The classic
B
ack in 2018, when Charmaine Forde returned to Trinidad after a storied career in the United States, fans of local popular music from the late 1970s to early 80s rejoiced. First winning wide acclaim on local radio, Forde was once the darling of the local impresario set seeking talent to make the leap outwards, when American record companies were doing business with artists from the islands. Hers is a story that needs to be told within the context of a legacy of singers from the Caribbean who have focused on the live music industry as a goal for success, as opposed to the highly profitable recording careers favoured by a more recent crop of pop singers. Born in Port of Spain, Forde grew up in the neighbourhood of Gonzales, where the influence of family played an important role in defining her craft and her sound. Her elder sister, a fan of jazz vocalist Nancy Wilson, had her records on constant rotation in the Forde household. That inspiration melded with Forde’s natural talent to forge a vocal timbre that resonates even today with a mix of the phrasing of Wilson and the power and tone of Shirley Bassey. Singing in church and school while growing up brought Forde to the attention of kaisojazz innovator and teacher Scofield Pilgrim, who put her in touch — and, critically, on stage — with local and regional jazz musicians, at home in Trinidad and then in St Lucia, Jamaica, Martinique, and Guadeloupe, at festivals and on the lucrative hotel performance circuit. One musician who was a lynchpin in her recording career debut was Trinidadian Michael Boothman, an early local jazz innovator and established recording artist on a US record label. He crafted an arrangement of the Bobby Caldwell hit “What You Won’t Do For Love” for Forde, inspired by Roy Ayers’s earlier soul-jazz recording, releasing it in 1980 to the nation and ultimately to the region, presenting her as a new voice that could swing with the best, with a powerful controlled dynamic range rarely heard locally.
The connections Charmaine Forde made on the high-end event circuit sustained a career where the intimacy of a pianovocal duet has as much cachet as a concert hall performance
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