Any anthology invites complaints about omissions but Strut can be forgiven for only skimming the surface of the calypso king’s vast output. Born Slinger Francisco, Colin Powell’s favorite musician scored his first hit aged 20 with Jean and Dinah, a playful song about the plight of prostitutes looking for trade after the closure of wartime U.S. bases in Trinidad. More than 300 albums later, he’s still touring and knocking out topical songs like 2008′s “Barack the Magnificent.”

Even within this collection’s 1962-74 timeframe, Sparrow roams far and wide. Like Jamaican music, calypso functioned as a kind of eclectic musical newspaper. One minute Sparrow’s a horndog novelty act, the next a quick-witted battle rhymer, and the next an earnest political commentator in the vein of Fela Kuti or Bob Marley. In a clever bit of sequencing, Congo Man’s mischievously lurid take on African culture – so outrageous that it was banned from the radio for almost 25 years – gives way to a starkly different approach to black history: the angry, moving “The Slave.” Kennedy and Khruschev’s jaunty account of the Cuban missile crisis (“Kennedy is a genius, Khruschev plain rubbish”) represents Sparrow’s topical side, “Sparrow Dead” (from 1974′s Van Dyke Parks-produced… read more »