the unique pleasure of being a citizen of T&T, St Lucia and St Vincent. Lawrence, who has been married to Katherine Buxo for 51 years, is the father of Barry Lawrence and Jodi Phillips.

Lawrence has fond memories of his childhood in St Vincent and in Trinidad, an experience which endears him to both countries. “I left St Vincent at the age of nine,” said Lawrence this week. “My family owned Brighton & Connery estates up in the country in Georgetown, but we lived in Kingstown. I lived close to a place named Victoria Park where all the major sporting activities on the island took place, like football and cricket so, as a child I enjoyed the things all boys enjoy. When the family migrated to Grenada I attended Presentation College where I wrote GCE.

“Most of my holidays were spent in Trinidad but I came to live in Trinidad around the age of 16. A lot of guys remember me from school holidays and think that I was Trinidadian. I grew up with guys like John Henderson, Syl Dopson, Willy West and John ‘Buddy’ Williams, all good musicians. The steelband and guitar were my big entry into music.” Lawrence recalled playing pan in St Vincent and subsequently adopted the guitar as his instrument of choice.

He said: “When my father went away to fight in World War II, unknown to us, he left behind a guitar which was given to me at the age of ten. At that stage I couldn’t play a guitar but I had a good ear for music. I used to tune bottles, filled with different amounts of water, and played music on them. My musical colleagues and I did a record—Kaiso 1—which was released in Trinidad in 1958. Of the guys that played on that record I am probably the only one alive. It was a super recording and was done upstairs a residence in Woodbrook. The record had only traditional Trinidad calypsoes on it.

A finger-style acoustic guitarist, Lawrence is versed in classical, folk, popular music, calypso and jazz. An original member of Silver Strings Combo, one this country’s foremost musical aggregations, a composer and arranger, Lawrence has also played with the Troubadours and was a pan player in the early days of Silver Stars steel orchestra.

He was also a guitarist in Olive Walke’s La Petite Musicale folk choir for many years.

He recalled: “I was very much involved in Olive Walke’s choir. We made songs like Mangoes and Zingay Tallala which became very popular. Denyse Plummer’s father, Buntin, and myself were the guitarists of Walke’s La Petite Musicale. We did a tremendous number of shows before I went to England to study.”

Lawrence said idleness and the restlessness of youth caused him to eventually go to Britain. He disclosed: “I was on a fast track in Trinidad, partying every night. I worked then at T Geddes Grant and used to find myself falling asleep on the job every day as almost every night I’d be out somewhere liming ‘til morning. I realised I was wasting time so decided to go to London. I didn’t have money then and bought my passage to England by selling my car. I did Building Construction at Hammersmith School of Building and Arts in Shepherd’s Bush, London.”

The late 50s were heady times for Lawrence as he played music in perhaps then the country’s top combo. “Before 1960 we started the very first combo with electric guitars and called it Silver Strings,” recalled Lawrence. “The group’s leader was Kenneth Pinheiro and the band also had Stanley Pinheiro and Dennis Garcia, known as the Elvis Presley of Trinidad. Dennis, who was from Belmont, combed his hair like Elvis, and danced like Elvis. Silver Strings became extremely popular.

“Before the electric guitar and amplification of instruments, which came into focus after the second world war, horn instruments held the spotlight. The electric guitar became something of a new instrument, taking over the lead in a band and pushing horns in the background. Coming fast and furious thereafter were combos like Cassanovas, Group Solo and Esquires. The combos had a new sound and new approach to music. It caused a marriage between combos and the big band sound. A real revolution took place in the music in the late 50s. The big bands had very little vocalists but the combos made vocalists very popular in fetes.”

Saturday Night Sunday Morning, recorded at Semp Studios, was Lawrence’s first solo LP. This disc included a unique version of Rio Mansanare. Lawrence has since done four more LPs, namely Sunset to Sunrise, Special Delivery, Together and Spirit of the Caribbean. There are several original compositions on each album.

Through the years Lawrence has worked with artistic luminaries like Aubrey Adams, Beryl McBernie, Helen Camps, Peter Minshall.

He has done it all, teaming up with Group Solo leader Robert Bailey to produce several shows, including a special performance with opera singer Monica Ortiz Ruck at Queens Hall; opened for the Spanish duo of composer Jose Greco and flamenco dancer Nana Lorca; and toured with Paul Keens Douglas on various occasions. He was the original “singing emcee” for Keens-Douglas annual Talk Tent Theatre for three years, and was a special guest at the 25th anniversary celebrations of the Talk Tent in 2008.

Having done feature performances at the Queens Park Oval in 2003 and 2004, Lawrence has accompanied several popular calypsonians including Mighty Sparrow, Relator, Terror, Gypsy and Bill Trotman.

Overseas, Lawrence formed the Triniana Quintet in England, a popular Caribbean group in London in the 60s. In England, he performed at the West Indian Students’ Centre, Oxford and Cambridge May balls, town halls, and other venues. He also played and entertained the touring West Indies cricket team at the prestigious Waldorf Hotel. Lawrence has appeared on British television, and composed and performed a special calypso for a show called This is Your Life, hosted by Eamonn Andrews, for the late Sir Learie Constantine.

Lawrence’s musical career is one that has to be the envy of many, one rarely accomplished by most. He has toured many Caribbean islands, and performed live and on radio and TV in Barbados, St Vincent, Grenada, St Lucia, St Croix, Martinique and T&T. He also performed for the first and third editions of the Story Telling Festival of the Caribbean, held in Barbados.

While resident in St Lucia, Lawrence has performed at the St Lucia Cultural Centre and other venues for that island’s Folk Research Centre, Cancer Society, Sickle Cell Association, Drug Rehab Centre, the government and numerous hotel venues.

Lawrence has the honour of composing and arranging music and lyrics for St Lucian musical The Hewanorra Story which opened at Pigeon Island Ampitheatre, and was subsequently performed through the year at local theatres. Excerpts of this work were used for the opening of the 1998 St Lucia Jazz Festival. Lawrence said he has done many compositions and arrangements of theatrical works in St Lucia. He said: “I composed and arranged music and lyrics for the plays La Chunga and Mary Could Dance, performance at Eagles Inn through the month of October 2000 and again at Bay Gardens Hotel, St Lucia. I was also presented and was featured in A Man for all Seasons, staged at St Lucia’s Tent Theatre in December 2002. This work was a two-hour long performance of mainly my own compositions. For this work I received the M&C Fine Arts Award for Best Performance 2004.”

In more recent years Lawrence has continued to create and produce excellent music, collaborating with the best in the region. He recalled: “I worked with Derek Walcott in the very early days of the Little Carib Theatre in Trinidad, and more recently in arranging and presenting the music for his play Steel as its musical director; as well as composing and arranging the music for Walcott’s play Odyssey which was performed in Italy and Spain.

“At the Trinidad Jazz Festival in March 2010, I was the featured performer at Jazz on the Greens, along with greats like Ray Holman, Douglas Redon and Michael ‘Ming’ Low Chew Tung. Three years later, I performed for the international Literary Festival (Word Alive) at Samaans Park, St Lucia. Also in 2013, I was the sole musician in the stage performance of Walcott’s Starry Starry Night, staged at Central Bank Auditorium, Port-of-Spain, in November, to sold out audiences.”

Lawrence received the prestigious music award as Honoured Composer in 2013 from St Lucia’s Cultural Development Foundation. His most recent work is the CD Melemelanj, released last month. This disc consists of several original compositions using authentic indigenous Caribbean rhythms.

Musing on the evolution of Caribbean music, Lawrence said: “The music has changed and has become much more technically sound. A lot of the young fellas now have taken the trouble to learn, to read and score the music. They have come to learn the importance of musical notation and putting proper arrangements together.

“Today’s musicians, like Dougie Redon, are much (more) proficient in music than we were back in the old days. This has also happened with the steelband and has made a significant impression on my own music. When you listen some of the intricate arrangements in Panorama are comparable to any classical piece of music you will hear.”