Pim, pom, pi, di, pom, pom…The ‘Bass Man’ is gone! Win­ston “The Mighty Shad­ow” Bai­ley passed away yes­ter­day at 3.50 am at the Er­ic Williams Med­ical Sci­ences Com­plex, Mt Hope. The ca­lyp­so icon, po­et and philoso­pher’s death came mere days be­fore he re­ceived what many said was long in com­ing – an hon­orary doc­tor­ate from the Uni­ver­si­ty of the West In­dies’ St Au­gus­tine Cam­pus for his life­long con­tri­bu­tion to the coun­try’s na­tion­al mu­sic and ca­lyp­so in par­tic­u­lar.

With Bai­ley’s death yes­ter­day, im­me­di­ate con­cerns were raised by some re­gard­ing whether he would still be con­ferred with the hon­orary de­gree promised by UWI – though no posthu­mous­ly.

UWI cam­pus prin­ci­pal Pro­fes­sor Bri­an Copeland was quick to put that to rest, how­ev­er, when he con­firmed that not on­ly would the uni­ver­si­ty still be con­fer­ring the doc­tor­ate on Bai­ley, but that it would al­so be cel­e­brat­ing him dur­ing Sat­ur­day’s grad­u­a­tion ex­er­cise at UWI Spec.(Trinidad Guardian)…[+]