There are all sorts of strange tales about my song Not A Blade O’ Grass. Some I’ve heard second-hand, but some folks, believe it or not, have actually come to me directly to categorically assert that they know exactly how the song came about. A couple times, I’ve been told, “Burnham pay yuh to write dat song.” One fellow, fully blocked, told me that Mr Burnham had even suggested some of the words. In fact, while Brother Forbes certainly used the song for his own ends, he had nothing whatsoever to do with its creation. For that, you have to go to the late Pat Cameron. Here’s the story, unabridged.
Tradewinds were in Guyana on tour in the ’70s while the Venezuela border row was brewing. I had done a long interview with Pat at the radio station in High Street; chatting off the air afterwards, she said to me, “Dave, Guyanese follow your music; you should write something about this Venezuela story, man.” I said to Pat, “Girl, I don’t write those kinds of head-on songs, and this is a delicate subject. Somebody else should do it.” But Pat Cameron was a persistent lady. She followed me out to the car continuing to make her case,
