Pressure Drop: Reggae in the Seventies

PREFACE

When writing this book, I didn’t set out to make it wholly comprehensive or to shoehorn in every artist, producer and recording I could find. The aim wasn’t completeness but to give an overall picture of how reggae music developed in the seventies, who helped to shape it, how it was impacted by events and how it was received. It’s a story rich in adventure, controversy, resilience and imagination, and has its origins in the indomitable spirit of the Jamaican people.

My qualifications for attempting to tell it are rooted in honesty and, to me, that’s what matters. Like many others of my generation, I grew up with the music as it unfolded. I remember watching Millie sing ‘My Boy Lollipop’ on black and white television and being thrilled at the sheer vivaciousness of what I saw and heard. I was 11 and became smitten with her and Jamaican music (‘Blue Beat’) from that moment onwards. By the age of 15 I’d experienced my first Caribbean house party or shebeen – we called them ‘blues’ – and added Prince Buster and Desmond Dekker to my list of favourite singers. I’m often asked how someone like me, a white Englishman, got into reggae, but the answer didn’t involve any great feat of discovery or even crate-digging. During my school years, reggae music was mainstream – it wasn’t unusual for Jamaican records to appear in the national charts, or to see artists like Desmond Dekker, Jimmy Cliff and Bob & Marcia performing their latest hits on Top Of The Pops. Their songs played on national radio, just like those by black American artists such as the Temptations, Stevie Wonder and Johnny Nash.

It was some skinheads’ violent behaviour that stopped all that in its tracks, because their association with Jamaican music brought shame to the genre. I remember being in blues parties when gangs of skinheads gathered outside, shouting abuse and smashing windows. I also recall being at a club where hippies congregated when the doors burst open and maybe a dozen skinheads rushed inside and began attacking people with fists, boots, broken bottles and bicycle chains. Not all skinheads behaved in this way, but I was still relieved when the Wailers’ Catch A Fire marked the end of early reggae (which the skinheads liked) and the start of the roots era (which most of them didn’t).

My involvement with the music at that time was restricted to buying records and going to concerts. Early UK tours by Dennis Brown, Toots and the Maytals, Bob Marley, Gregory Isaacs and Burning Spear brought the music and culture of Jamaica into focus like never before, and while we no longer saw or heard the same number of reggae records on national TV or radio, specialist publications like Black Music and Black Echoes had appeared by then. Thanks to Island Records and Virgin’s Front Line label, we could also buy albums by Jamaican artists in high street shops – a development that made all the difference to fans living outside of London and other major cities with sizable Caribbean communities, which is where most of the import shops were. Brighton, where I lived then, was close enough to London for me to see shows, buy records and visit places like Brixton or Dalston, where you could buy a draw of high grade ganja and hear the music played on a sound system. That was the ultimate listening experience, and although London dances weren’t so welcoming as those in Nottingham, that wasn’t reason enough to stay away.

It wasn’t until 1988, when I started writing for Black Echoes (by then retitled Echoes) that I began meeting people connected to the reggae industry. Two years later I threw caution to the wind and became a full-time music journalist specialising in reggae and dancehall – a position I still hold today, more than thirty-five years later. From that point onwards I made the transition from ardent fan and occasional DJ/radio presenter to a participant of sorts – one with a mission to help share an appreciation of the music far and wide, and with as much professionalism as I could muster. Apart from making regular trips to Jamaica and supplying Echoes with a never-ending supply of articles and reviews, I wrote promotional material and liner notes for a host of reggae labels, before being commissioned to write books by Omnibus Press.

Over the years, I’ve interviewed countless reggae artists, musicians, producers, managers, label owners and soundmen, many of whom are quoted in this book. Before the advent of Zoom calls and WhatsApp, the majority of these interviews were held in person – either backstage, on tour buses, at rehearsals or in studios, hotels, record company offices and people’s homes, including my own. I am grateful to each and every one of the people who’ve granted me the time and opportunity to ask them endless questions about their work, the times they’ve lived through and the conditions they sometimes had to endure in bringing their music to the world. If I can pass on even a fraction of the spirit and determination that it took for them to become recognised, or the passion and sincerity they felt when outlining their feelings about society and their hopes for humanity, then I will have gone some way towards doing them justice.

That ten-year period we call the seventies is now considered to be a golden age for reggae music. It was a time when musical landmarks came thick and fast, and reggae artists like Bob Marley, Peter Tosh and Burning Spear earned legendary status. From the mid-seventies onwards there was an over-riding sense that something significant was happening, and those of us living outside of Jamaica could do no more than hang on to its coat-tails, there was no mistaking the heady scent of change in the air. The music told us this, and many of these artists and musicians were genuinely intent on raising people’s consciousness and igniting a social and cultural revolution that would finally sweep away the colonial construct they termed ‘Babylon’ – a form of mental and actual slavery upon which western society is based, and that Jamaica’s griots sought to replace with a ‘one love’ philosophy forged from sufferation and Biblical prophecy.

The story of these soul rebels wasn’t the sum total of the seventies’ reggae narrative, but it was easily the most compelling part – not just because of the larger-than-life characters, the way they looked and spoke, their cultural differences and the events they were caught up in, but also because of what their songs could teach us about human existence. Everywhere we looked, such artists were triumphing over adversity and turning their lives around while seeking to uplift their listeners. I still find that extraordinary, and marvel at the courage and perseverance needed to make that happen. That’s a large part of the story I wanted to write when working on this book, because a great deal of my thinking and understanding about life has been shaped by reggae music and its cultural framework. I was taken on the journey of a lifetime, because it was during the seventies that Jamaica introduced the world to toasting, dub, Rastafari and rockers, whereas Britain rallied by contributing punk, lovers rock and 2 Tone. I’ve included all of these different forms in the following chapters, along with political and societal factors that provided an essential backdrop to the music.

Some of the featured artists were deejays capable of talking a mile a minute about literally anything at all. They were part of an influx of entertainers providing thrills and amusement, while others aimed for crossover recognition or hoped to please ordinary folk wanting to hear something they could dance and sing along to. Certain singers, like Gregory Isaacs and Beres Hammond, used their voices and lyrics to tug at our heartstrings. Their songs could make us weep just as easily as making us feel like a million dollars. And we haven’t even mentioned dub magicians like King Tubby and Lee ‘Scratch’ Perry, mystical figures such as Augustus Pablo, or flamboyant characters like Bunny Lee and Niney The Observer, whose quick-witted antics brought humour and creativity to the genre. It’s to all of the above that I dedicate these pages, covering the decade in which their talents shone most brightly.

INTRODUCTION

Before embarking on the story of the seventies, let’s remind ourselves of what happened leading up to that period. The previous decade had been the most prolific in musical history, fuelled by the public’s hunger for new releases and the advent of transistor radio and home hi-fi equipment. Jamaicans had grown accustomed to jukeboxes blasting the latest hits in bars all across the island, while sound systems competed against one another to spin the most exclusive acetates and play them loudest. Mythical characters emerged from that world like Arthur ‘Duke’ Reid the Trojan, an ex-policeman who wore guns on both hips and a crown perched on his head. His competitors included Tom the Great Sebastian and King Edwards, but Reid’s greatest rival was Clement ‘Coxsone’ Dodd – a jazz and rhythm and blues fan who hung out with musicians and wasn’t averse to reasoning with the Rastafarians he met in Trench Town’s tenement yards.

Early soundmen like these were the bedrock of the Jamaican music industry, but to keep ahead of the competition they had to visit different parts of the US and search out the best records to play at dances back home. There was no local music to speak of that could rival American rhythm and blues for excitement, especially when hyped up by MCs like Count Machuki, Sir Lord Comic and King Stitt, whose jive talking would ring out in the night air even before the stylus bit into the shellac.

Prince Buster was one of Coxsone’s strongarm guys who helped ward off Duke Reid’s thugs when they tried to sabotage Coxsone’s equipment or frighten away his followers. The day he was born, his parents had been caught up in street battles between striking workers and police. They were on their way to the hospital when policemen opened fire on the strikers, witnessing trade union leader William Alexander Bustamante pushing his way to the front, shouting, ‘shoot me and save the innocent people of Jamaica!’ Buster’s parents were so impressed they named their newborn son Cecil Bustamante Campbell in his honour.

Like his namesake, who went on to become prime minister and oversee Jamaican independence, Buster was fiercely ambitious. He was a champion runner at school and used to practise boxing under the streetlight outside the Caribbean restaurant on Drummond Street in downtown Kingston. The owner named him ‘Prince Buster’, although he was also known as ‘Wild Bill’ for a time because of his daredevil behaviour. He claims to have been the catalyst for Jamaican soundmen like Dodd and Reid starting to record local talent rather than remain in hock to the Americans.

‘When I was growing up I used to listen to singers like Frank Sinatra, Billy Eckstine, Sarah Vaughan and Ella Fitzgerald,’ he told me. ‘Those were early days, but then the music changed and I started listening to artists like Fats Domino. I was in love with rhythm and blues but, at the same time, I had to fight it, because that was Coxsone and Duke Reid’s power. What you must understand is that I was within Coxsone’s camp, and the records he was playing were all bought from America. He’d just scratch off the label and not let anyone know what he was playing. For instance, Sir Coxsone had a number one tune he called ‘Coxsone’s Hop.’ He played that tune for seven years without Duke Reid finding a copy, but it was an American rhythm and blues song by Willis Jackson called ‘Gator’s Tail’ and there was nothing Jamaican about it! Well, I was there studying what was going on and whenever we were playing the sound system, I’d be listening to the records and watching how the crowds reacted. They wouldn’t know the artist who was singing. All they heard was somebody saying it’s an exclusive, y’know?

‘Well, Count Machuki wasn’t feeling too good about Coxsone by this time, so he come and complain to me about it. He say that him never see too much cash yet, and why don’t I start up a sound system of my own? I think about it and that’s when I decide to go and get a farm work ticket, so I can leave for America to buy some rhythm and blues and get the money to start up a sound system. Well, I pass every test, and then the morning I was supposed to leave there was a line extending down to the quay and a man come up to me and say, ‘open your hands.’ He said my hands were too soft to cut cane, and so I can’t go. It was like everything come down on me, and I later find out it was Coxsone’s father-in-law who say that to me, because they were afraid of me going there. After that now, I go and find a drummer named Arkland Parks – we call him ‘Drumbago’ – and he said I can’t turn back, so we rehearse every day for about three weeks straight before going into the studio and making some tracks. If I’d have got that farm work ticket, then I would have come back with rhythm and blues just like the rest of them. But because I didn’t get it, I went to Drumbago and there it was, the birth of ska!’

That first session yielded tracks like ‘Little Honey’ and an instrumental, ‘Buster’s Shack’, credited to Buster’s All-Stars. The latter was issued in the UK on a subsidiary of Melodisc called Starlite, owned by Emil Shalit, who’d been selling folk music from around the world, including calypso from Trinidad. Shalit would later become Buster’s mentor and business adviser.

‘I named my sound system Voice Of The People, and I overthrew them by playing the new sound, which was ska. But what I was really overthrowing was rhythm and blues. We had this song called ‘They Got To Go’ but I wasn’t just speaking about Coxsone, Duke Reid and King Edwards – I was referring to rhythm and blues as well. That song was a big hit in Jamaica, but then I change the lyrics around, saying they must come my way because ska was the biggest thing happening at that time, and the others had to adapt to it to stay alive in the business. It gave the people something that represented their own culture and it bring them joy, but it also cause problems because Coxsone and Duke Reid had been making a lot of money bootlegging rhythm and blues and when ska came, it killed it for them. That caused a lot of trouble, but it felt so good to know that Duke, Sir Coxsone and King Edwards had been vanquished. After I demolish them now the three of them became friends and that shocked Jamaica, because how could that happen? Except they do it to try and overthrow Prince Buster, and they all turned against me.’

Buster’s speaker boxes were even bigger than those of Duke Reid and Coxsone, and aptly named ‘Houses Of Joy.’ He also introduced the concept of having separate amplifiers for the bass, mid-range and treble, but it was the fervour created by his own recordings – released just prior to Jamaican Independence and dubbed ‘Jamaica’s first national sound’ – that stirred up the most excitement. Buster previewed his new sound system in Salt Lane and promptly challenged Duke Reid to a clash, although the latter failed to turn up. Shortly afterwards, both men held dances just a block apart. Reid hired Forrester’s Hall, and Prince Buster the Jubilee Tile Gardens on King Street.

That night Buster’s friend Pama Dice ran a length of speaker cable all the way down North Street and set up a treble horn in a tree right near where Reid was playing. Buster turned his sound up full blast, but then a man from Duke Reid’s camp called Tassie cut the wire. Buster raced to reconnect it, defeated Tassie in a knife fight and then leapt onto a nearby wall and urged the crowd to come to his dance instead. It was a defining moment in the history of Jamaican music, and Buster would explore every avenue open to him from thereon. He opened Prince Buster’s Record Shack on the corner of Luke Lane and Charles Street and also invested in jukeboxes prior to making his first-ever stage performance at the Glass Bucket. The Prince Buster phenomenon hadn’t yet extended beyond central Kingston, but his next move would have the most far-reaching repercussions of all: persuading Count Ossie and his Rastafarian drummers to record a couple of tracks with him at local radio station JBC in 1961.

‘I wasn’t a Rasta,’ says Buster. ‘I grew up in a Rastafarian street and there were Rastas where I stayed in the country for a while, but my family were Christians, and so I couldn’t go in front of them with locks in my hair. They were Garveyites as well, though, so they had nothing against Rastas, even though Rastafarians were under serious pressure at that time. No one would check for them, but I decided to take them into the studio so that I could stay one step ahead of Duke Reid, Coxsone and the rest. The only way I could do that was to keep coming different all the time, and leave no space for monotony, y’ understand?

‘Like I say, I grew up amongst Rastafarians. When I was a little boy, I used to climb up a tree on Salt Lane whenever Count Ossie would come down from Wareika Hill on his way to a Rasta gathering, or I’d be running alongside them as they played. Ossie and I later became friends, long before we did any recording together. When I was on top with ‘They Got To Go’, my mind went back to Count Ossie, so I decided to use him on a record. A friend said that couldn’t happen because of the way things were with Rastas back then but they hadn’t seen Ossie play as a child like I had, and so they couldn’t imagine what I had in mind for him to do, y’ understand? So I went up Wareika Hill one night and Ossie thought I wanted him to play as a member of my band. But I said, no, that’s not what I want. I just want the band playing like you used to in Salt Lane. He said he didn’t want to play with a bass or regular drummer, and I agreed but that delayed our arrival, and so Duke Reid took over my session. There was a big uproar about that when I arrived, but a man from the radio station calmed me down and said not to worry about it. He told me there was another room we could make into a studio, so we went upstairs, put a partition in there and it just so happen that it had exactly the right acoustics for the Rasta drumming. It was perfect. But then, after I released those songs, the radio stations wouldn’t play them! I couldn’t believe that, y’ know? My sound system push them for a while, and then I start to cut some copies onto soft wax for people like Lloyd the Matador so he can play them, until eventually things start to happen. I knew I was going to be challenged for using Count Ossie, but his band was full of great players and the night we do those recordings the man’s fingers were burning, I tell you! That was the night we did ‘Oh Carolina’, and it was a song that had only existed in my imagination before then.’

Buster recorded Bunny & Skitter’s ‘Chubby’ during that same session, but it was ‘Oh Carolina’, sung by the Folkes Brothers, that stood out with its chanted, folksy melodies and mesmerising hand drumming. Though Rastas were still vilified by the establishment, according to Buster, the radio stations didn’t necessarily ignore ‘Oh Carolina’ because it promoted Rastafari or sounded radically different from everything else, although such factors surely played a part.

‘It was because the DJs had private agreements with some of the manufacturers to push certain things,’ he said, with disdain. ‘They were getting payola, so it took them about three or four months before they played ‘Oh Carolina’, and then only because they were forced to play it due to public demand. People just loved it from the minute they heard it, and that in turn helped the Rasta movement to grow, because they had a song to represent them at last, and something to hold onto.’

After the release of ‘Oh Carolina’, Buster and Emil Shalit entered an exclusive agreement to issue Buster’s productions on the Blue Beat label, distributed by Melodisc. ‘Blue beat’ was the name given to the West Indian-style rhythm and blues as popularised by Laurel Aitken and Higgs & Wilson. With help from Siggy Jackson, Shalit had been quick to capitalise on blue beat’s popularity in England by releasing records, selling merchandise and booking weekly slots at London’s Marquee club.

‘Mr Shalit was a very intelligent man,’ says Buster. ‘He was my teacher, because before I met him Jamaica was my world and everything I had was there, but Mr Shalit turned me from someone with an island mentality into someone with a worldview. I learnt so much from that man. I was just an island guy, singing for my supper and green to the world, but he saw something else in me. He told me to park up the sound system, go into the studio and make records, and then he would distribute them for me, and I’m sure glad that I followed his advice.’

During this time with Blue Beat, Buster produced records by Owen Gray, the Mellow Larks, the Maytals, Eric ‘Monty’ Morris, Basil Gabbidon, Rupie Edwards, Hortense Ellis, Lord Creator and numerous other local artists. his was in addition to issuing a string of wonderfully diverse hits under his own name. Buster recorded songs about everything – love, sTex, outlaws and Rasta, you name it. All human life was there in his sixties’ recordings and he also voiced some of the first talking records ever committed to vinyl, well before King Stitt and U-Roy made their debuts and the Last Poets and Gil Scott-Heron laid the foundations of hip-hop in America. There’s also a strong case for crediting Prince Buster with having been the first-ever dancehall artist, since he had all the characteristics associated with that genre: he was boasty, had sharp dress sense and a vocal style that blurred the lines between singing and rapping. He also wrote ditties about explicit sex that predated ‘slackness’, and made some thrilling gangster records that bristled with bravado and outrageous theatricality. For proof, listen to ‘Al Capone’, which opened with the immortal phrase, ‘don’t call me scarface…’ The rhythm then started up and one of the all-time great dance records began hurtling down the grooves like a runaway train. It was only much later that most of us learnt it was King Sporty’s voice on that intro and not Buster’s, but no matter, because the flip side – ‘One Step Beyond’ – was pretty impressive, too.

In 1964, he accompanied Byron Lee, Jimmy Cliff and Monty Morris to the World’s Fair in New York. Buster was unstoppable, although his thunder would soon be stolen by 16-year-old Millie Small, who was still starry-eyed after being flown to London a year earlier by Island Records’ Chris Blackwell. The latter had started his record label back in 1959 after travelling back and forth to the US and buying records to sell to Jamaican sound system owners. One of his earliest productions, Laurel Aitken’s ‘Boogie In My Bones’, has been called Jamaica’s first indigenous pop record, but the urbane Blackwell nearly chose a career in film rather than music after working as location manager on the James Bond film, 1962’s Dr No. It was a visit to a fortune teller that persuaded him otherwise, after she advised him to carry on making records. In 1962 the 25-year-old Blackwell left for London where, always the entrepreneur, he began licensing records from Jamaican producers like Leslie Kong and selling them to independent shops out of the back of his Mini.

‘I thought that in view of my complexion I’d be better off in England than in Jamaica,’ Blackwell admitted, ‘Jamaica had just become independent and every problem it had was considered to be associated with white folk and colonial oppression. It was a changed situation. People who had no money and no influence were saying they’d been oppressed by the British and they wanted to get theirs now. Their time had come...’

When Blackwell first started licensing and selling records, his main customers were people from the Caribbean living in the UK. But that would soon change with the release of ‘My Boy Lollipop.’

‘The business expanded so quickly,’ Blackwell said. ‘There were so many producers in Jamaica, you see. Many of the guys who had sound systems were also producers, and they made some great records. Coxsone Dodd was a great example of that, and it was him who first produced this little girl called Millie. I heard her sing and thought she was incredible, so I brought her over to England and was looking for a song that would be a hit for her. I found this old song [by Barbie Gaye] called ‘My Boy Lollipop’ that I’d found ages ago during the days when I would go up to New York to buy records. That record changed my life, because up until that point I’d just been driving around the periphery of London, going into all the shops and selling them records… I absolutely loved it and ‘My Boy Lollipop’ was a hit everywhere. I didn’t put it out on Island though, because I’d seen what could happen when small independent labels had a hit. They’d generate a huge amount of revenue and then, when their next record came out, it wouldn’t hit and they’d crash back down again. So I licensed ‘My Boy Lollipop’ to Fontana.’

Millie Small’s family were from Clarendon, where her father worked as an overseer on a sugar plantation. She had twelve brothers and sisters and, after entering local talent competitions and winning first prize on Vere Johns’ popular radio show Opportunity Knocks, she auditioned for Coxsone, who thought that she sounded like Shirley Mae Goodman of Shirley & Lee. Small’s earliest recordings were duets with Owen Gray and Roy Panton, but the London pop scene – then dominated by the Beatles, the Dave Clark Five and Dusty Springfield – would provide a sterner test.

Once she’d arrived in the UK, Blackwell arranged for Small to have dancing lessons and enrolled her in speech-training classes. He then booked her to play West Indian social clubs throughout the country, where people from the Caribbean communities welcomed her with open arms. Millie’s voice had a shrill upper register, but it was her appealing personality and upbeat cheeriness that they liked – qualities that ‘My Boy Lollipop’ showcased in abundance. Astute as ever, Blackwell had asked Millie to voice the song in a cupboard so that her delivery would have additional resonance, and the resulting take was irresistible. Rarely had so much fun and vivacity been squeezed into a song lasting under two minutes, and once ‘My Boy Lollipop’ entered the UK national charts in March 1964 there would be no stopping it. It reached number two in Britain and the US and would ultimately sell over seven million copies worldwide. Despite Prince Buster’s best efforts, it was Millie who introduced Jamaican music to mainstream Britain and America. But her follow-up, ‘Sweet William’, flopped and she would never come up with another smash hit like ‘My Boy Lollipop’.

Like Buster, Millie had also performed at the World’s Fair in New York during August 1964, by which time ska had been hailed as the latest dance craze – even First Lady Jackie Kennedy was photographed doing it. Millie returned to Jamaica soon afterwards and thousands lined the streets as she was driven into the city in an open-top limousine. She headlined Independence anniversary shows at the Sheraton Hotel and National Stadium during that visit and also shared a bill with Otis Redding at May Pen’s Capri Theatre. What an amazing night that must have been, with Otis singing his hits ‘Respect’, ‘My Girl’, ‘Shake’ and ‘I’ve Been Loving You Too Long’ and Millie performing a comeback show in her home parish after conquering Britain and America!

A few months later, Ready Steady Go broadcast a television special called Millie In Jamaica featuring Jimmy Cliff, Count Ossie, Prince Buster, Roy Panton and Louise Bennett. That black and white film was a revelation for fans in the UK, some of whom fell under the spell of the music’s Caribbean roots and never recovered. Why Fontana then followed the show with the corny ‘See You Later Alligator’ was anyone’s guess, since it missed this important new demographic by a country mile. Meanwhile, billed as ‘the Pint-Sized Hurricane’, Millie breezed through Australia, New Zealand, Hong Kong, Singapore, Japan and the US before heading for Central and South America.

Small was Jamaica’s first musical jetsetter. Still riding on the crest of ‘My Boy Lollipop’, she and Jackie Edwards toured Africa, performing in countries like Kenya, Uganda, Tanzania, Ghana and Liberia long before any other Jamaican acts did. American film star Marlon Brando, whose girlfriend, Esther Anderson, was Millie’s chaperone, joined them briefly on that trip, although by 1966 and the release of her album Ska At The Jamaica Playboy Club – with a cover-photo of Millie wearing a swimsuit and Bunny Girl ears – the zest and vitality of her early time in the spotlight had largely dissipated. She wasn’t yet 20 years old and must have felt exhausted, although the music of her homeland had only just begun its own incredible journey.

Prince Buster was the second Jamaican artist to capture the imagination of British audiences when ‘Al Capone’ was reissued in February 1967 and raced up the UK national charts, peaking at number thirteen. The previous year, shortly after witnessing Emperor Haile Selassie I’s triumphant state visit to Jamaica, Prince Buster had travelled to London, where he met heavyweight boxer Muhammad Ali, who was about to fight Henry Cooper for a second time. Ali was going through major changes at the time and, like Buster, was unafraid to stand up for what he believed in. After embracing Islam and discarding the name Cassius Clay, he’d alienated a great deal of his popular support and would soon have his world titles taken from him after announcing that he wasn’t going to fight in Vietnam. Black men weren’t encouraged to assert their racial and cultural identity, as the Rastafarians had discovered in Jamaica, and Black Muslims and Civil Rights’ activists had found to their cost in America. Led by the firebrand Malcolm X, the Black Muslims preached self-empowerment and offered a sense of pride that wasn’t all that far removed from what Marcus Garvey had advocated back in the twenties. It’s therefore hardly surprising that Buster – who assumed the name Mohammed Yusef Ali and started a new label called Islam – felt drawn to them, although he remained a fighter at heart and wasted no opportunity to attack his rival producers, both on record and otherwise whenever things got heated. Coxsone was the target on ‘Thirty Pieces Of Silver’, and then Duke Reid came in for a mauling on ‘Big Fight’, as Buster brought all the excitement and drama of being ringside at a boxing match into the studio with him. According to legend, Buster had voiced ‘Madness’ after taking his revenge on one of Duke Reid’s thugs, and eye witnesses said the assault was so brutal they thought that he’d gone crazy. (Remember that name ‘Wild Bill’?) Another time his skull was fractured after someone hit him on the head with a paving slab, and he was also stabbed with an ice pick at some point during those early sound wars.

‘I was fighting against people who were prisoners, criminals and thugs, like you’d find out in the road,’ he said. ‘I had a broken skull thanks to them, so I had to be wild and vicious myself and that’s why I called one of my labels Wild Bells because it represented a dangerous part of my life, when I had to be wild to survive.’

Fellow singer Derrick Morgan, who’d previously recorded for Buster, hardly qualified as a serious opponent, but quitting Buster’s camp for Chinese-Jamaican businessman Leslie Kong’s brought a wealth of scathing invective down on his head. Morgan’s battle with Prince Buster quickly became the talk of Jamaica and provided welcome publicity for both of them. Buster’s opening retort to Morgan’s defection was ‘Black Head Chiney’, which was racism, laced with humour. Derrick countered with ‘Blazing Fire’, using the rhythm of ‘Madness’, but then Buster insinuated Derrick was working for nothing on ‘Praise Without Raise’ and, in a reference to Morgan’s blindness, accused him of being ‘too blind to understand.’ Buster then told Derrick to ‘rest in his nappy,’ on ‘Creation.’ Relations between the pair somehow remained cordial despite these skirmishes, but their supporters didn’t always realise this.

‘It was just a musical war,’ Derrick assured me. ‘I wrote ‘Blazing Fire’ off him, and then, when him come back with ‘Praise and No Raise’, I say that when I was recording with him I wasn’t even taking praise, much less raise… Ah, so it start, the rival thing, and it went on and on and on. When I come with ‘Tougher Than Tough’, he then came with those Judge Dread songs, but it get big and bad in Jamaica after a while. Gangs start to fight one another over Buster and I, and man and man would cut up one another in bars. That’s when the government step in and asked us to do something about it. I can’t remember whether it was Buster’s plan or not, but [Jamaican MP Edward] Seaga tell us to go to [Jamaican newspaper] the Gleaner so they can take pictures of us together and that’s how it all got calmed down…’

Several other acts, jealous of all the attention that Buster and Morgan were getting, tried to join in, but without success. Coxsone even talked Delroy Wilson into singing against Buster, but he refused to pay the youngster any mind. Meanwhile, groups of disaffected youths called ‘rudies’ were causing trouble in Kingston’s inner city communities, and also at the dances.

‘Rudies were young men aged between 14 and 30 who had joined the migration from country to Kingston,’ explained French filmmaker Stefan Paul. ‘With no skills and West Kingston’s chronic 30 per cent unemployment, the rudies redefined the street life, hanging out, suffering, flicking deadly ratchet knives, trolley-hopping, purse-snatching, occasional muggings… petty theft and insolence, singing and general hooliganism became lifetime careers, most of which ended very early. For the rudie, the only way out of West Kingston, Trench Town, Tivoli Gardens, Ghost Town, Jones Town or Denham Town was via a hit single or a police bullet.’

The island’s two main political parties were the JLP and PNP, and as they struggled for power, gangs had formed around them in different parts of the city. One such gang leader, Zackie The High Priest, was the inspiration for Buster’s brilliantly conceived ‘Judge Dread’, on which he acts as Judge Four Hundred Years and presides over a court involving such fabulous names as George Grab And Flee and Emmanuel Zechariah Zackeepom. It was an inspired piece of social commentary, but there was humour in it too, like when Buster turns to one of the prisoners and tells him to hush up, asking if he was going to shoot him as well. The follow-ups in this series included ‘Barrister Pardon’, aka ‘Judge Dread Dance’, voiced on the same rhythm as ‘Judge Dread’ and ‘The Appeal’ featuring a lawyer from Europe called Judge Dread Locks, who Buster sentences to life imprisonment for ‘racial injustice and slave trading.’

‘We knew a lot of good Rastamen who believed in what they were doing,’ he said, ‘but then it became a fad and everybody became a Rasta. After that, some of these people started to do criminal things, even whilst talking about Jah, and let me tell you, that upset me greatly – it bugged me so much that I make this song ‘Judge Dread’ and sentence them all to four hundred years! But if the Jamaican government had taken my advice they could have nailed the problem right there and then…’

Prime Minister Hugh Shearer needed to look no further than his own cabinet – and Edward Seaga, minister for welfare and development, in particular – for answers. In late 1966, Seaga invited an overseas circus to Jamaica for the Christmas holidays. During their stay in Kingston they were based at the George VI Memorial Park, where a large crowd came to see the lights, listen to carols and hear the band of the First Battalion of the Jamaica Regiment. The evening’s entertainments then ended with a fireworks display ‘which delighted children and grown-ups alike and sent a thrill of joy through all hearts for the season,’ according to a report in the Gleaner, which then complained that ‘the noise from the circus nearby made some of the singing almost inaudible.’ Legend has it that this circus was the catalyst for much of the gun violence that followed. It’s said that guns had been hidden in the large teddy bears given as prizes on many of the stalls, and this was why children carrying these bears were stopped as they left the park and had their prizes taken off them. We can only imagine the upsets this caused, but why else would anyone do that?

Most old-timers agree that 1967 was the year that the Kingston gang wars became more prevalent, and also more violent. The main gangs affiliated to the JLP in that era were the Skulls and Zackie The High Priest’s Phoenix gang. Their key rivals included the Vikings, led by Dillinger, and the Spanglers, who controlled the Regent Street area. Dudley Thompson marshalled the PNP troops, and Seaga did the same with gangs supporting the JLP. Apart from their usefulness in causing mayhem and division, these gangs’ primary purpose was to ensure that people in their neighbourhoods voted to keep certain politicians in office. This ultimately resulted in a network of no go areas spread across the city that neither party could row back from, since their hands were too bloody. Seaga then compounded the problem by giving the order to flatten a shanty town called Back O’ Wall so he could build apartments there instead, which were then let to JLP supporters. This new power base was called Tivoli Gardens, but hundreds of squatters, Rastafarians and impoverished people were made homeless by the destruction of Back O’ Wall; many of them watched on helplessly as their make-do shelters were razed to the ground. Those who didn’t and chose to protest instead were chased away and beaten by police. In the aftermath, large numbers of people dispersed into neighbouring ghetto areas or returned to the rural districts they’d originally come from, whilst some of the Rastafarians like Prince Emmanuel and his followers sought shelter in the hills overlooking Bull Bay.

Singer Desmond Dekker hadn’t witnessed any of this in person – he’d only seen it reported on local television – but the song that he wrote about it, ‘007 (Shanty Town),’ left people in no doubt about what had happened, or his own feelings towards it. Within weeks of Prince Buster breaking into the UK Top 20 with his reissue of ‘Al Capone’, Desmond went four places better with ‘007 (Shanty Town).’ This was no novelty hit tailored for commercial success, but a show of support for people who’d been cast aside by scheming politicians like Seaga, who’d been renamed ‘the minister for warfare and devilment’ by PNP followers. ‘007 (Shanty Town)’ was a record that reeked of authenticity, yet the majority of overseas fans who bought the single and sent into the UK charts during the Summer of Love knew nothing of this. They just found it catchy and different and loved the new, slowed down rocksteady beat behind it – a stylistic evolution that would inspire countless singers and vocal groups as the sixties drew to a close.

Desmond was born in Kingston but had spent most of his early years near Seaforth in St Thomas, where some of Jamaica’s bloodiest slave uprisings had taken place. By the age of 15 he was working as a welder in west Kingston and dreaming of becoming a singer like his idols Nat King Cole and Sam Cooke. Coxsone and Duke Reid both turned him down, and he had to audition for Beverley’s several times before getting the nod from Leslie Kong, whose faith was rewarded when Desmond’s debut, ‘Honour Your Mother And Father’, topped the local charts in 1962. Kong hadn’t cared much for Desmond’s actual surname of Dacres, rebranding him ‘Desmond Dekker.’ At Desmond’s prompting, he also auditioned a young Bob Marley, who worked at the same welding shop. Kong recorded a handful of tracks with him, including the country music covers ‘Judge Not’ and ‘One Cup Of Coffee.’ He even tried renaming him ‘Bobby Martell’, but nothing came of it.

Dekker’s career flourished, though. He and guitarist/arranger Lynn Taitt struck up a good partnership and the hits kept coming – especially after he’d teamed up with a vocal group called the Four Aces, who sealed their alliance with ‘Problems.’ The rude boy era was in full swing by then and Dekker and the Aces joined in with rocksteady classics such as ‘Rude Boy Train’, ‘Keep A Cool Head’ and ‘Rudie Got Soul.’ In common with other local singers, Desmond had also been inspired by Emperor Haile Selassie I’s state visit to Jamaica the previous year, as heard in a growing number of songs devoted to spiritual and cultural themes, including ‘Wise Man’, ‘Mount Zion’ and ‘Pretty Africa.’ Around the same time ‘007 (Shanty Town)’ was heading for the UK charts, Desmond and the Aces were voted runners-up in the Jamaican Song Festival with ‘Unity’, and won it the following year with ‘Music Like Dirt’, aka ‘Intensified ’68.’

The group’s next hit was a song written about Jamaica’s sufferers called ‘Israelites’ that opened with a description of having to rise every morning and slave for a living. It took a year for ‘Israelites’ to capitalise on its popularity in reggae dances and top the charts in West Germany, Sweden, Holland, Canada and South Africa as well as the UK, where it became the first-ever reggae song to reach number one – even Millie hadn’t managed that. But Desmond’s new-found celebrity came at a cost, requiring him to spend increasing amounts of time away from Jamaica. Somewhat surprisingly, the lure of fame and money didn’t turn his head and he remained loyal to Leslie Kong, rejecting the advances of every other producer who approached him.

Derrick Morgan’s career path worked out rather differently. He’d started out with Duke Reid, then voiced his breakthrough hit ‘Fat Man’ for Simeon Smith’s Hi Lite label before joining Prince Buster on Blue Beat. His defining hits, however, were all produced by Leslie Kong for the Beverley’s label. ‘Blazing Fire’ and ‘House Wife Choice’ the latter shared with Patsy, came out in 1961, and then ‘Forward March’ became a veritable anthem as Jamaica celebrated its independence. The following year, Beverley’s released a debut album, also called Forward March, that helped establish the dapper, pork pie hat-wearing 23-year-old as one of Jamaica’s biggest stars. After their musical clash, Prince Buster invited Derrick to sign with Emil Shalit and leave for London. Leslie Kong advised him against it and offered to pay him more money, but Derrick had dreams of making it big in the UK and signed anyway. As it turned out, Derrick only spent six months in London and then on his return he discovered that his partner Patsy had defected to Treasure Isle.

‘Patsy left and I say that I was gonna try and go back with Leslie Kong, but when I go to see him now, Leslie didn’t want to know. He said that I can’t work for him when I’m under contract with Shalit so I form a group called Derrick Morgan and the Blues Blenders and went to Coxsone…’

It was Edward Seaga who stepped in and got Morgan released from his contract with Shalit, and the first thing Derrick did after hearing the news was to go and see Beverley’s.

‘All I wanted was to go back to Leslie Kong, and that’s how he get ‘Tougher Than Tough’, because this rude guy come to me and said that he wanted me to make a song off him. His name was Busby and I was afraid he would come and cut me, so I tell Leslie that he was threatening me and I must make a song for him and bring it to the dance on Friday. Desmond Dekker did the harmony for me, and we recorded it on the Thursday. Then the following night Busby had a box of beer and when that record play and he hear me sing strong like lion, we are like iron, he get all excited, blow out the beer and crush it against the wall so that it wet up some girls who were there. They were wearing these red and white outfits because they were with a gang called Spanglers or something like that…’

Busby became yet another victim of Kingston’s gang wars soon afterwards, but ‘Tougher Than Tough’ did well for Beverley’s and that wasn’t the only thing that Leslie Kong had to thank Derrick Morgan for. Few people knew of Jimmy Cliff – then known as James Chambers – when he’d first visited Derrick back in 1962. The young singer from Somerton, near Montego Bay, had voiced a couple of songs for Count Boysie and Sir Cavalier that had gone nowhere, and was attending night classes in radio and television engineering at Kingston Technical College when he had the idea of approaching Derrick with a song he’d written with Leslie Kong in mind called ‘Dearest Beverley.’ Kong had agreed to give Jimmy a try, renamed him ‘Jimmy Cliff’ and then, at Derrick’s instigation, recruited Prince Buster’s backing band to play on the session. That’s what had sparked off the feud between him and Buster, but it ended up working wonders for Kong and Jimmy himself, who followed ‘Dearest Beverley’ with singles such as ‘Miss Jamaica’, ‘King Of Kings’ and ‘Trust No Man’, some of which appeared on Island Records in the UK. A cameo appearance in the film This Is Ska – shot in black and white at the Sombrero Club in Kingston, with backing by Byron Lee and the Dragonaires – then led to him being invited to perform at the World Fair in New York. Confident as ever, Jimmy seized the opportunity with both hands and got the best write ups when the Jamaican artists’ performances were reviewed in Cash Box, Billboard and Record World.

‘United Artists wanted to sign me but this guy Byron Lee wanted to jump on the bandwagon and I said, no, no, no. I am Jimmy Cliff and I am here as the guest with your band. I’m not a part of your Dragonaires, and he was fuming and bitter. He said some nasty, racist things but I didn’t care, and in the end I didn’t sign with United Artists.’

It was in New York that Jimmy met Island Records’ Chris Blackwell, who was there with Millie. ‘He approached me and said, come to England but I said no. I wanted to stay in America instead, but then he said something that made me change my mind. He said, there are plenty of singers like you in America, but there is maybe just one like you in England. I heard that and left for England about three months later, but when I first came over and looked out the window, I wanted to get back on the plane! I thought, oh man, is this London? I want to go back home! I didn’t like it one bit. But then I met up with some other Jamaicans and things got better. To be truthful, I had to adapt and I found that difficult at first because I was a star in Jamaica. I had three or four hit records in the charts and I’d toured every nook and crevice on the island, but then I thought, I need to do something different now, and that’s why I decided to take up Island Records on their offer. I came here with the intention of doing my own music, which was ska, but it didn’t work out that way. The audiences there weren’t ready, and so I had to sing R&B, soul and rock’n’roll and mix it all up, and by doing that it made my music even richer…’

Jimmy describes London as being ‘a Mecca for new creativity.’

‘There were some great bass players, drummers and horn players there, and I played with a lot of them,’ he said, during one of several conversations with me. ‘The way the music business was in Jamaica at that time, producers like Coxsone, Duke Reid and Beverley’s all had their own little families, where the members worked on each other’s music, just like at Motown. That was the same kind of set up that Island had in the early days as well, because Chris Blackwell had artists like the Spencer Davis Group and if you listen to their records, you can hear me singing in the background. You can hear this voice going, hey, hey, hey and that was me! When Island Records bought that church on Basing Street and turned it into a studio, it became like a blues party, y’ know? That’s where I recorded my album, Hard Road To Travel, and it’s where that picture on the cover was taken.’

You could hear the rock, pop and Motown influences coursing through that 1967 debut album. The title track, produced by Jimmy Miller, was straight soul, although Cliff would later rework it into a characteristically resilient reggae number.

‘I would say that my songwriting became extended rather than changed when I was in England, because I recorded a first cut of ‘Hard Road To Travel’ there before going back to Jamaica and doing that other version. I also wrote songs like ‘Sitting In Limbo’ in England, which was very much like a blues progression and if I’d have been in Jamaica, I don’t think that I would’ve written a song like that or ‘Keep Your Eyes On The Sparrow’, which was kind of rock-based. I was open to all different kinds of music at that time, because when I was in the UK, that’s when I started hearing music from different parts of Africa as well, and I loved that. It broadened my scope and my mind to a great extent. When I’m writing a song, it has to fit in any mode of music you want to put it in. It can’t just belong to one category and that’s it. That’s how it was it for me, and so I was considered a soul singer in the UK, even more than a ska or a reggae singer until I made a reggae song that was a hit.’

Someone once said that it’s not where a song comes from that counts, but where it takes you. Jimmy would base his career on writing songs that were universal and defied all attempts to be categorised, although the inspiration behind them was often more clear-cut. Brazil had a profound impact on him when Jimmy first went there in the late sixties, and he ended up staying there far longer than he’d expected.

‘Brazil was a very interesting place. The military ruled the country at that time, but I got the invitation to go there to sing in a song festival, and I went with this song ‘Waterfall’ by a group called Nirvana that was signed to Island Records. They were the original Nirvana and it was like a little pop song, y’ know? I didn’t like it, to tell you the truth, but it gave me a chance to leave Britain, because I really wanted to get out by then. This was in 1968 and I went and sang this song and it turned the stadium upside down! There were all these great people on the show, like Paul Anka, and there I was representing Jamaica, but my life changed after that. I won the Festival and I was only supposed to be there for just a short time – maybe for like a month – but I stayed in Brazil for about half a year! That’s where I discovered that different places had a particular energy that can have a profound effect upon us as individuals. Brazil had that for me, and that’s where I started writing a number of songs, including ‘Wonderful World, Beautiful People.’ But it was a love and hate situation, because I loved the country and I loved the people, but I really couldn’t take the system they had there. It was too hypocritical for me. But overall, that was a very good experience, and Brazil has always been a very special place for me. After I left there I went to Argentina, Chile, Uruguay, Panama and Puerto Rico, and when I finally arrived in Miami I had all of these songs half-written, including ‘Many Rivers To Cross’ and ‘Vietnam’, so I checked into a hotel room and finished them before I left for Jamaica. I was ready!’

Island followed his Hard Road To Travel album with Jimmy Cliff In Brazil, which featured some of the same tracks. But it was Trojan’s 1969 set, Jimmy Cliff, that made him a star. This was the album, co-produced with Leslie Kong in Jamaica, that contained the revamped ‘Hard Road To Travel’, ‘Many Rivers To Cross’, ‘Vietnam’ and ‘Wonderful World, Beautiful People’, which peaked at number six in the UK national charts during late October and gave Jimmy his first international hit. Thanks to his willingness to search out fresh experiences and sources of inspiration he’d been reborn as a singer with purpose—one with lyrics and melodies to die for, who pulled no punches in getting his message across. ‘Many Rivers To Cross’ is surely one of the greatest songs ever written by a Jamaican artist – Bob Marley included – but everything about Jimmy Cliff had changed since he’d left Jamaica, even his appearance. For instance, the tie-dyed, collarless shirt and fringed jacket he wore on the sleeve of Jimmy Cliff wasn’t typically Jamaican but was more like something a rock star would wear. Also, he was looking directly into the camera on the front cover, with no hint of showbiz whatsoever. It was the gaze of someone who knows what they’re about and is determined to fulfil their destiny come what may. Witness, too, the artwork on the back cover, because that slogan painted in red on the wall behind him, whilst incomplete, spelt FIGHT, and made a statement that couldn’t be ignored.

CHAPTER ONE

1970: SHOCKS OF MIGHTY!

‘A year ago they were a minority, a violent curiosity in an age of hippie benevolence,’ began a British article from early 1970, reprinted in the Gleaner and retitled The Skinheads, Greasers And Rudys – England’s New, Violent Teen Style. ‘Since then, however, they’ve been breeding like fleas, spreading and taking root throughout the country until their numbers are now estimated at anything up to a million.’ It told of youths from working class backgrounds wearing trousers above their ankles, T-shirts, braces and ‘bovver’ boots," their hair shorn to within a fraction of an inch and who feel antipathy towards hippies and gay and Asian people. The author goes on to describe them as being ‘dumb, ugly and boorish,’ yet their appreciation of Jamaican music and artists like Desmond Dekker was beyond question.

Desmond Dekker’s role in introducing ska and rocksteady to audiences overseas cannot be underestimated, and he reinforced his record-breaking chart success with dynamic stage performances. A little after the New Year he, Jimmy Cliff and Jackie Edwards played in north London, where he received ‘tumultuous support from the many skinheads present,’ according to one reviewer, who wrote that ‘the English youths have taken him to their hearts. Desmond has that rare gift of direct communication with his audience and he teased, taunted, titillated and courted their attention.’

He’d been quick to adopt the same dress code as the skinheads, and regularly wore Ben Sherman shirts and trousers hitched several inches above his ankles, although his songs remained resolutely Jamaican in character. The follow-up to ‘Israelites’ was ‘It Mek’, which again raced into the UK Top 10. Dekker and the Aces toured non-stop thereafter as his popularity continued to soar, although the pressures of being on the road so much took their toll and a different line-up of Aces had backed Desmond on his latest single, ‘Pickney Gal.’ The level of success he’d experienced to date was unbelievable, especially when you consider the extent to which reggae was being derided by the UK music establishment. The BBC had initially refused to play ‘Israelites’, whilst Radio 1 DJ Tony Blackburn denounced reggae records live on air in front of millions of listeners – a situation that compelled representatives from Trojan and Pama to seek urgent peace talks with BBC officials.

Unusually, Desmond Dekker had stayed with just the one producer – Leslie Kong – throughout his rise to fame, and he continued to make music that was free of artifice or pretension. He wrote about what he saw around him, and his lyrics were invariably rooted in traditional values.

‘I never looked to complicate my music,’ he admitted. ‘That’s not how it goes in reggae. You’re supposed to keep it straightforward, so that all manner of people can relate to it, and you can sing about anything within that same basic structure. It’s a simple music, and it has a message everyone can relate to. Admittedly, my style of writing and pronunciation would make it a little bit unusual at times, but that’s how it was. Everyone would try and come up with something different, and that’s one of the things that made the music of that period so interesting.

‘Ultimately I tried to be myself and just talk the way I do normally, using my own accent. I didn’t try to put on anything, but just sing the way I felt. The idea was to give you food for your feet as well as your brains, and that same combination is always there in my music.’

Beverley’s was by now the most successful record label in the island’s history, despite having released fewer tracks than more established competitors such as Studio One and Treasure Isle. The Kong family owned a real estate business as well as a pharmacy, an ice cream parlour and Beverley’s Record Den ‘for the latest in local and foreign hits.’ The latter aside, there was little in Leslie’s background to suggest that he was going to have a career