Mr Showbiz, the Forgotten Crooner of Calcutta’s Park Street

It was a snowy December afternoon in 2022. I keep in mind taking the train from London Bridge to fulfill the Hansens in South London for the very first time. Vivian was there, as was his partner, June Hansen (née Marsh), their child, and her household. Outdoors, South London was white and freezing. Inside, Hansen’s warm recollections transferred me back to mid-century Calcutta — neon-lit Park Street places, loaded dance floorings, and voices that ran late into the night.

This was the very first of numerous conferences with a male who when impressed the bandstands along Park Street — TrincasMocamboand Magnolia– and assisted me map a mostly forgotten stretch of Calcutta’s music history. As we talked, the old-time city returned in a familiar series: the phases, the audience, the pay, the artists who emigrated, and those who had actually died.

Jazz and dance bands grew within the city’s hotels long before Hansen got here. In 1926, India’s very first jazz record was cut by a band citizen at the Grand (later on Oberoi Grand), Calcutta’s landmark hotel on Chowringhee. Throughout the Second World War, as Allied soldiers put into the city, all elite places worked with African American jazz artists to run nighttime programs. Pianist Teddy Weatherford[19459108]was the Grand’s bandleader and cut numerous records in the city before his unfortunate death in 1945. After 1947, foreign ensembles still flew in seasonally , with regional Anglo-Indian and Goan artists taking control of the majority of the empty slots. By the mid-1950s, the live home entertainment had actually slowly moved to the close-by Park Street stretch. New dining establishments emerged. Mocambo opened in 1956, and Trincas started hosting live music in 1959. Live jazz and cabaret attracted more clients. The majority of Park Street places started real estate a resident band and a crooner. And in the middle of this musical melee was Vivian Hansen, later on called”Mr Showbiz,”the Calcutta crooner who now resides in East Croydon.

Hansen was born in Delhi in 1940, as one of 6 kids in an Anglo-Indian household, and matured moving regularly as his daddy worked for the East Indian Railway. The household ultimately settled in Calcutta. By 1959, the teen was singing for K.C. Sen’s BandWagonthe city’s primary Anglophone skill management firm with routine Sunday auditions, hotel dates, and a pipeline from amateur vocalist to paid citizen. It just took a fast Sunday audition at the New EmpireTheatre for Sen to find his skill, and Hansen rapidly ended up being the prima donna for 2 Band Wagon groups: The Offbeats, a singing trio with Rodney Callistin and Raymond Ward; and the Treble Clefs, an all-Anglo-Indian line-up including Carlton Oxley on saxophone, Derek(Dougie) Clark and Raymond Ward on guitars, Peter Plant on drums, and Hansen on vocals.

The Treble Clefs dipped into the Grand Oberoi’s Shehrazade bar for about a year. That very same year, The Offbeats headed out to the Gramophone Company’s Dum Studios and cut a 78-rpm record with Marie Sampson, then a familiar voice at Magnolia’s lunch and night sets. They covered Perry Como’s”Catch a Falling Star” and Elvis Presley’s “(Let Me Be Your)Teddy Bear.”

. Hansen’s tidy pop tenor might bring a whole Sunday flooring by itself, run pop hooks for 4 hours, and still handle demands. Reporter Jug Suraiyain remembering him as Mr Showbiz, composed that he “sounded more like Cliff Richard than Cliffie-boy himself did”which he was “the star of the afternoon jam sessions at Trincas.” “I did jazz, pop, reggae, and nation,” Hansen remembered. “I catered for individuals. When I saw a Japanese [table]I played a Japanese tune. If a Greek came , I played a Greek tune. They utilized to reward us with cash or beverages.”

In spite of his increasing appeal, the cash felt thin.” Sen was terrific in his art however paid us really little bit,”Hansen remembered.”He would make money 3 hundred rupees for a string of 10 programs at the Grand and 3 programs at the Great Eastern and just hand us 10. “

Looking for much better pay and poetic license, Hansen left BandWagonafter a year in 1960. He then formed the Soul Sensationsgenerating Peter Plant on drums and Rudy Rodericks on the piano. That very same year, theyplayed at the Ludlow Jute Mills in Barrackpore, north of the city, far from the Park Street glamour. By September 1961,”Mr Showbiz “was back on Park Street, arranging the charity revue Make Mine Musicat St. Xavier’s College, in help of parish schools run by St. Teresa’s Church.

. Around this time, on Mocambo’s dance flooring, Hansen saw a girl dancing with uncommon energy. Throughout a break in between sets, he asked if she had actually ever thought about taking the phase seriously. She chuckled. Hansen recommended getting her an expert agreement.

Years later on, in her autobiography, the now-famous cabaret queen of Calcutta, Miss Shefaliremembered working then as a domestic housemaid in a Calcuttan Anglo-Indian family when Hansen presented her to George David, the supervisor of Firpo’sa famous Chowringhee dining establishment that shut down in 1977. Hansen himself keeps in mind just the dance flooring conference. Their accounts vary on the information, both concur that Hansen initially opened the door for her to go into Calcutta’s expert cabaret circuit.

In 1962, Hansen moved down the street to TrincasPlaces at the time still flew in foreign dance bands on short-term visas, with regional acts getting the supporting slots. That year, Trincas worked with the British Ashley Kozak Quartet and used Hansen as resident vocalist. After the ensemble returned home, he remained on with Jimmy Ravestee’s group up until 1967.

“From 3 to 7, it was 4 hours of non-stop rock-and-roll,”Hansen states, fondly keeping in mind bygone Sunday afternoon efficiencies. “We played the Beatles, Cliff Richard, Herman’s Hermits, the Rolling Stones, all sorts of poppy things! By the time we completed, my voice was entirely gone!”

At Trincas, he likewise ran the Vivian Hansen Show and the Sunday My Fair Lady contest, offering emerging regional skill a platform before routine clients. From 1967, he invested a year at Magnolia, then settled into Mocambo, where he carried out into the 1980s. His better half, June, sang at Capri close by, and frequently participated in at weekend revues. He likewise carried out periodically with Sonny Lobo’s orchestra at Shehrazade.

When Duke Ellington’s orchestra went to in 1963, members of the ensemble slipped out of the Oberoi Grand after midnight and jammed with Hansen and Ravestee at Trincas. Biddu Appaiah turned up from Bangalore and jammed with Hansen years before”Kung Fu Fightingbrought him international recognition.

Years beforeZanjeer(1973 )turned him into a Bollywood icon, Amitabh Bachchan– then a young Calcuttan executive operating at Bird & Co., the shipping company– was amongst the workplace males who constantly often visited Park Street on weekends. He was a routine at Mocambo’s corner tables and, as Hansen remembers, was a fan of his singing.”I did an unique program for him at Prince’s at the Grand,” remembered Hansen.

Hansen likewise crossed into mainstream Bengali movie theater, appearing in a gold-lamé coat next to starlet Moushumi Chatterjee in the famous Uttam Kumar’s last movie,Ogo Bodhu Shundori(1981 ).

By the early 1970s, he had actually developed into an independent impresario. “I was running all the programs from Tollygunge Clubto Bengal ClubCalcutta Swimming Cluband the Saturday Club,.”he states. Partnering with Martin Sarkis of Humayun Properties– which ran the LighthouseNew Empire, and Tigermovie theaters– he routinely arranged revues such as Starlit Night and Starorama together with business”Beat Stock”programs (Woodstock-inspired’fight of the beat groups’contests including school rock groups, mod-fashion pageants, and Hansen himself as the MC ). By dealing straight with sponsors like ITC, Golden Tobacco, and Shaw Wallace, he declares that amateur groups were paid around a thousand rupees per date, without intermediaries. He likewise arranged beat contests at significant Calcutta locations like the Kalamandir AuditoriumSt. Xavier’s College,and the Calcutta Ice Skating Rink.

In the late 1970s, the scene was slowly diminishing. Naxalite discontent, street gang wars, and the Left federal government’s aggressive home entertainment tax combined to “paralyze the city’s home entertainment organization.”Anglo-Indian artists were leaving en masse for Australia, Canada, and the UK.”The writing was on the wall,” Hansen kept in mind.”You might take a look at the bandstand on a Saturday night and understand half your rhythm area was loading trunks for Melbourne or London. “

The Hansen household ultimately left Calcutta for Britain in 1988. In South London, he ran the Croydon Bargain Centreup until his retirement in 2013. He sometimes carried out at the White HorseBar and when looked like an entrant on the tv video game program,Offer or No Deal

Returning to that December afternoon, as the heavy winter season snow fell outside the window, and June served us a delicious Anglo-Indian chicken curry and peas pulao supper, Vivian chuckled and stated he was” among the last of the Mohicans .”” There was Engelbert Humperdinck, there was Cliff Richard, and there was Tony Brent. And now there’s just me left,”he joked.

Author Bio:.Arka Chakraborty is a music historian based in Kolkata and a PhD prospect at SOAS University of London, looking into Kolkata’s Anglophone music scene.