Revisited: The Death of Rex Lawson

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=tPiXYIoBmqs

49 years ago, a great highlife musician, Rex Lawson, left the company of the living. He was aged 33 years when he passed away.

Rex Lawson was born on the 4th of March 1938 to a Kalabari father and Igbo mother. Born after frequent early childhood deaths of his mother’s children, his father named him, Erekeosima, which means “not worthy of a name”.

Erekeosima grew well and lived with his maternal uncle who taught him how to play the trumpet. Once he got his hands on the trumpet, it began to shape things around him and he called his father’s bluff by giving himself a name, a household name in highlife music, that has resonated even after his death.

Cardinal Jim Rex Lawson died on the 16th of January, 1971 in a fatal car crash at Urhonigbe on Agbor-Warri Road. He had a show that fateful day and had sent his band ahead of himself to set up at Zena Nite Club, Warri.

The events leading up to his death was sequentially narrated in his biography, Cardinal Rex Jim Lawson, The Legend written by his nephew, Sopriala Bob-Manuel.

According to the biography, Rex Lawson woke up that day to find a dead vulture by his house. An evil omen if superstitions are anything to go by, but this did not deter Rex Lawson from going about the…