Soca music, Carnival anthems and Caribbean party classics
Trinidad and Tobago · Calypso / Soca
Austin Lyons, known first as Blue Boy and then as SuperBlue — ten Road March titles, a record seven Soca Monarch crowns, and the originator of the “jump and wave” style.
“Super Blue — Fantastic Friday (Official Audio).” Official audio via JulianspromosTV (verified promoter channel). No usable licensed photo was found, so this page uses the official audio embed and no photo.
Austin Lyons, born 25 May 1956 in Point Fortin, Trinidad and Tobago, is the calypsonian and soca artist known first as Blue Boy and then as SuperBlue. His mother was Grenadian and his father Trinidadian. As a youth he played tenor steel pan, and he worked at sea before music became his living — shipmates are credited in two separate accounts with the nickname Blue Boy, for being, in their words, bluer than black.
His breakthrough came in 1980 with “Soca Baptist”, a song he wrote in 1979 during a layover in Santo Domingo. He sang it in the calypso tents dressed in blue robes with his head tied, in the manner of a Spiritual Baptist preacher, with a whistle around his neck. Baptist groups objected to the song, radio stations were pressed not to play it, and he was excluded from that year's Calypso Monarch competition — but the masquerade bands played it on the road anyway, and it won the 1980 Road March. The then prime minister, Dr Eric Williams, declined to intervene beyond saying good sense should prevail. The song's blend of Baptist chant and soca rhythm, and its call-and-response crowd commands, set the template for much of what followed.
As Blue Boy he won the Road March again in 1981 with “Ethel” and in 1983 with “Rebecca” — the latter also carried Desperadoes Steel Orchestra to the Panorama title that year. The middle of the decade brought management troubles, late releases, and a difficult personal period he later spoke about openly, and by the late 1980s his career had stalled. The comeback began with “Road to Italy”, written around Trinidad and Tobago's near-qualification for the 1990 football World Cup. Around 1989–1991 he took the name Superblue, and in 1991 “Get Something and Wave” won the Road March by a landslide, in the months after the attempted coup of July 1990 — a release anthem for a shaken country.
The 1990s were his dominant decade. He won the Road March in 1992 with “Jab Jab”, in 1993 with “Bacchanal Time”, and in 1995 with “Signal to Lara”, a tribute to the West Indies cricketer Lara. In 1994 he was denied a fourth straight Road March title when Preacher's sound-alike “Jump and Wave” pipped his “Flag Party”. He also won the first Soca Monarch competition in 1993, and went on to win that crown seven times in all (see table below) — a record that still stands. In 1993 he became the first artist to win the Soca Monarch and the Road March in the same year.
His stagecraft became legend: blue costumes, the whistle, dancing on speaker boxes, and daring physical antics in Soca Monarch finals. He is widely hailed as the originator of the “jump and wave” style of soca — short, shouted crowd commands over a driving beat — and the Soca Monarch's founder, William Munro, credited him with a major role in the competition's early success. His songs also travelled into Panorama year after year, in the hands of the steel orchestras.
After his 2000 Soca Monarch and Road March double (the Road March shared in a tie with Iwer George), he spent more than a decade out of the Soca Monarch competition. He returned in 2013, aged 56, with “Fantastic Friday”, billed as teacher against student opposite the defending champion Machel Montano. The judges declared a tie for the Power Soca Monarch crown, and “Fantastic Friday” also won the Road March. In 2018 he and Montano joined forces on “Soca Kingdom”, which won the Road March with 336 plays — his tenth Road March title, a total bettered only by Lord Kitchener's eleven before Montano passed them both.
Honours followed late in his career: the SAO Hall of Fame Award in 2011, a street named after him in Point Fortin in 2020, and the Hummingbird Medal Gold in the 2021 national awards, where the President's House citation recorded his ten Road March and seven Soca Monarch titles and called him a trailblazer and a benchmark for fellow artists. His daughters with fellow calypsonian Lady Gypsy, Terri Lyons and Fay-Ann Lyons-Alvarez, are both soca artists in their own right; Fay-Ann has won the Road March three times.
| Year | Song | Notes |
|---|---|---|
| 1980 | “Soca Baptist” | As Blue Boy |
| 1981 | “Ethel” | As Blue Boy |
| 1983 | “Rebecca” | As Blue Boy; also Panorama winner for Desperadoes |
| 1991 | “Get Something and Wave” | As Superblue |
| 1992 | “Jab Jab” | As Superblue |
| 1993 | “Bacchanal Time” | As Superblue |
| 1995 | “Signal to Lara” | Title also styled “Signal for Lara” / “Lara” |
| 2000 | “Pump Up” | Tie with Iwer George (“Carnival Come Back Again”); title also styled “Pump It Up” |
| 2013 | “Fantastic Friday” | As Superblue |
| 2018 | “Soca Kingdom” | With Machel Montano; 336 plays |
Sources: Road March winners list, steelband.co.uk (opened; states it follows the accepted official chronology); Carnival Road March — Wikipedia; 2018 counts via MyTriniLime (citing TUCO results: Soca Kingdom 336, Iwer George 140, Patrice Roberts 112).
| Year | Song | Notes |
|---|---|---|
| 1993 | “Bacchanal Time” | First Soca Monarch winner; also won Road March |
| 1994 | “Flag Party” | Retained crown |
| 1996 | “Bounce” | First year as International Soca Monarch |
| 1997 | “Barbara” | Tie with Ronnie McIntosh (“Ent”); first tie in competition history |
| 1998 | “Ato Party” | — |
| 2000 | “Pump Up” | Also won Road March (tie) |
| 2013 | “Fantastic Friday” | Tie with Machel Montano (“Float”); third tie in competition history; also won People's Choice 2013 |
Source: winners tables opened at International Soca Monarch — Wikipedia. The “seven” total is also the figure in the President's House citation reported at BlackFacts — SuperBlue gets Hummingbird Gold.