The Blind, Deaf, Naked, and Half-Naked Man

This time we’ll listen to Mighty Spoiler’s take on the old joke about the blind, the deaf and the naked man who all claim a dropped coin as their own, employing blatantly self-contradictory reasoning to argue their case. Variations of the tale are abundant in American and Caribbean folklore (and surely in many other parts of the world), bearing also obvious connections to biblical rhetoric: With the coming of the Messiah the blind shall see again, the deaf hear, the lame walk, and so on. In this case, the impaired trio—try to image how they got together in the first place—are arguing over a shilling that the narrator has happened to drop after coming out of a theatre. Spoiler, as always, provides so much detail and convincing dialogue that you almost take it for an eyewitness account. (There are, annoyingly, a number of gaps and uncertainties in my transcript.)

Joseph ‘Cobra Man’ Clemendor

The observant listener has already made out that this is not the Mighty Spoiler singing. Spoiler recorded the song for Vital Angel’s elusive Vitadisc label in 1954. But since I don’t have that one, I present instead an excellent cover version by calypso singer Joseph Clemendor (sometimes spelt Clemendore). I was really delighted to find this recording. Clemendor sings very much in the vein of Spoiler, with a lively yet distinct tone, smoothly syncopating the beat of Gérard la Viny’s orchestra. He has changed some references here and there. For instance, Spoiler sang that the events took place outside the Globe Theatre (in Port of Spain), while Clemendor seems to sing about another venue, some place phonetically akin to “The Gomo Theater”.

By all accounts, ‘Clemmy’ was a big admirer of ‘Spoilo’. The album whence the song is taken has several other Spoiler-penned calypsos on it. One of them, “Ugly Girls Have Pretty Names”, performed by Spoiler in the calypso season of 1951 was, from what I can tell, never recorded by its originator. Thanks to Clemendor’s rendition, we can get a good grasp of how Spoiler would have sung it. Bandleader Gérard la Viny apparently also took the song to heart, making his own French translation and titling it “Les prénoms des filles”. He recorded his version twice: in Paris around 1960 for the Simm label and in Guadeloupe in 1968 for Henri Debs’ Disques Debs label.

 
Spending a pleasant afternoon with a little armchair research on Clemendor, I soon stumbled across wishful postings in comments fields from people—several claim to be relatives—who also looked for more info on the man. What seems safe to ascertain is that Clemendore was born of African and Indo-Caribbean descent in Trinidad in 1923. He resided in Jamaica in the early fifties, touring the Caribbean with a dance troupe, singing calypsos at The Montego Beach Hotel, and making at least two excellent recordings at Stanley Motta’s studio in Kingston. More surprisingly, however, he was also a greatly skilled yoga practician and contortionist, a fact aptly sustained by his sobriquet: Cobra Man.

A Hungarian poster promoting Clemendor as “the mysterious Indian fakir”.

Subsequently, he moved to England with his wife Leonor. According to his grandson, Jacob Bell, he was part of a touring circus troupe while also offering healing sessions and teachings on the art of yoga, a vocation that took him at least as far as Bulgaria.

Gérard la Viny – singer, guitarist, bandleader.

He spent some time in Paris in 1956, and that is probably when the album Calypso was recorded for the label Guilde du Jazz. It is not far-fetched to imagine that Joe and bandleader Gérard (called Geraldo on the record, for some reason) met at the Parisian cabaret restaurant La Canne à Sucre, known as “the Creole embassy of Paris”, where the latter was a regular entertainer. (The restaurant is still run by his relatives.)
 
According to the sleeve notes, la Viny, originally from Guadeloupe, had in fact gone to Paris to study economy at L’Institute des Sciences Politiques, but the “demon of music” also tugged at him and eventually won the fight.