Here you go, a handful of ska tunes. Here's the rundown: Dandy Livingstone's (above) "Rudy, A Message to You" was covered by the Specials on their first single in 1979. A similar story with Prince Buster's "One Step Beyond", covered by Madness as their second 45 the same year. Carlos Malcolm's "Bonanza Ska" is a cover of the TV western of the same name. And the Skatalites' "Exodus" is a cover of the theme to the movie of the same name (directed by Otto Preminger). Roland Alphonso is down there because Roland Alphonso. And that's it. Hey, it's Friday.
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If you're at all interested in the original ska from early sixties Jamaica (as opposed to later ska revivals), you know that there was a handful of go-to horn players, called into action through ska to rocksteady and a few continuing through reggae. Some of the bigger names were Don Drummond (trombone), Roland Alphonso (sax), Lester Sterling (sax), Johnny "Dizzy" Moore (trumpet), and Tommy McCook (sax), all founding members of the Skatalites, and all but Drummond alumni of the Alpha Boys School (a launching pad for many early reggae musicians). Some of them had records under their own name "and the Skatalites", others were featured players with co-billing on singers' records. Tommy McCook seemed everywhere back then. Checking this handful of tunes you'll hear what the Specials, Madness and Bad Manners, and later a thousand others, used, recycled and sometimes caricatured. Despite the sound quality (a little muddy, typical for the period in Jamaica), I prefer these to the later ultra kinetic bands.
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Well, shit. I just heard that Terry Hall died a little over a week ago. Pancreatic cancer. He was the lead singer of the Specials from 1979-1981, when the band was at the peak of their popularity and the most visible of the second generation of ska bands, primarily British and most on Two-Tone Records. After he left the Specials he continued with Fun Boy Three, then Colourfield and, well, a few other projects. He eventually re-joined the Specials for a reunion tour in 2009. When you think about it, and I have, the Specials are a big part of the reason that people, in the U.S. anyway, know that there was Jamaican popular music prior to reggae. Although I'm sure I'd heard a few ska songs by the time the Specials surfaced, I hadn't noticed a distinct difference from reggae. But, just as in going backwards to find the sources of old blues or rock 'n' roll songs, I was prodded to learn about the origins of ska after hearing Hall and the Specials. Dude was like the Elvis of ska, in that he was turning kids on to old music originally done by black musicians they never heard of.
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Dig it or don't: Here's a few from ska OG Don Drummond. Lucky for you, I'm not in the mood for blab. Those of you not familiar with Drummond, it's your night to make up your mind with zero input from me. I carry the card, licensed to be lazy.
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Prince Buster started out working security for Coxsone Dodd's sound system, and then
left and began his own system. He started dabbling in producing, finally
making records of his own. Lots of them. You know what else he did? He afforded me a way out of trying to think of something to post. I clicked on an old post. "Enjoy Yourself". I'm gonna flake off and do just that.
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This sucks. Toots Hibbert died yesterday from Covid. He was in intensive care in a Jamaican hospital about ten days ago and after a couple days came news that his condition was improving. Like a lot of people, I was relieved. Hearing this today was a major bummer.
Hibbert was the lead singer of Toots and the Maytals and there from the beginning, active throughout the years from the ska era up to just a few weeks ago when his latest album came out. His voice was distinctive in a gruff Otis Redding sort of way, and he could make you like songs you previously hated (check his take on John Denver's "Take Me Home, Country Roads". Whoa!). Dude was reggae.
Here's a few songs that I didn't post when I did the post about him going into intensive care a week or so ago, along with a couple I did post because some are just vital (see "Pressure Drop"). Some of it is very early, when they were billed as just The Maytals. If you're unfamiliar with Toots and the Maytals altogether, check this documentary.
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This was a completely forgotten link, probably from years ago. I don't think that the blog it came from exists anymore, yet the link still works. It's Tommy McCook's "Tenor on the Call". McCook was a saxophonist, one of the handful of horn players that absolutely ruled the ska and early reggae years. He was there at the beginning, in some ways he is the beginning. Along with Roland Alphonso (sax), Don Drummond (trombone), and Bobby Ellis (trumpet), they were everywhere, notably Duke Reid's and Studio One. You be hard pressed to find any ska or reggae cut from 1963-1970 with horns on it that didn't have at least one of them on it; more often than not a couple or more. And there's a lot of stuff where one of them would stand out, front and center. This was one of McCook's moments, a hazy nine minute jam on Studio One. It's a few years later in his career, from 1977, hence the percolating riddim and non-stop relentless stuck in second gear percussion. Nice combo though.
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Here's a whole heap of stuff from Coxsone Dodd's Studio One. If you're not familiar with the label, there's some links below to get you caught up. Suffice it to say that it was one of the most important reggae labels of all time, particularly during the sixties and seventies. There's over a hundred and fifty cuts and they run the gamut. Vocals, instrumentals, dub, ska, some with excellent sound and some with surface noise and occasional pops and skips. (I miss skips in records.) If you dig golden era reggae, there'll be some names you'll recognize and many you won't. Even if you consider yourself knowledgeable about Studio One, there's some surprises. There's also a link to a two part documentary, which can lag in parts, but just seeing Dodd in conversation should be enough for some of you fiends.
A note about downloading from Internet Archive: Once there, in the right column, under "Download options" click on "VBR MP3 Files".
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There's this commercial that's been on TV lately that uses a snippet of the Specials' version of "Rudy, A Message to You". Wanting to get the cover out of my head, I went for Dandy Livingstone's original and landed on a 48 song reggae post that I know I've been to before. But that didn't stop me from spending the last couple hours going back for seconds.
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Ohh, man, Prince Buster died yesterday. If you know his music, you might pause for a second like you do with the passing of any musical figure, respect, reflection, and on to the next story. But Prince Buster was so much more than just a musician. The guy did everything. He started out as a bouncer for Coxsone Dodd's sound system, a position that expanded with him identifying the songs of other sound system operators (that sounds fun) and selecting records for Dodd, eventually leaving to start his own soundsystem. That was just the beginning. Before the decade was out he would make his own music, and act as producer, label owner, record store owner, and talent scout. Dude did it all.
If all of that wasn't enough, he's sometimes credited with the whole ska guitar chord on the afterbeat thing, that chunka chunka, a prime ingredient of nearly all ska and reggae throughout the sixties, seventies, and beyond. In the middle there he pioneered the slow down into rocksteady. Keep in mind, this is all in the space of about ten years. Maaan, I'm gonna need a longer pause.
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I'm not even going to mess around with this one, Let's just say that Groove Addict just fucking did it again. The singles discography of Blue Beat Records, from number 001 to 400. Yeah. That's a whole lot of ska. Here's just a few. If you dig ska, go there. I'll see you in a couple weeks. There's four posts, each with multiple zips averaging 25 cuts each, and a few mp3 samples thrown in. Let me know how far you get.
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Because I've posted Studio One stuff here about a thousand times, I haven't bothered to look for anything else for a while, not because there isn't a lot out there but because there's so much of it that you have to give it a rest at some point. Or not. Tonight I was in the mood, and I ran into a page with over a hundred Studio One cuts. If you're familiar with the label, you already know that a second wasted here reading any crap I'm writing is a second you could be spending listening to good music. You are excused.
If you aren't familiar with Studio One, get with it, man. Just consider them one of the most important reggae labels of all time and you're off to a good start. From the late fifties, through the seventies and beyond, from R & B, through ska, rocksteady, reggae, DJ stuff, and all sub-genres in between, label owner Coxsone Dodd churned out quality shit, and when he was done with that he churned out more quality shit. Studio One was like Jamaica's Stax, Motown, Chess or Sun. And there's a lot of it. You'd be hard pressed to find anyone who's heard all of it. Although by now someone must have put together a complete Studio One discography, the last time I checked, not one person knew of all of Dodd's releases, not even Dodd himself when he was still alive.
The songs at Internet Archive are almost all early, some from vinyl copies with audible surface noise. If you're expecting some sanitized remastered stuff, you're in the wrong place. That's kind of missing the point. Jamaican studios were rather funky in comparison to the fancy shit in the states, and their record pressing operations were even funkier. I'll take a loss in fidelity any day if it reminds me of the less than perfect conditions that something was recorded in.
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Here's a couple things that I've got to post now and get it out of the way. Though the Skatalites had been here kind of a lot, I'd probably just loose track of these if I waited. If you dig the Skatalites, you know how rare it is to do an image search and come up with anything that isn't small, shitty quality, or includes just a few members. Rare it is that you find a posed promo photo, let alone a large one, worthy of printing out and putting on your fridge or whatever. Check this one. The image above is is an actual size detail. This thing is big. And cool man.
The other Skatalites thing is them doing a Beatles cover. Of course, it had to happen. I'm surprised that I forgot about this one, particularly since I've posted it before. Duh.
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Some random guy in Yardbeat. Not Bobby Ellis. He plays trumpet.
Well, whaddya know? Not half bad ska from a band I never heard of. Yardbeat, a semi-current outfit out of Jamaica. There's hardly anything about them online, so you've got what I could find. Two songs, a dated looking web page, and a live video from 2013, showing them without any visual flash whatsoever. Total street clothes. You could see them at the hardware store, or Best Buy. But they sound great, the sax solo in the video is super baddass. If you're at all skeptical of current ska, and I'm with you on that, you should know that trumpet demigod Bobby Ellis played with them at some point, and if you're at all skeptical of current ska, you probably know who he is.
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Byron Lee may seem like kind of a musical slut, being at different times a mento, calypso, ska, reggae or soca artist, depending on what would likely sell. That's a little harsh for someone who was around and active through it all. You could poo-poo the fact that he wormed his way into the 1964 New York Worlds Fair via his connections with his former manager, the future Prime Minister of Jamaica Edward Seaga, then the head of Jamaica's Social Welfare and Economic Development. Wah, wah, wah. There are a couple reasons to forget all about of that. One is that his music is good. Real good. All shapes and sizes, from the corny to the wacked out, but all seriously tight. The closest I've heard to a stinker is his cover of "Live and Let Die", a later cut, but even that is a solid jam. But, the biggest reason to salute Lee, and it is a big one, is that he was the first Jamaican artist to incorporate the electric organ and the electric bass. Try to imagine sixties and seventies reggae without them.
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You may have heard. Rico Rodriguez died a few days ago at the age of eighty. That's a bummer. Real bummer. He was a trombone player, one of the last links to pre-reggae Jamaican music still up and around, performing up until a couple years ago. He went to the Alpha Boys School, the former school of several musicians who would figure heavily in ska and early reggae. But Rico was one of few who kept at it throughout their life. From early sides for Coxsone Dodd, Duke Reid and Prince Buster and other Jamaican producers, to the UK and Trojan, a stint with the Specials, Special AKA, Jerry Dammer's Spatial AKA Orchestra, and Jools Holland's band, the guy was everywhere. He played on Dandy Livingstone's "Message to You Rudy" and on the Specials' cover of it twenty years later. As a sideman and as a solo artist, he was a constant for anyone keen to him. I'll miss that, seeing where he'd pop up next. Thankfully there is a plethora of stuff available. Here's just a taste.
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Oh hell yeah. Nothing better for a day like today. It was mid-seventies, clear, water temp 73 degrees, and I ran into the perfect soundtrack, Don Drummond stuff at Groove Addict. Like I said, oh hell yeah. With apologies to people mired in shitty weather.
Drummond was a founding member of the Skatalites. One of the musicians responsible for the carrying jazz and R&B into ska. Check the first two below, and then go to Groove Addict for a few more. Drummond is backed by the Skatalites on these, and some of you will appreciate what that means: the A squad, Jackie Mittoo, Rolando Alphonso and Tommy McCook. Yee-haw!
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I ran into "Bonanza Ska" by Carlos Malcolm over at For the Sake of the Song. Bam! Sucked in again, and it wasn't the first time a glance at something about Malcolm turned into a two hour wormhole. Here's the two that got me started, and one recorded a few years later in New York, that one really funky, and tight. Malcolm did it all. I've heard stuff from all different periods of his career, in all sorts of styles, and I haven't heard a stinker yet, Check his Facebook page for a lot of YouTube audio clips, read the advice he dishes out to particular Facebook visitors (as recently as tonight). This guy doesn't sit around doing nothing.
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Aw jeez, here we go again. I ran into a post at Roots and Culture that had a couple from Calypsoul 70, a compilation that came out a few years ago. Both are mighty jams, one by the curiously named Biosis Now, and the other by Cedric Brooks. The Brooks song is the one that got me going. Man, that guy did everything, from funky jazz soul to very heavy roots stuff, reggae, and ska. He lived for a short time in San Diego, at the same time Carlos Malcom did, and the two worked together in 1998. Which sent me off to revisit Carlos Malcom. I had to stop there, or kiss off the rest of the night. Brooks also worked with Sun Ra and Tony Allen, and the latter played with Fela. You can see where all that would lead.
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If you're at all into pre-reggae and early reggae related Jamaican music, go get yourself a napkin. You're gonna need it. Underground Uncovered just posted a two hour, 44 song mix of Jamaican music from 1958-1969. This is good stuff, jazz, R & B, bluebeat, ska, and rocksteady. It's a zip file with individual song files, all labeled with the year of release, so you can sort them chronologically if that's your thing. Got to Underground Uncovered to see the song listing.
Note: At Zippyshare, click on the orange "Download Now" button. Ignore those other huckster download buttons. Some songs are in the mp4 format, so some may not play on whatever you listen back on, but still, it's 44 songs so it's not the end of the world. It's a quick download, 189 MB.
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