Enjoy yourself'."Īlphonsus Celestine Edmund Cassell was born in 1949, in the shadow of the lush, green, apparently benign Soufrière Hills, the youngest of nine children of Joseph and Veronica Cassell. This is the whole message of my music: 'Have a good time. People want music to enjoy themselves with. "Calypso is political, tropical, slower," he told an interviewer. Over the years, he moved away from calypso's traditional social or political comment and fused its cadences with rhythms from Latin America, Africa or other Caribbean islands. He ran the store personally when not on tour as far afield as Canada, Europe, Japan or Africa. He set up a new store at Nixon's, a few miles farther north on the one-third of the island now considered safe from the volcano's lethal pyroclastic flows and choking ash showers. Originally inspired by the great Trinidadian calypso singer Slinger Francisco – "The Mighty Sparrow" – Arrow took the traditional calypso form to a new level, influencing such later Caribbean bands as the Baha Men of the Bahamas ("Who Let the Dogs Out?") and Kevin Lyttle of St Vincent and the Grenadines ("Turn Me On"). When he released his original version in 1983, it reached only No 59 in the UK charts but was given a new lease of life later in that decade when covered by David Johansen, alias Buster Poindexter, former lead singer of the punk group the New York Dolls. His self-penned 1980s hit "Hot, Hot, Hot" became one of the most-played songs ever – from beaches and cruise ships to discos and wedding receptions – and has been recorded in more than a dozen languages, including Hindi. Alphonsus Cassell, better-known as "Arrow" or "The Mighty Arrow", was considered the king of soca (soul-calypso) music, taking the traditional Caribbean calypso to a worldwide audience with the upbeat addition of soul, merengue, salsa, rock, zouk, reggae and hip-hop influences.