Posted by Janice Mather on November 15, 2001 at 10:33:07:
The legend of Sweet Richard - King of Junkanoo
By JANICE MATHER
"Once in a Bahama old, 'twas a man vibrant, vivid, bold. He'd rush from East Street down to Bay, to
please the tourists every day. Bereft of shoes, adorned with plumes, clutching cutlass, draped in
costumes, he'd dance and shake, he'd rush and sing. His name? Sweet Richard, Junkanoo King."
If unique characters make the life of a town, then Nassau is officially dead. But it wasn't always so.
They may not have been days of knights and knaves, but 'twas a time, not long ago, when there was a
man who dressed in loud costumes, and danced daily in downtown streets.
His parents named him Richard Dean, but there were other names he was born to wear - like King of
Junkanoo. And king he was, for while other festival men exert themselves for a few parades each year,
the excitement and art and performance of a rush was as much a part of Dean's life as 9-to-5 jobs for
most others.
A dependent Bahamas, without votes for blacks, was the one in which this king reigned. A Long Island
boy, "Sweet Richard", as he was also known, came to New Providence at 16, where he first worked in
the downtown meat market. Soon, he had moved up to his own butcher's business in Mason's Addition,
East Street.
Pig's feet, pork chops, and lumps of bloody meat were fine, up to a point. But other things began to
attract his attention.
The nightlife caught his interest. Spots like the Silver Slipper and The Cat And The Fiddle, and many a
night he would sneak over the fence, to get a better peek of what transpired in the limelight.
"Many nights, he'd get on-stage, he'd wanna do a show, a little act. Normally, they used to keep running
him away from the stage," recalls his son, Dexter Thompson. "One night, they left him alone - and he
started doing a little act there, with the limbo."
From there blossomed a career that took him to clubs throughout the island. He continued to perform at
The Cat And The Fiddle, as well as at the Montagu Beach Hotel, Silver Slipper, Lemon Tree Club, and
others popular at the time. That was his nightlife - and the day job wasn't much different.
Says Thompson, his father would rise daily, open up his shop, then begin the Junkanoo trek that led
him from East Street down to Bay Street. With a host of followers in tow, he would proceed to perform
downtown, as tourists came off ships and wandered around shops.
Encircled by followers and fans, he would dance, barefoot and bare-chested, dressed in a huge,
crepe-paper, parrot or pirate costume cape, always with a cutlass in his hands, a dagger in his mouth.
His behaviour often attracted the attention of more than tourists, and many a time he would be arrested
for disorderly behaviour.
"He'd go in front of the magistrate, and he'd ask the charges," says Thompson. "When the charges were
read to him, the judge would ask 'guilty or not guilty?' He'd look at the judge and say 'Cool it, Daddy!'
and start performing in front of the judge.'"
Nights, he was an equally industrious performer.
"One night he was performing for the Duke of Windsor (at The Cat And The Fiddle)," Thompson
remembers. "It was raining, and they cut the show because of the rain. He stayed on stage by himself,
and the managers came, and told him to come off, but the Duke of Windsor told them he could continue
performing, if he wanted to."
The part dancer, part actor, pure entertainer's love of crowds and the stage eventually took him to the
United States, where he performed for the last 10 years of his life. There, he performed, in clubs as well
as in streets. On trips back home, he would bring along what became his signature white Cedilla
convertible, in which he would sit, stopping at his whim, to perform Junkanoo in the streets. Though oft
arrested in the U.S., as he was at home, his success continued to bloom, even taking him to film, with the
movie, "Island Woman," which was released in the '60s.
It's lucky that his life was full then. He died in 1964, just months shy of his 34th birthday, reportedly
choking to death on a piece of steak.
"He left here to do one thing - to sell The Bahamas to the tourists. And he died for that," Thompson
says.
You won't find him in the big history books. His statue is nowhere, his name may appear no place, save
for an article in the 1986 Bahamas Handbook.
But for the time he lived and reigned, his antics drew him fame and followers, and earned him the name
Sweet Richard - King of Junkanoo.