Historian Dale Butler changes gears
Author Dale Butler is not a man to rest on his laurels. So with the winding-down of his book writing and publishing business, Atlantic Publishing House, he has already shifted his focus to another project dear to his heart: recording oral history, something he started in 1976 with a simple tape recorder.
Around 1980, he switched to a video camera and focussed on sportsmen and outstanding Bermudians like Mrs. Muriel Callabras and Mr. Vernon Jackson. His tape of Sylvia Richardson was used at the recent opening of the eponymous care facility for seniors in St. George’s.
When Mr. Butler, who is also Minister of Social Rehabilitation, began writing and publishing more and more books, he had little time to do the oral history interviews, but his video camera came out again in connection with republication of his book, ‘Jazz on the Rock’, as well as his research on local boxers.
During a conversation with his friend Rodney Smith, Mr. Butler mentioned he was video taping the life stories of musicians, from which it emerged that three of them live in Warwick.
“I had already done Kenneth Smith, one of the founding members of the Aldano Quintet, and I always ask seniors for the names of other seniors,” Mr. Butler relates. “Kenneth played drums in the Quintet, and his brother-in-law Earlston Smith played tenor sax. The third musician I went to get pictures of was Earl Darrell, who was a piano player at the Waterlot Inn for 30 years. So, having done these three already, I said to Rodney, ‘John (Sonny) Phipps was a sax player with a variety of bands, along with Ross Tuzo who played sax.’ So that became the five musicians, but until Rodney mentioned it, it didn’t strike me that they were all in Warwick, which is my area. Then it became, ‘What do I call (the documentary)?’ “
As he often did, Mr. Butler brainstormed with his friend and fellow PLP MP Glenn Blakeney for almost an hour until finally the latter said: “I see this is about harmony — the harmony of being musicians. That’s it: ‘Five Profiles in Harmony’ !”.
With the documentary named, it was then up to graphic artist Sakeena Talbot of SoléDesign Studios to design the DVD cover and the poster for the premi|0xe8|re screening, which is set for 8 p.m. on May 3 at St. Mary’s church hall in Warwick. With only 130 seats available, Mr. Butler advises people not to wait until the last minute to purchase their $20 tickets.
“We will be serving ice cream and cake, and have a couple of raffles, and a husband and wife will dance salsa,” he promises. “I am encouraging Bermudians who listen to their music to come out and see the documentary.”
When asked what the hardest part of the project was, the documentary-maker was typically forthright.
“I had never done a documentary, I did not have the technical skills to link it all together into a movie, and I wish I had the budget to give it to Panatel, but I found in Alex Dill, a young Bermudian who is starting out on his career, the perfect person to pull all five stories together,” Mr. Butler says.
The documentary maker’s learning curve also included discovering that musical, mechanical and synchronisation rights are also an issue when using other people’s material, and he found needed permission for all three. He explains it this way:
“Earl Darrell plays two songs, ‘A Chicken is nothing but a Bird’ and ‘Flat Foot Floogee on the Floy-Floy’, and when you hear the titles you think he made them up until you discover that he didn’t and they have music rights, so I have been working on getting those rights,” he says.
Synchronisation rights (using copyrighted music as background to the script) proved the most difficult, so Mr. Butler consulted Milton Raposo, who happens to be a pianist and has offered to write the documentary’s theme.
“So that’s another Bermudian whose talents are being used,” he says.
Overall, the documentary maker is characteristically confident that his film will be a success.
“It is about 90 minutes long, and I shot it in black and white, which makes it a powerful movie.”
Ahead of tomorrow’s screening, Mr. Butler lined up a special treat for the former musicians and their wives: on Sunday last the couples were chauffeur-driven in individual cars to Fourways Inn for brunch, where naturally he was on hand with his video camera, together with a still photographer.
“They were overwhelmed,” he says.
This documentary is not the end of Mr. Butler’s new “career”, however. Instead, ‘Five Profiles in Harmony’ will become part of a ‘Harmony’ series. Next is ‘Divas in Profile’, for which he has already interviewed former singer Thelma Tucker, June Caisey and Jean Howes, he has list of five others whom he hopes to interview, including Pinky Steede.
Then there will be ‘Pianists in Harmony’, for which he has already interviewed Erskine Phillip and Alvin Brangman, with Kenneth (Tokey) Dill and Ron Lighbourne to follow. Down the road will be ‘Saxophones in Harmony’.
Meanwhile, the media-savvy Mr. Butler says he is trying to move out of the book business, where has a storage problem, into “something young people are into, which is unfortunate because you can gain much more from reading than just sitting there as an observer”.
“When this comes out it will still connect with the ‘Jazz on the Rock’ reprint, which will be out for Christmas. By then I hope to have issued at least two more of these documentaries.”
[bul]Anyone wishing to purchase the DVD should contact Mr. Butler at ddbutler@logic.bm or 697-8931.
