From our Express archives:Terry Joseph, Sunday February 6, 2000
OF the hundreds of beautiful calypso melodies composed by Kitchener, the song that became his trademark was actually written by someone else.
The eternally infectious music of what was, in fact, his biggest calypsoever, the blockbuster “Sugar Bum Bum”, was not his song, according to the man who arranged the music for the piece.
As recently as Friday night, at the Newtown Girls’ RC Carnival fete, bandsinger Steve Sealy, working with Horyzun, did the song as a tribute to Kitch. Over the years, the very construction of the song was attributed to Kitch, mainly because he was known as a good bass-player and one of the song’s major hooks is its commanding bassline.
Even in the lyrics, the word “Audrey”, trumpeted by Kitch to start what would become the song for which he is best known in the latter day, was not the name that he wrote, when he finally completed the opening verse. Worse, the song was an after-thought. Kitchener had only been able to come up with nine songs for his album that year and he needed another.
Enter master arranger, Ed Watson. Speaking to the Sunday Express, Watson said: “For over six weeks, Kitch tried to come up with a tenth song and just couldn’t. I had just released my own 1977 album This is Music and this beat and melody came into my head. The first person I called was my good friend Joey Lewis and played it for him. I told him to come for it, because by I felt that if I tried to keep it for the following year, someone might have come up with something similar.
“Kitch came over one morning and started dancing around the livingroom to get vibes. This is how he used do a lot of his work,” Watson said.
“I say, ‘Kitch I have a nice beat here and a melody line, sing something with it and see what happening, nuh?’ It was bothering me, I didnot want it bothering me as it could get away, so we went to my son Roger’s room, to the keyboard.
I started with the bass on the left hand and strummingon the right hand, then I picked out the melody and we start doing it and I say: ‘What boy! I better tape this.
“Kitch never taped his music as he composed, you know, he did not like tape recorders. But it was a good thing I did, because by the time he got back home, he had forgotten it and had to call me back. Charlie (Rawlston Charles) was backing the album financially, so we called him, got the okay and started to practise this thing.
I tell him this go be the best song on the album, he say ‘joke’. He did not know what I was planning for the arrangement. Kitch had called the woman in the song ‘Betsy’, but I told him we had to change that to ‘Audrey’, because it was not a strong enough vowel sound to open a verse with.
“When we hit Coral studios and we start to play, even the manager left his office and came to the studio. Kitch ‘self say ‘Oh God!’ when he heardthe final arrangement.” Watson said. “I went up to New York to mix it and add it to the album. When I came back, we did the same thing with ‘Just a Little Bit’, but Kitch said since that was already on my album, he did not want to put the vocal on his.
