Neville Jules Speaks on Pan
Mr. Neville Jules and friend
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TrinbagoPan.com Reporters
Interview Date: May 26, 2007
Posted: June 11, 2007
TRINBAGOPAN: How was that pan set up?
NEVILLE: The pans were stretched out instead of in as they are now. You had to put some dents on it and try to get the notes. That was played with a strap over your shoulder and the pan resting on your chest. I played that one and 'Fisheye' played the four note 'ping-pong'.
I remember a gentleman from the Hell Yard Boys who stood in front of the band like he was conducting it. To every corner we met, he would do his thing and stop the band. 'Fisheye' would then start doing his thing with the rhythm and then the rest of the band would start up. They were not playing chords or melody, it was just rhythm. That was in 1945. By the first Carnival after the war, everybody was playing some good pan and that is the way it started.
You may hear a lot of talk about who did different things. You may hear [Winston]'Spree' Simon was the first person to put a song on a pan. That is not so. We had a lot of guys in our band that played before him. There was a gentleman who I tuned one for and he said that he did it. He came where I was and he saw the pan. To argue with that is petty stuff and it didn't make any sense; but it showed that he got the idea from me. He was the guy who he tuned one for 'Spree'. His name was Andrew 'Pan' de La Bastide from Hill 60. He went to England with Trinidad All Steel Percussion Orchestra (TASPO). Somehow, the talk spread that 'Spree' is the man.
After that, I did a guitar pan. I remember I was on Duke Street here and it was around Christmas time. A Parang band was practicing and I stood up and listened to the guy strumming the Cuatro. I decided I was going to make one like that, which I did. I had it playing and the other bands saw it. One gentleman called Philmore 'Booths' Davidson heard it and he went and tuned one identically. He played it the same way but he called it the guitar pan and that name remained stuck. He didn't do anything. He just imitated what I did. I did the bass.
TRINBAGOPAN: Could you give us some perspective of the time?
NEVILLE: I would say 1945 was the first one and everybody was doing it in 1946. We had another instrument called the 'tune boom'. It was made from the biscuit drum. I got the idea from that because in those days, they had a lot of young men who were going around with guitars singing and doing their stuff. They had a box with a hole in it like you would see in a bass. They had three pieces of steel or metal cut at different lengths that they bolted onto the box in front of the hole and they would pluck at it imitating a bass. It wasn't musical but it sounded like a bass while they were singing and playing their guitar. I made a 'tune boom' that would make at least some of the chords. I remember the first time I did that we went down to Tragarete Road by Invaders. I think that year one of the popular Calypsos was 'Georgie Porgie Pudding and Pie, Kiss the Girls and Make Them Cry'. When we went down there they were astonished to see and hear what we did. The following Carnival, after that Christmas, a band named named 'Katzenjammers' came up from down there with more 'tune boom' than us. I did the Bombs, the Grundig and quite a number of stuff. The Grundig was a pan that was just before the cello.
TRINBAGOPAN: Did you have any musical training experience?
NEVILLE: No, I didn't. There was a gentleman by the name of Sunny who lived right here on Bath Street. After he heard the band, he decided to give us free music lessons. He explained the piano to us and wrote some songs in alphabetical letters. I remember he asked us to play the notes and let him know what song it was. Afterwards, he told us to get a blackboard and draw lines in spaces, which he explained to us. He said, "I want you to have these guys singing these notes." We had a guy who was a real joker and liked to disrupt things. He came in one day and heard me teaching the guys. He made a joke about it and everybody started laughing. That was the end of that. To this day I still do not have any musical training.
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