Windjammer 1958 Limbo Dancers, Trinidad Jump Up, The Happy Wanderer

Lorene Delaney says: This clip features Limbo Dancers and The Trinidad Jump Up accompanied by the Calypso band The Silvertones Steel Band performing "The Happy Wanderer". Taken from the 1958 spectacular "Windjammer: The Voyage of the Christian Radich", the first movie presentation in CINEMIRACLE. Cinemiracle was a widescreen cinema format competing with Cinerama developed in the 1950s. It was ultimately unsuccessful, with only a single film produced and released in the format. Like Cinerama it used 3 cameras to capture a 2.59:1 image. Cinemiracle used two mirrors to give the left and right cameras the same optical center as the middle camera. This movie was a documentary film of a training cruise of the full-rigged S/S Christian Radich from Oslo across the Atlantic, through the Caribbean, to New York and back home again. "Windjammer" was produced by Louis De Rochemont and directed by his son Louis De Rochemont III. The world premiere of both Windjammer and the Cinemiracle system was at Grauman's Chinese Theatre in Hollywood on 8 April 1958. The film ran for 36 weeks. Windjammer was later transferred to the Cinerama format, and even to Cinemascope. The crew consisted of the captain Yngvar Kjelstrup, 16 officers, 42 teenage cadets and the mascot dog Stump. They traveled 17, 500 miles. This is truly one of my favorite movies since I was a child. I grew up listening to the soundtrack of this movie and this had a great deal to do with my love for sea shanties, ships and the ocean.

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Lawford Dupres November 19, 2018 at 3:47pm

Silvertones was also well connected with the Simplex Time Recorder Co. which had their factory on the Eastern Main Rd, close to Fernandes. They joined with Dixieland in 1957 to go to the US and Canada as the Simplex Band, which tour started In Gardner, Mass. then on to Montreal, Via the St. Lawrence river to several towns up the Saguenay river, and then to Quebec City. " Brownman" and Patsy Jagdeo were the two members from Silvertones that made the trip. Also, Noel Agostini. ( can't remember how he got in). The rest, including myself, were Dixieland members. Accompanying the band were several convent girls who, along with some band members, had to learn some local dances like the Bele.
kenneth johnson March 5, 2015 at 4:40pm

Yes. We were quite popular at the time but mostly at venues like Normandy, Country club. private parties etc.

We sometimes joined up with Dixieland steelband for carnival.Idont know Steve Achaiba.
June A. Archibald March 4, 2015 at 12:20am

Valderie, Valdera, Vaderrahahahahaha, Valderie, Valdera, with a knap sack on my back...... This is what is ringing in my brain as the words to the song..... Am I mistaken?
Glenroy R Joseph March 3, 2015 at 3:04pm

Thanks for the history . Kenneth Johnson , this is the forum for it :).

I was not aware that Curtis Pierre , another pan legend was the arranger.

If I'm not mistaken , wasn't Silvertones ( from Belmont) one of the more popular club and dance hall steelbands of that era ?
kenneth johnson March 3, 2015 at 2:13pm

This steelband is Silvertones from Belmont led by Claude Brownman Durham with an arrangement by Curtis Pierre.

I am one of the tenorpan players.

Kenneth Johnson
Glenroy R Joseph May 15, 2013 at 7:21pm

A couple corrections, David Ragobar. This wasn't the south band also called "Silvertones" (of which I was a member in the late sixties), I don't believe they were around in the fifties.

This Silvertones was a "town" band, and the tune "Happy Wanderer " was the Road March for 1955.

And as far as Steve Achaiba is concerned, he's about my age , so he would have been a child in the mid fifties and was hardly likely to be a member of this band from Port of Spain.
David Ragobar May 15, 2013 at 3:09pm

I enjoyed the videos 1958. I would have been a young child back then, and the joy and happiness expressed by those in the video brought mixed emotions. I also recognized Steve Achaiba playing a tenor with Silvertones, a south band. Steve later played with Cavaliers, and was the Captain, arranger and leader of Hatters and South Stars. Thanks for the view into the past.

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Windjammer 1958 Limbo Dancers, Trinidad Jump Up, The Happy Wanderer

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