Trinicenter Message Board Trinidad and Tobago News  The History
of Steelband in Trinidad and Tobago  Roy Harper  From Barbados
to Blue Stocking Alley  February 8, 1998 By Kim Johnson  Today,
at 69 years of age, Roy Harper can still be heard playing with
Pan Vibes every Monday night at the Trinidad Hilton, and you'd
hardly know this was one of the pioneers of the steelband
movement in St James.  Born in Barbados, he was brought to
Trinidad once his mother was able to travel, and eventually
settled in Lucknow Street in St James - Blue Stocking Alley it
was called in those days. "It had a big river running down
almost in the centre of the road, like how Bournes Road used to
be," he recalls.  Those days there was a tamboo bamboo yard with
stickfighting close by in Ranjit Kumar Street, but Harper hardly
got to see it, being at the time under his mother's
jurisdiction.  "As a little fella," he explains, "you could open
a little part between the coconut branch and peep but if they
see you they give you one cut arse