Edric Connor

Argo Records sleeve design by Olga Lehmann

Edric Esclus Connor (2 August 1913 – 13 October 1968) was a Caribbean singer, folklorist and actor who was born in Trinidad. He was a performer of calypso in the United Kingdom, where he migrated in 1944 and chiefly lived and worked for the rest of his life until he died following a stroke in London, at the age of 55.[1]

Career

Edric Esclus Connor[2] was born in 1913 in Mayaro, Trinidad. He settled in Britain in 1944, making his debut on BBC Radio two weeks later, in Calling the West Indies.[3] In 1951 he was responsible for bringing the Trinidad All Steel Percussion Orchestra - TASPO - to the Festival of Britain.[4] In 1955, he recorded the first Manchester United Football Club song, "The Manchester United Calypso".[5] That same year, he and his wife Pearl, whom he had married in 1948,[3] set up the Edric Connor Agency, representing black actors, dancers, writers and musicians, which eventually, in the 1970s, she ran under the name of the Afro-Asian-Caribbean Agency.[6] In 1963, they set up the Negro Theatre Workshop, one of the UK's first black theatre groups.[7]

Connor appeared on stage at London's Prince's Theatre in 1956 in Summer Song, the life told through the music of Antonín Dvořák, in which Connor was "given two of the show's most memorable moments in 'Deep Blue Evening' and 'Cotton Tail'."[8] In 1958 he became the first black actor to perform for the Royal Shakespeare Company in Stratford, playing Gower in Pericles, having been recommended for the role by Paul Robeson.[3] Connor acted in a total of 18 films, including his role as Daggoo in Moby Dick (1956).[9]

Connor co-starred with Rita Hayworth, Robert Mitchum, and Jack Lemmon in the 1957 film Fire Down Below (1957), directed by Robert Parrish, playing the character Jimmy Jean, who was the third man on the "boat-for-hire" along with Mitchum and Lemmon.

In 1952, with his band "The Caribbeans" (subsequently called The Southlanders)[10] Connor recorded, according to the AllMusic website, a "groundbreaking LP of Jamaican folk music" entitled Songs from Jamaica.[11] This included the song "Day Dah Light", which portrayed the hard life of Caribbean field workers. The song was later recorded by Jamaican folk singer Louise Bennett in 1954, and was rewritten in 1955 by Irving Burgie and William Attaway. The version performed by Harry Belafonte became known as "Day-O (The Banana Boat Song)", reaching number five on the Billboard charts in 1957,

Connor's acting for television included roles in the espionage series Danger Man (US: Secret Agent): as the character Thompson in "Deadline" (1962, the final episode of the original series, which featured an almost entirely black cast), and as opposition leader Dr Manudu in the series 2 episode entitled "The Galloping Major" (first aired on 3 November 1964).

Connor directed the "Caribbean Carnival" event held in London's St Pancras Town Hall at the end of January 1959, organised by fellow Trinidadian Claudia Jones, and televised by the BBC.[12][13] He appeared on the BBC programme Desert Island Discs on 13 April 1959,[14] when one of his choices was "Deep Blue Evening", from the show Summer Song, a track on which he was a soloist.[15]

Legacy

His daughter Geraldine Connor (1952–2011) – herself a singer and ethnomusicologist – was instrumental in bringing to light her father's autobiography, Horizons: The Life and Times of Edric Connor 1913–1968, which was written in the mid-1960s and only finally published in 2006. In 2005, Geraldine accepted an award on behalf of the Connor family from the British Association of Steelbands, in celebration of her family’s contribution to the Promotion of Steelband Music, Caribbean Art, Culture and Heritage throughout the United Kingdom.[16] The Edric and Pearl Connor Papers, 1941–1978,[17] were donated to the Alma Jordan Library at the University of the West Indies, St Augustine, Trinidad & Tobago, and additional material on them is housed in the Schomburg Center for Research in Black Culture.

A prestigious annual award named after him, the Edric Connor Inspiration Award, is made annually in his honour in the Screen Nation Film and Television Awards. It was won by Joseph Marcell in 2012 and in 2011 by Sir Trevor MacDonald OBE, other previous winners including Moira Stuart (2007), Mona Hammond (2006) and Lenny Henry (2002). In 2014 the award was posthumously given to Felix Dexter.[18]

His name is also associated with the "Edric Connor Trailblazer Award", of which a notable winner in 2003 was Rudolph Walker (who, coincidentally, in 1989, like Connor before him also played Gower in Shakespeare's Pericles).

Selected filmography

Selected discography

Edric Connor and the Caribbeans

Edric Connor and the Southlanders

Edric Connor with Ken Jones and His Music

Bibliography

Further reading

References

  1. ↑ Stephen Bourne, "Connor, Edric Esclus (1913–1968)", Oxford Dictionary of National Biography, Oxford University Press, 2004; accessed 12 June 2016.
  2. ↑ Stephen Bourne, "Mogotsi, Pearl Cynthia Connor- (1924–2005)", Oxford Dictionary of National Biography, Oxford University Press, 2009.
  3. 1 2 3 "Connor, Edric (1913–1968), in David Dabydeen, John Gilmore and Cecily Jones (eds), Oxford Companion to Black British History, Oxford University Press, 2007, pp. 113–14.
  4. ↑ Notes, "(1954) Edric Connor & The Caribbeans – Songs from Jamaica", folkcatalogue.
  5. ↑ Davy Collins, "A history of the chants", FTB Pro, 17 August 2012.
  6. ↑ Margaret Busby, "Pearl Connor-Mogotsi" (obituary), The Guardian, 2 March 2005.
  7. ↑ BBC 1Xtra Black History timeline
  8. ↑ Adrian Wright, A Tanner's Worth of Tune: Rediscovering the Post-war British Musical, The Boydell Press, 2010, p. 196.
  9. ↑ "Movie Seamen", Jet magazine, 3 March 1955, p. 61.
  10. 1 2 Notes, "(1955) Edric Connor and the Southlanders – Songs from Trinidad", folkcatalogue.
  11. ↑ "Edric Connor" Artist Biography by Bruce Eder. AllMusic.
  12. ↑ Ray Funk, "Notting Hill Carnival: Mas and the mother country", Caribbean Beat, Issue 100.
  13. ↑ "History: 1959 – Elements of Caribbean Carnival", Notting Hill Carnival '14.
  14. ↑ Edric Connor - Actor, Calypso singer, Desert Island Discs, 13 April 1959.
  15. ↑ "13. DEEP BLUE EVENING - Edric Connor 3:16", Summer Song. SEPIA 1086.
  16. ↑ Margaret Busby, "Geraldine Connor obituary", The Guardian, 31 October 2011.
  17. ↑ Edric and Pearl Connor Papers, 1941–1978, University of the West Indies, Special Collections, Alma Jordan Library.
  18. ↑ "The Winners — 2014 Awards", Screen Nation.

External links

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