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I wind up this se­ries, writ­ten in recog­ni­tion and ho­n­our of the great­ness of the Ca­lyp­so King of the World, Slinger Fran­cis­co, the Mighty Spar­row, on his 90th birth­day, plac­ing the fo­cus on his off-stage con­tri­bu­tions. But then again, Spar­row has al­ways been in the glare of so­ci­ety in what­ev­er he has done since his 1956 Jean and Di­nah, Rosi­ta and Clementi­na; he has nev­er left the bright lights.

We there­fore shift the at­ten­tion ever so slight­ly, but re­main al­ways with the ca­lyp­so ex­tra­or­di­naire-plus with a mi­cro­phone in hand.

From the 1960s, Spar­row emerged as a busi­ness­man who in­vest­ed in the record-sell­ing in­dus­try through hav­ing his own record shop on Fred­er­ick Street, Port-of-Spain. It was lo­cat­ed in­side a mall on the east­ern side of Fred­er­ick Street, go­ing south to In­de­pen­dence Square.