Sam Manning

The story so far.

Written and edited by Smokiller

Sam Manning was a performer, songwriter and bandleader counted among the first calypsonians to win an international audience. Born around 1898 in Couva, Trinidad, he worked as a chauffeur and jockey before serving in the Middlesex Regiment and the British West Indies Regiment during the First World War. After the war he toured the Caribbean as a vaudeville act, mixing calypso songs with comedy. In the early 1920s he moved to Harlem, where he recorded for OKeh and Paramount in 1924, blending jazz with calypso rhythm. He reached Broadway in 1925 in the play Processional, and his song Lieutenant Julian marked the 1929 transatlantic flight of Hubert Fauntleroy Julian. In 1934 he moved to London and opened the Florence Mills Social Club on Carnaby Street with Amy Ashwood Garvey. Back in New York in 1941 he made calypso soundies with Beryl McBurnie, and in 1947 he wrote and directed the Broadway show Caribbean Carnival. He died in 1960 in Kumasi, Ghana.