Edric Connor

Edric Esclus Connor (2 August 1913 – 13 October 1968) was a Caribbean singer, folklorist and actor who was born in Trinidad. He was a performer of calypso in the United Kingdom, where he migrated in 1944 and chiefly lived and worked for the rest of his life until he died following a stroke in London, at the age of 55.

Edric Esclus Connor was born in 1913 in Mayaro, Trinidad. He settled in Britain in 1944, making his debut on BBC Radio two weeks later, in Calling the West Indies. In 1951 he was responsible for bringing the Trinidad All Steel Percussion Orchestra – TASPO – to the Festival of Britain. In 1955, he recorded the first Manchester United Football Club song, "The Manchester United Calypso". That same year, he and his wife Pearl, whom he had married in 1948, set up the Edric Connor Agency, representing black actors, dancers, writers and musicians, which eventually, in the 1970s, she ran under the name of the Afro-Asian-Caribbean Agency. In 1963, they set up the Negro Theatre Workshop, one of the UK's first black theatre groups.

Connor appeared on stage at London's Prince's Theatre in 1956 in Summer Song, the life told through the music of Antonín Dvořák, in which Connor was "given two of the show's most memorable moments in 'Deep Blue Evening' and 'Cotton Tail'." In 1958 he became the first black actor to perform for the Royal Shakespeare Company in Stratford, playing Gower in Pericles, having been recommended for the role by Paul Robeson. Connor acted in a total of 18 films, including his role as Daggoo in Moby Dick (1956).

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