ABSTRACT
William Walker, known to all as Sugar Belly, developed on his own the instrument he called the bamboo saxophone, and played it with facility, style, passion, and joy. At the height of his popularity in the late 1950s, Sugar Belly was one of the important figures in the Jamaican music scene, turning his homemade saxophone into a natural vehicle for a distinctively Caribbean musical style. Sugar Belly did make a fair number of bamboo saxophones over the years, keeping some to play himself and selling others. The main segment of his bamboo saxophone (see the photos) is a straight section of bamboo, an inch or so in diameter and something over a foot long. Sugar Belly carved his reeds from bamboo. He turned to store-bought reeds only when his bamboo supply (which he found in the Hope River valley, not far from Kingston) gave way to coffee plantations and other forms of development.
