Steelpan Music Legends

by Kathryn Barbour

Cordell giving a private concertGlobal - Lore has him as one of the greatest double-tenor players to have ever walked the planet. Through the eyes of someone who knew him closely—his former wife Kathryn Barbour—the steelband world gets an upclose and personal look at the man known as Cordell “Spongy” Barbour.

“On August 16, 1941, Cordell Delano Barbour was born in John-John, Trinidad, the firstborn child of Julitha Barbour and George Masanto. He was named after the U.S. secretary of state at the time, Cordell Hull, and the U.S. president, Franklin Delano Roosevelt. From an early age, he clashed with his father and was sent to be reared by his grandmother in John-John. The war years were hard, and his grandmother was poor. He remembered often being hungry and as an adult, would stress to others that no one could know of hunger by reading about it. They had to experience it.....”


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