Music
TIGER BAY BLUES Chris Sullivan revisits what was once a den of vice, pleasure, danger and high thrills in the docklands area of Cardiff, and meets the residents who recall Tiger Bay’s glory days
“Tiger Bay was, in the simplest words possible, a symbol of racial, ethnic, religious and ecumenical harmony… my mother used to say ‘The League of Nations could learn a thing or two from Tiger Bay’.” Author and historian Neil Sinclair
I
n the 19th Century, the moniker ‘Tiger Bay’ was used in popular literature and slang (especially by sailors) for any dock or seaside neighbourhood that had a notoriety for danger. But the most famous one, which spawned its most famous daughter, Shirley Bassey, is Cardiff ’s Tiger Bay. Said chanteuse was born in Bute Street to a Nigerian father and Tyneside mother, but moved to the
more salubrious Splott area when she was young. She never returned to the rough and tumble of the docks but used its notoriety as a badge of honour, which angered many a proper resident. Bassey’s first hit, The Banana Boat, initially performed by Edric Connor and the Caribbeans, is a traditional Jamaican mento song whose lyrics are from the point of view of dockers working the
116
