Podcasts about Duke Reid

The Life, Sound, and Legacy of Duke Reid and Treasure Isle Records Before Duke Reid was a king of Jamaican music, he was a decorated cop. Before Treasure Isle was one of the greatest labels in reggae history, it was a small liquor store on Bond Street in Kingston. And before the world ever heard of U-Roy or Phyllis Dillon, Duke was already shaping the streets with a sound system so heavy it moved people physically and spiritually. He didn't just play records—he ruled dances with a crown on his head, a revolver on his hip, and a shotgun slung across his back. PLAYLIST Duke Reid, Justin Hinds & The Dominoes – Botheration The Melodians, Tommy McCook, The Supersonics – Everybody Bawling Hopeton Lewis, the Tommy McCook Quintet – Boom-Sha-Ka-Lacka Dave Barker, Tommy McCook, The Supersonics – Lock Jaw The Techniques, Tommy McCook, The Supersonics – Travelling Man The Techniques – I'm in the Mood for Love Duke Reid, Justin Hinds & The Dominoes – Carry Go Bring Come Duke Reid, The Melodians – Passion Love John Holt, Leroy Sibbles – Let's Build Our Dreams The Ethiopians, Tommy McCook, The Soul Syndicate – Pirate Rosalyn Sweat, The Paragons – Blackbird Singing Justin Hinds – Sinners Justin Hinds & The Dominoes – Mighty Redeemer Teacherman, Tommy McCook, The Supersonics – The Lesson The Three Tops, Tommy McCook, The Supersonics – Do It Right U-Roy, the Tommy McCook Quintet – Rule the Nation The Paragons – The Tide Is High Alton Ellis, Tommy McCook, The Supersonics – Breaking Up (Is Hard to Do) Sir Lord Comic, Tommy McCook, The Supersonics – What a Situation (aka Black Man's Time) Stranger Cole, Duke Reid's Band – Rough and Tough Don Drummond, The Skatalites – Garden of Love Ken Parker, Tommy McCook, The Supersonics – I Can't Hide

Trojan Records: Soundtrack of a Revolution An Hour of Iconic Sounds From A Pioneering Reggae Label   Trojan Records was founded in July 1968, during a cultural turning point in Britain, when Jamaican music was gaining traction in the UK. A collaboration between Lee Gopthal, the owner of Musicland record shops and Beat & Commercial distribution, and Island Records' Chris Blackwell, the label was initially created to showcase music from legendary Jamaican producer Duke Reid. The name “Trojan” paid homage to Reid's powerful sound system, famously mounted on British Trojan trucks with the motto: “The toughest sound around.”   The Pioneers – Long Shot (Kick De Bucket) King Stitt & The Dynamites – Fire Corner Clancy Eccles – Fattie Fattie Clancy Eccles – Darling Don't Do That Lloyd Robinson – Cuss Cuss The Upsetters – Dollar in the Teeth The Ethiopians – What a Big Surprise The Reggae Boys – Mama Look Deh Lloyd & Claudette – Queen of the World Errol Dunkley – Darling Ooh Dennis Alcapone – Ripe Cherry Dandy Livingstone – Reggae in Your Jeggae Harry J Allstars – Musical Weather Symarip – Skinhead Moonstomp U-Roy – Wet Vision Al Brown & Skin Flesh & Bones – Here I Am Baby Rudy Mills – John Jones Brent Dowe – Share the Good Times Hazel & The Jolly Boys & The Fugitives – Stop Them The Untouchables – Tighten Up The Baba Brooks Band – Guns Fever

Il y aurait bien des manières de décrire Lily Allen, mais voici les trois adjectifs qui me semblent les plus appropriés : fougueuse, désinvolte et audacieuse. Avec "Smile", premier tube à son actif en 2006, son charme à l'anglaise a opéré même outre-manche. Prêts à revenir 18 ans en arrière ?Crédits de l'épisode :- "Smile" (Clement Dodd, Darren Lewis, Iyiola Babalola, Jackie Mittoo, Lily Rose Cooper, Future Cut)- "I know where it's at" (Shaznay Lewis, Karl Gordon, Walter Becker, Donald Fagen, Paul Griffin / Karl Gordon, Cameron McVey, Magnus Fiennes)- "Smile – Acoustic version" (Clement Dodd, Darren Lewis, Iyiola Babalola, Jackie Mittoo, Lily Rose Cooper, Future Cut)- "Everything's just wonderful" (Lily Rose Cooper, Greg Kurstin)- "Smile – Maquette" (Clement Dodd, Darren Lewis, Iyiola Babalola, Jackie Mittoo, Lily Rose Cooper, Future Cut)- "LDN" (Lily Rose Cooper, Duke Reid, Darren Lewis, Iyiola Babalola, Future Cut)- "Shame for you" (Lily Rose Cooper, Blair Mackichan)- "Littlest things" (Lily Rose Cooper, Mark Ronson, Pierre Bachelet, Santi White, ROY,- "Not big" (Lily Rose Cooper, Greg Kurstin)- "Free soul" (Soul Brothers)- "Scream & shout" (Jef Martens, Jean-Baptiste, Tula Contostavlos, William Adams, Lazy Jay)- "Baby one more time" (Max Martin, Rami Yacoub)- "Murder on the dancefloor" (Sophie Ellis-Bextor, Gregg Alexander, Matt Rowe)- "Smile - Simlish version" (Clement Dodd, Darren Lewis, Iyiola Babalola, Jackie Mittoo, Lily Rose Cooper, Future Cut)- "Hip's don't lie" (Shakira, Wyclef Jean, Omar Alfanno, Latavia Parker, Jerry Duplessis, Luis Diaz)- "The fear" (Lily Rose Cooper, Greg Kurstin)- "22" (Lily Rose Cooper, Greg Kurstin)- "Fuck you" (Lily Rose Cooper, Greg Kurstin)- "Hard out here" (Lily Rose Cooper, Greg Kurstin)- "Family man" ((Lily Rose Cooper, Benjamin Garrett, Starsmith, Mark Ronson, Seb Chew)L'épisode contient également :- Un extrait de l'interview de Lily Allen chez Rinse FM (08/05/2018)- Un extrait de l'interview de Lily Allen dans Taratata (2006)Un grand merci à la petite princesse Milana, à Mélissa et à Giacomo pour avoir apporté leur contribution à cet épisode.Hébergé par Ausha. Visitez ausha.co/politique-de-confidentialite pour plus d'informations.

For Part Two I'll be looking at how Studio One regained the crown after losing some of their cache and hitmaking ability to Duke Reid's Treasure Isle and his rocksteady output by shifting gears, embracing Rasta and the evolving roots reggae style, toasting, rub-a-dub, dub and rockers ushering in the new generation of future icons: Dennis Brown, Burning Spear, Prince Jazzbo, Dillinger, Willi Williams and more.    STUDIO ONE (PART TWO) 1970-1979) PLAYLIST 1. Al Campbell -  Take A Ride  2. Johnny Osbourne - Truths and Rights 3. The Abyssinians - Satta Massagana 4. Dennis Brown - No Man Is An Island 5. Wailing Souls - Row Fisherman Row 6. Larry Marshall – Run Babylon 7. Prince Jazzbo - Jah Dread 8. Burning Spear - New Civilisation 9. Black Brothers - School Children 10. Johnny Clarke - Creation Rebel 11. King Tubby - Creation Dub 12. Dillinger - Natty Ten to One 13. Sugar Minott - Have No Fear 14. Lone Ranger - The Answer 15. Willie Williams - Addis A Baba 16. Freddie McGregor - Rastaman Camp

Stranger Cole doesn't recall a time before he started singing and writing music; it was always a part of his life. As a teenager in Jamaica in the early 60s, he took several of his songs to record producer Duke Reid, who liked his songwriting, but not his voice. He had Eric Monty Morris sing Stranger's song "In and Out The Window." After the song became a hit, he let Stranger sing a few of his songs. The next two, "Rough and Tough" and "When You Call My Name" (With Patsy Todd) were also big hits. These songs are STILL well-known songs from this era. The hits kept on coming for Stranger with "Uno Dos Tres" (With Ken Boothe), "Bangarang" (The first recorded-reggae song), Yeah Yeah Baby (With Patsy Todd) and many more. This week we are honored to speak with Jamaican ska icon, Stranger Cole. We talk about his vast and fascinating history with music, which includes playing with The Skatalites, performing at the Sombrero Club (featured in the 1964 BBC documentary, This Is Ska), working with Duke Reid, and how he stumbled into singing the first reggae song.  We also talk about his move to Toronto, Canada in the 70s, where he opened the Kensington Market record store Roots Records. We talk about the recording of his debut LP, "Forward" In The Land Of The Sunshine, and we ask what it's been like traveling all over the world in recent years, and getting backed by young and eager, ska-studious bands wherever he travels. He also explains how doing "rewinds" makes for a better live show.  Support the show

Sintonía: “The (Grandfather’s) Clock” - Sir Dee’s Group “I Love You” - The Jiving Juniors with Duke Reid & His Group; “Early One Morning” - The Blues Busters with Duke Reid & His Group; “The Wasp” - The Bubbles; “Come On Baby” - Owen Gray with The Sonny Bradshaw Quartet; “I Need Some Loving” - The Blues Busters with Luther “Wee Willie” Williams & His Orchestra; “Rosabel” - The Magic Notes with Drumbago & The Jazz Beat; “Let The Good Times Roll” - Derrick & Patsy with Drumbago & His Harmonisers; “Midnight Track” - Owen Gray; “Pocket Money” - Mossman & Zeddse with Smithie’s Sextet; “My Happy Home” - Roy & Patsy with Hersang & His Combo; “Over and Over” - Shenley Duffus with Drumbago’s All Stars”; “Blues From The Hills” - Rico Rodriguez With His Blues Band; “Duke’s Cookie’s” - Rico & Duke Reid’s All Stars; “Little Vilma” - The Blues Busters with Luther “Wee Willie” Williams & His Orchestra; “I Wanna Love” - The Jiving Juniors With Duke Reid & His Group; “Pleading For Mercy” - The Blues Busters With Luther “Wee Willie” Williams & His Orchestra; “I Don’t Want To Cry” - Jimmy James with Hersang & His Combo. La primera parte de este monográfico dedicado a repasar lo mejor de este cofre de tres discos compactos, se emitió el 27-09-2022. Escuchar audio

Sintonía: "Continental Shuffle" - Rico with the Matador All Stars "Drinkin´ Whiskey" - Laurel Aitken; "Japanese Girl" - Lloyd Clarke; "Nobody Else" - Owen Gray & The Jets; "I Won´t Cry" - Derrick Harriott; "What Makes Honey" - Duke Reid´s All Stars; "My Heart´s Desire" - The Jiving Juniors With Duke Reid & His Group; "Low Down Dirty Girl" - Laurel Aitken; "Worried Over You" - Keith & Enid with Trenton Spence and His Group; "Mash It! (Parts 1 & 2)" - Owen Gray; "Til The End Of Time" - Chuck & Dobby With Duke Reid & His Group; "Judgement Day" - Laurel Aitken; "Bridgeview Shuffle" - Roland Alphonso With The Matador All Stars; "Oh My Love" - Derrick & Patsy; "Lost My Baby" - The Blues Busters; "Tonight and Evermore" - Cosmo & Dennis; "Honey Girl" - Laurel Aitken Escuchar audio

For Part Two I'll be looking at how Studio One regained the crown after losing some of their cache and hitmaking ability to Duke Reid's Treasure Isle and his rocksteady output by shifting gears, embracing Rasta and the evolving roots reggae style, toasting, rub-a-dub, dub and rockers ushering in the new generation of future icons: Dennis Brown, Burning Spear, Prince Jazzbo, Dillinger, Willi Williams and more.    STUDIO ONE (PART TWO) 1970-1979) PLAYLIST 1. Al Campbell -  Take A Ride  2. Johnny Osbourne - Truths and Rights 3. The Abyssinians - Satta Massagana 4. Dennis Brown - No Man Is An Island 5. Wailing Souls - Row Fisherman Row 6. Larry Marshall – Run Babylon 7. Prince Jazzbo - Jah Dread 8. Burning Spear - New Civilisation 9. Black Brothers - School Children 10. Johnny Clarke - Creation Rebel 11. King Tubby - Creation Dub 12. Dillinger - Natty Ten to One 13. Sugar Minott - Have No Fear 14. Lone Ranger - The Answer 15. Willie Williams - Addis A Baba 16. Freddie McGregor - Rastaman Camp   You can download this episode from the show's website www.BassmentSessions.com and join the mailing list as well    

This Episode Is Brought To You By: https://www.2linedmusichutstore.comThe living legend DENNIS ALCAPONE pulled up to the Entertainment Report Podcast for an EPICCC and in-depth conversation about the highs and lows of his lengthy career. Dennis Alcapone spoke about his original sound system El Paso, first recording for producer Keith Hudson, Bob Marley warning him about Clement 'Sir Coxsone' Dodd, meeting a young Dennis Brown and Alton Ellis at Studio 1, early U Roy comparisons, recording for all major producers in Jamaica at the time like Bunny 'Striker' Lee, Duke Reid and Clement Dodd. Dennis Alcapone gave us insights to his many hit songs like 'Nanny Version', 'Teacher Teacher', 'Guns Don't Argue', 'El Paso', 'Cassius Clay', 'Jumping Jack' and so much more. He also spoke about not getting payed or making money from many of the over 100 singles and 12 albums he recorded. THIS IS A MUST LISTEN!!! Don't Forget To Subscribe. Enjoy!

Ska is a music genre that originated in Jamaica in the late 1950s. Ska combined elements of mento and rhythm and blues. It is characterized by accented with stabs on the off-beat. Prince BusterSka developed in Jamaica in the 1960s with Prince Buster, producers Clement Dodd, and Duke Reid and found its way to England in the early sixties alongside the wave of Jamaican immigrants that moved to England's big cities from the Caribbean. See acast.com/privacy for privacy and opt-out information.

If you are sensitive or offended by profanity, !!LISTENER DISCRETION IS ADVISED!!! This week I sat down for an open, honest and lively chat wit Comedian Alvin 'Duke' Reid, and I learned a lot about the man behind the Mic! Tapp in loved ones and listen in as Duke shares whats on his mind! Make sure to follow Duke on IG @reidshit and on Facebook @ Alvin Duke Reid or Alvin Reid To share your thoughts about this episode or any episode or to submit a letter in to "Whats on your Mind", send an email to Onmymindpod@gmail.com or connect with me on Twitter @georgiaonmymnd or IG @georgiaonmymnd. Take care Loved Ones! --- This episode is sponsored by · Anchor: The easiest way to make a podcast. https://anchor.fm/app --- Send in a voice message: https://anchor.fm/georgia-onmymind/message

Playlist 01-U Roy - Dynamic Fashion Way 1969 Inbidimts Now Sounds production Keith Hudson 02-Rule The Nation 1969 Duke Reid 03-Version galore 1970 Treasure Ise 04-Behold – 1971 - Treasure Isle ( a fiiae Uk ) – 05-U roy & Slim Smith - Love I bring – 1971 Mego Ann ( Jam ) - 06-Way Down South 1971 Pama Records 07-Hopeton Lewis & U-Roy 1971 Tom Drunk 08-Nanny Skank – 1972 Pitts Burg ( Jam 09-Back Heart 1972 Pama Records 10-Linger You linger 1973 11-Wake the town – 1974 - - Attack. Encore Duke Reid 12-I Cant Love Another 1975 Virgin Album Dread in a Babylon 13-Chalice In The Palace 1975 VirginAlbum Dread in a Babylon 14-U Roy & The Gadiators - Natty Rebel - 1976 - Groovmaster ( Jam ) - 15-Have mercy – 1976 p Natty Rebell - Virgin ( Uk ) 16-Babylon Burning 1976 Abum Natty Rebel 17-Music Addict (1984) riddim Operation Eradication Ujama 18-U-Roy ‎– True Born African 1991 Ariwa 19-Steppin Pon The Right Track 1993 Ariwa 20-U Roy & Horace Andy - Shaking up the city - 1996 album Babyon Kingdom must fall- Ariwa 21-Stop that train 2009 Moll-Seekta abum et film Rocksteady : The roots of reggae 22-U-Roy Feat. Tarrus Riley - Pumps & Pride 2014

This week’s episode looks at “My Boy Lollipop” and the origins of ska music. Click the full post to read liner notes, links to more information, and a transcript of the episode. Patreon backers also have a ten-minute bonus episode available, on “If You Wanna Be Happy” by Jimmy Soul. Tilt Araiza has assisted invaluably by doing a first-pass edit, and will hopefully be doing so from now on. Check out Tilt’s irregular podcasts at http://www.podnose.com/jaffa-cakes-for-proust and http://sitcomclub.com/ —-more—- Resources As usual, I have created a Mixcloud playlist containing every song heard in this episode — a content warning applies for the song “Bloodshot Eyes” by Wynonie Harris. The information about ska in general mostly comes from Bass Culture: When Reggae Was King by Lloyd Bradley, with some also from Reggae and Caribbean Music by Dave Thompson. Biographical information on Millie Small is largely from this article in Record Collector, plus a paywalled interview with Goldmine magazine (which I won’t link to because of the paywall). Millie’s early recordings with Owen Gray and Coxsone Dodd can be found on this compilation, along with a good selection of other recordings Dodd produced, while this compilation gives a good overview of her recordings for Island and Fontana. Patreon This podcast is brought to you by the generosity of my backers on Patreon. Why not join them? Erratum I refer to “Barbara Gaye” when I should say “Barbie Gaye” Transcript Today, we’re going to take our first look at a form of music that would go on to have an almost incalculable influence on the music of the seventies, eighties, and later, but which at the time we’re looking at was largely regarded as a novelty music, at least in Britain and America. We’re going to look at the birth of ska, and at the first ska record to break big outside of Jamaica. We’re going to look at “My Boy Lollipop” by Millie: [Excerpt: Millie, “My Boy Lollipop”] Most of the music we’ve looked at so far in the podcast has been from either America or Britain, and I’m afraid that that’s going to remain largely the case — while there has been great music made in every country in the world, American and British musicians have tended to be so parochial, and have dominated the music industry so much, that relatively little of that music has made itself felt widely enough to have any kind of impact on the wider history of rock music, much to rock’s detriment. But every so often something from outside the British Isles or North America manages to penetrate even the closed ears of Anglo-American musicians, and today we’re going to look at one of those records. Now, before we start this, this episode is, by necessity, going to be dealing in broad generalisations — I’m trying to give as much information about Jamaica’s musical culture in one episode as I’ve given about America’s in a hundred, so I am going to have to elide a lot of details. Some of those details will come up in future episodes, as we deal with more Jamaican artists, but be aware that I’m missing stuff out. The thing that needs to be understood about the Jamaican music culture of the fifties and early sixties is that it developed in conditions of absolute poverty. Much of the music we looked at in the first year or so of the podcast came from extremely impoverished communities, of course, but even given how utterly, soul-crushingly, poor many people in the Deep South were, or the miserable conditions that people in Liverpool and London lived in while Britain was rebuilding itself after the war, those people were living in rich countries, and so still had access to some things that were not available to the poor people of poorer countries. So in Jamaica in the 1950s, almost nobody had access to any kind of record player or radio themselves. You wouldn’t even *know* anyone who had one, unlike in the states where if you were very poor you might not have one yourself, but your better-off cousin might let you come round and listen to the radio  at their house. So music was, by necessity, a communal experience.  Jamaican music, or at least the music in Kingston, the biggest city in Jamaica, was organised around  sound systems — big public open-air systems run by DJs, playing records for dancing. These had originally started in shops as a way of getting customers in, but soon became so popular that people started doing them on their own. These sound systems played music that was very different from the music played on the radio, which was aimed mostly at people rich enough to own radios, which at that time mostly meant white British people — in the fifties, Jamaica was still part of the British Empire, and there was an extraordinary gap between the music the white British colonial class liked and the music that the rest of the population liked.  The music that the Jamaican population *made* was mostly a genre called mento. Now, this is somewhere where my ignorance of this music compared to other musics comes into play a bit. There seem to have been two genres referred to as mento. One of them, rural mento, was based around instruments like the banjo, and a home-made bass instrument called a “rhumba box”, and had a resemblance to a lot of American country music or British skiffle — this form of mento is often still called “country music” in Jamaica itself: [Excerpt: The Hiltonaires, “Matilda”] There was another variant of mento, urban mento, which dropped the acoustic and home-made instruments and replaced them with the same sort of instruments that R&B or jazz bands used. Everything I read about urban mento says that it’s a different genre from calypso music, which generally comes from Trinidad and Tobago rather than Jamaica, but nothing explains what that difference is, other than the location. Mento musicians would also call their music calypso in order to sell it to people like me who don’t know the difference, and so you would get mento groups called things like Count Lasher and His Calypsonians, Lord Lebby and the Jamaica Calypsonians, and Count Owen and His Calypsonians, songs called things like “Hoola Hoop Calypso”, and mentions of calypso in the lyrics. I am fairly familiar with calypso music — people like the Mighty Sparrow, Lord Melody, Roaring Lion, and so on — and I honestly can’t hear any difference between calypso proper and mento records like this one, by Lord Power and Trenton Spence: [Excerpt: Lord Power and Trenton Spence, “Strip Tease”] But I’ll defer to the experts in these genres and accept that there’s a difference I’m not hearing. Mento was primarily a music for live performance, at least at first — there were very few recording facilities in Jamaica, and to the extent that records were made at all there, they were mostly done in very small runs to sell to tourists, who wanted a souvenir to take home. The music that the first sound systems played would include some mento records, and they would also play a fair number of latin-flavoured records. But the bulk of what they played was music for dancing, imported from America, made by Black American musicians, many of them the same musicians we looked at in the early months of this podcast. Louis Jordan was a big favourite, as was Wynonie Harris — the biggest hit in the early years of the sound systems was Harris’ “Bloodshot Eyes”. I’m going to excerpt that here, because it was an important record in the evolution of Jamaican music, but be warned that the song trivialises intimate partner violence in a way that many people might find disturbing. If you might be upset by that, skip forward exactly thirty seconds now: [Excerpt: Wynonie Harris, “Bloodshot Eyes”] The other artists who get repeatedly named in the histories of the early sound systems along with Jordan and Harris are Fats Domino, Lloyd Price, Professor Longhair — a musician we’ve not talked about in the podcast, but who made New Orleans R&B music in the same style as Domino and Price, and for slow-dancing the Moonglows and Jesse Belvin. They would also play jazz — Dizzy Gillespie, Duke Ellington, and Sarah Vaughan were particular favourites. These records weren’t widely available in Jamaica — indeed, *no* records were really widely available . They found their way into Jamaica through merchant seamen, who would often be tasked by sound men with getting hold of new and exciting records, and paid with rum or marijuana. The “sound man” was the term used for the DJs who ran these sound systems, and they were performers as much as they were people who played records — they would talk and get the crowds going, they would invent dance steps and perform them, and they would also use the few bits of technology they had to alter the sound — usually by adding bass or echo. Their reputation was built by finding the most obscure records, but ones which the crowds would love. Every sound man worth his salt had a collection of records that nobody else had — if you were playing the same records that someone else had, you were a loser. As soon as a sound man got hold of a record, he’d scratch out all the identifying copy on the label and replace it with a new title, so that none of his rivals could get hold of their own copies. The rivalry between sound men could be serious — it started out just as friendly competition, with each man trying to build a bigger and louder system and draw a bigger crowd, but when the former policeman turned gangster Duke Reid started up his Trojan sound system, intimidating rivals with guns soon became par for the course. Reid had actually started out in music as an R&B radio DJ — one of the few in Jamaica — presenting a show whose theme song, Tab Smith’s “My Mother’s Eyes”, would become permanently identified with Reid: [Excerpt: Tab Smith, “My Mother’s Eyes”] Reid’s Trojan was one of the two biggest sound systems in Kingston, the other being Downbeat, run by Coxsone Dodd. Dodd’s system became so popular that he ended up having five different sound systems, all playing in different areas of the city every night, with the ones he didn’t perform at himself being run by assistants who later became big names in the Jamaican music world themselves, like Prince Buster and Lee “Scratch” Perry. Buster performed a few other functions for Dodd as well — one important one being that he  knew enough about R&B that he could go to Duke Reid’s shows, listen to the records he was playing, and figure out what they must be — he could recognise the different production styles of the different R&B labels well enough that he could use that, plus the lyrics, to work out the probable title and label of a record Reid was playing. Dodd would then get a merchant seaman to bring a copy of that record back from America, get a local record pressing plant to press up a bunch of copies of it, and sell it to the other sound men, thus destroying Reid’s edge. Eventually Prince Buster left Dodd and set up his own rival sound system, at which point the rivalry became a three-way one. Dodd knew about technology, and had the most powerful sound system with the best amps. Prince Buster was the best showman, who knew what the people wanted and gave it to them, and Duke Reid was connected and powerful enough that he could use intimidation to keep a grip on power, but he also had good enough musical instincts that his shows were genuinely popular in their own right. People started to see their favourite sound systems in the same way they see sports teams or political parties — as marks of identity that were worth getting into serious fights over. Supporters of one system would regularly attack supporters of another, and who your favourite sound system was *really mattered*. But there was a problem. While these systems were playing a handful of mento records, they were mostly relying on American records, and this had two problems. The most obvious was that if a record was available publicly, eventually someone else would find it. Coxsone Dodd managed to use one record, “Later For Gator” by Willis “Gatortail” Jackson, at every show for seven years, renaming it “Coxsone Hop”: [Excerpt: Willis “Gatortail” Jackson, “Later For Gator”] But eventually word got out that Duke Reid had tracked the song down and would play it at a dance. Dodd went along, and was allowed in unmolested — Reid wanted Dodd to know he’d been beaten.  Now, here I’m going to quote something Prince Buster said, and we hit a problem we’re likely to hit again when it comes to Jamaica. Buster spoke Jamaican Patois, a creole language that is mutually intelligible with, but different from, standard English. When quoting him, or any other Patois speaker, I have a choice of three different options, all bad. I could translate his words into standard English, thus misrepresenting him; I could read his words directly in my own accent, which has the problem that it can sound patronising, or like I’m mocking his language, because so much of Patois is to do with the way the words are pronounced; or I could attempt to approximate his own accent — which would probably come off as incredibly racist. As the least bad option of the three, I’m choosing the middle one here, and reading in my own accent, but I want people to be aware that this is not intended as mockery, and that I have at least given this some thought: “So we wait. Then as the clock struck midnight we hear “Baaap… bap da dap da dap, daaaa da daap!” And we see a bunch of them down from the dancehall coming up with the green bush. I was at the counter with Coxsone, he have a glass in him hand, he drop it and just collapse, sliding down the bar. I had to brace him against the bar, then get Phantom to give me a hand. The psychological impact had knocked him out. Nobody never hit him.” There was a second problem with using American records, as well — American musical tastes were starting to change, and Jamaican ones weren’t. Jamaican audiences wanted Louis Jordan, Fats Domino, and Gene & Eunice, but the Americans wanted Elvis and Jerry Lee Lewis and Bobby Darin. For a while, the sound men were able to just keep finding more and more obscure old R&B and jump band records, but there was a finite supply of these, and they couldn’t keep doing it forever. The solution eventually became obvious — they needed Jamaican R&B. And thankfully there was a ready supply. Every week, there was a big talent contest in Kingston, and the winners would get five pounds — a lot of money in that time and place. Many of the winners would then go to a disc-cutting service, one of those places that would record a single copy of a song for you, and use their prize money to record themselves. They could then sell that record to one of the sound men, who would be sure that nobody else would have a copy of it. At first, the only sound men they could sell to were the less successful ones, who didn’t have good connections with American records. A local record was clearly not as good as an American one, and so the big sound systems wouldn’t touch it, but it was better than nothing, and some of the small sound systems would find that the local records were a success for them, and eventually the bigger systems would start using the small ones as a test audience — if a local record went down well at a small system, one of the big operators would get in touch with the sound man of that system and buy the record from him. One of the big examples of this was “Lollipop Girl”, a song by Derrick Harriott and Claudie Sang. They recorded that, with just a piano backing, and sold their only copy to a small sound system owner. It went down so well that the small sound man traded his copy with Coxsone Dodd for an American record — and it went down so well when Dodd played it that Duke Reid bribed one of Dodd’s assistants to get hold of Dodd’s copy long enough to get a copy made for himself. When Dodd and Reid played a sound clash — a show where they went head to head to see who could win a crowd over — and Reid played his own copy of “Lollipop Girl”, Dodd pulled a gun on Reid, and it was only the fact that the clash was next door to the police station that kept the two men from killing each other. Reid eventually wore out his copy of “Lollipop Girl”, he played it so much, and so he did the only sensible thing — he went into the record business himself, and took Harriott into the studio, along with a bunch of musicians from the local big bands, and cut a new version of it with a full band backing Harriott. As well as playing this on his sound system, Reid released it as a record: [Excerpt: Derrick Harriott, “Lollipop Girl”] Reid didn’t make many more records at this point, but both Coxsone Dodd and Prince Buster started up their own labels, and started hiring local singers, plus people from a small pool of players who became the go-to session musicians for any record made in Jamaica at the time, like trombone player Rico Rodriguez and guitarist Ernest Ranglin. During the late 1950s, a new form of music developed from these recordings, which would become known as ska, and there are three records which are generally considered to be milestones in its development. The first was produced by a white businessman, Edward Seaga, who is now more famous for becoming the Prime Minister of Jamaica in the 1980s. At the time, though, Seaga had the idea to incorporate a little bit of a mento rhythm into an R&B record he was producing. In most music, if you have a four-four rhythm, you can divide it into eight on-beats and off-beats, and you normally stress the on-beats, so you stress “ONE and TWO and THREE and FOUR and”. In mento, though, you’d often have a banjo stress the off-beats, so the stresses would be “one AND two AND three AND four AND”. Seaga had the guitarist on “Manny Oh” by Higgs and Wilson do this, on a track that was otherwise a straightforward New Orleans style R&B song with a tresillo bassline. The change in stresses is almost imperceptible to modern ears, but it made the record sound uniquely Jamaican to its audience: [Excerpt: Higgs and Wilson, “Manny Oh”] The next record in the sequence was produced by Dodd, and is generally considered the first real ska record. There are a few different stories about where the term “ska” came from, but one of the more believable is that it came from Dodd directing Ernest Ranglin, who was the arranger for the record, to stress the off-beat more, saying “play it ska… ska… ska…” Where “Manny Oh” had been a Jamaican sounding R&B record, “Easy Snappin'” is definitely a blues-influenced ska record: [Excerpt: Theo Beckford, “Easy Snappin'”] But Duke Reid and Coxsone Dodd, at this point, still saw the music they were making as a substitute for American R&B. Prince Buster, on the other hand, by this point was a full-fledged Black nationalist, and wanted to make a purely Jamaican music. Buster was, in particular, an adherent of the Rastafari religion, and he brought in five drummers from the Rasta Nyabinghi tradition, most notably Count Ossie, who became the single most influential drummer in Jamaica, to record on the Folkes brothers single “Oh Carolina”, incorporating the rhythms of Rasta sacred music into Jamaican R&B for the first time: [Excerpt: The Folkes Brothers, “Oh Carolina”] 1962 was a turning point in Jamaican music in a variety of ways. Most obviously, it was the year that Jamaica became independent from the British Empire, and was able to take control of its own destiny. But it was also the year that saw the first recordings of a fourteen-year-old girl who would become ska’s first international star. Millie Small had started performing at the age of twelve, when she won the Vere Johns Opportunity Hour, the single biggest talent contest in Kingston. But it was two years later that she came to the attention of Coxsone Dodd, who was very interested in her because her voice sounded spookily like that of Shirley, from the duo Shirley and Lee. We mentioned Shirley and Lee briefly back in the episode on “Ko Ko Mo”, but they were a New Orleans R&B duo who had a string of hits in the early and mid fifties, recorded at Cosimo Matassa’s studio, pairing Leonard Lee’s baritone voice with Shirley Goodman’s soprano. Their early records had been knock-offs of the sound that Little Esther had created with Johnny Otis and his male vocalists — for example Shirley and Lee’s “Sweethearts”: [Excerpt: Shirley and Lee, “Sweethearts”] bears a very strong resemblance to “Double-Crossing Blues”: [Excerpt: Little Esther, Johnny Otis, and the Robins, “Double-Crossing Blues”] But they’d soon developed a more New Orleans style, with records like “Feel So Good” showing some of the Caribbean influence that many records from the area had: [Excerpt: Shirley and Lee, “Feel So Good”] Shirley and Lee only had minor chart success in the US, but spawned a host of imitators, including Gene and Eunice and Mickey and Sylvia, both of whom we looked at in the early months of the podcast, and Ike and Tina Turner who will be coming up later. Like much New Orleans R&B, Shirley and Lee were hugely popular among the sound system listeners, and Coxsone Dodd thought that Mille’s voice sounded enough like Shirley’s that it would be worth setting her up as part of his own Shirley and Lee soundalike duo, pairing her with a more established singer, Owen Gray, to record songs like “Sit and Cry”, a song which combined the vocal sound of Shirley and Lee with the melody of “The Twist”: [Excerpt: Owen and Millie, “Sit and Cry”] After Gray decided to continue performing on his own, Millie was instead teamed with another performer, Roy Panton, and “We’ll Meet” by Roy and Millie went to number one in Jamaica: [Excerpt: Roy and Millie, “We’ll Meet”] Meanwhile, in the UK, there was a growing interest in music from the Caribbean, especially Jamaica. Until very recently, Britain had been a very white country — there have always been Black people in the UK, especially in port towns, but there had been very few. As of 1950, there were only about twenty thousand people of colour living in the UK. But starting in 1948, there had been a massive wave of immigration from other parts of what was then still the British Empire, as the government encouraged people to come here to help rebuild the country after the war. By 1961 there were nearly two hundred thousand Black people in Britain, almost all of them from the Caribbean.  Those people obviously wanted to hear the music of their own culture, and one man in particular was giving it to them. Chris Blackwell was a remarkably privileged man. His father had been one of the heirs to the Crosse and Blackwell fortune, and young Chris had been educated at Harrow, but when not in school he had spent much of his youth in Jamaica. His mother, Blanche, lived in Jamaica, where she was a muse to many men — Noel Coward based a character on her, in a play he wrote in 1956 but which was considered so scandalous that it wasn’t performed in public until 2012. Blanche attended the premiere of that play, when she was ninety-nine years old. She had an affair with Errol Flynn, and was also Ian Fleming’s mistress — Fleming would go to his Jamaican villa, GoldenEye, every year to write, leaving his wife at home (where she was having her own affairs, with the Labour MPs Hugh Gaitskell and Roy Jenkins), and would hook up with Blanche while he was there — according to several sources, Fleming based the characters of Pussy Galore and Honeychile Ryder on Blanche. After Fleming’s death, his wife instructed the villa’s manager that it could be rented to literally anyone except Blanche Blackwell, but in the mid-1970s it was bought by Bob Marley, who in turn sold it to Chris Blackwell. Chris Blackwell had developed a fascination with Rasta culture after having crashed his boat while sailing, and being rescued by some Rasta fishermen, and he had decided that his goal was to promote Jamaican culture to the world. He’d started his own labels, Island Records, in 1959, using his parents’ money, and had soon produced a Jamaican number one, “Boogie in My Bones”, by Laurel Aitken: [Excerpt: Laurel Aitken, “Boogie in My Bones”] But music was still something of a hobby with Blackwell, to the point that he nearly quit it altogether in 1962. He’d been given a job as a gopher on the first James Bond film, Dr. No, thanks to his family connections, and had also had a cameo role in the film. Harry Saltzman, the producer, offered him a job, but Blackwell went to a fortune teller who told him to stick with music, and he did. Soon after that, he moved back to England, where he continued running Island Records, this time as a distributor of Jamaican records. The label would occasionally record some tracks of its own, but it made its money from releasing Jamaican records, which Blackwell would hand-sell to local record shops around immigrant communities in London, Manchester, and Birmingham. Island was not the biggest of the labels releasing Jamaican music in Britain at the time — there was another label, Blue Beat, which got most of the big records, and which was so popular that in Britain “bluebeat” became a common term for ska, used to describe the whole genre, in the same way as Motown might be. And ska was becoming popular enough that there was also local ska being made, by Jamaican musicians living in Britain, and it was starting to chart. The first ska record to hit the charts in Britain was a cover of a Jimmy Cliff song, “King of Kings”, performed by Ezz Reco and the Launchers: [Excerpt: Ezz Reco and the Launchers, “King of Kings”] That made the lower reaches of the top forty, and soon after came “Mockingbird Hill”, a ska remake of an old Les Paul and Mary Ford hit, recorded by the Migil Five, a white British R&B group whose main claim to fame was that one of them was Charlie Watts’ uncle, and Watts had occasionally filled in on drums for them before joining the Rolling Stones: [Excerpt: Migil Five, “Mockingbird Hill”] That made the top ten. Ska was becoming the in sound in Britain, to the point that in March 1964, the same month that “Mockingbird Hill” was released, the Beatles made a brief detour into ska in the instrumental break to “I Call Your Name”: [Excerpt: The Beatles, “I Call Your Name”] And it was into this atmosphere that Chris Blackwell decided to introduce Millie. Her early records had been selling well enough for him that in 1963 he had decided to call Millie’s mother and promise her that if her daughter came over to the UK, he would be able to make her into a star. Rather than release her records on Island, which didn’t have any wide distribution, he decided to license them to Fontana, a mid-sized British label. Millie’s first British single, “Don’t You Know”, was released in late 1963, and was standard British pop music of the time, with little to distinguish it, and so unsurprisingly it wasn’t a hit: [Excerpt: Millie, “Don’t You Know”] But the second single was something different. For that, Blackwell remembered a song that had been popular among the sound systems a few years earlier; an American record by a white singer named Barbara Gaye. Up to this point, Gaye’s biggest claim to fame had been that Ellie Greenwich had liked this record enough that she’d briefly performed under the stage name Ellie Gaye, before deciding against that. “My Boy Lollipop” had been written by Robert Spencer of the Cadillacs, the doo-wop group whose biggest hit had been “Speedoo”: [Excerpt: The Cadillacs, “Speedoo”] Spencer had written “My Boy Lollipop”, but lost the rights to it in a card game — and then Morris Levy bought the rights from the winner for a hundred dollars. Levy changed the songwriting credit to feature a mob acquaintance of his, Johnny Roberts, and then passed the song to Gaetano Vastola, another mobster, who had it recorded by Gaye, a teenage girl he managed, with the backing provided by the normal New York R&B session players, like Big Al Sears and Panama Francis: [Excerpt: Barbie Gaye, “My Boy Lollipop”] That hadn’t been a hit when it was released in 1956, but it had later been picked up by the Jamaican sound men, partly because of its resemblance to the ska style, and Blackwell had a tape recording of it. Blackwell got Ernest Ranglin, who had also worked on Dr. No, and who had moved over to the UK at the same time as Blackwell, to come up with an arrangement, and Ranglin hired a local band to perform the instrumental backing. That band, Jimmy Powell and the Five Dimensions, had previously been known as the Moontrekkers, and had worked with Joe Meek, recording “Night of the Vampire”: [Excerpt: The Moontrekkers, “Night of the Vampire”] Ranglin replaced the saxophone solo from the original record with a harmonica solo, to fit the current fad for the harmonica in the British charts, and there is some dispute about who played it, but Millie always insisted that it was the Five Dimensions’ harmonica player, Rod Stewart, though Stewart denies it: [Excerpt: Millie, “My Boy Lollipop”] “My Boy Lollipop” came out in early 1964 and became a massive hit, reaching number two on the charts both in the UK and the US, and Millie was now a star. She got her own UK TV special, as well as appearing on Around The Beatles, a special starring the Beatles and produced by Jack Good. She was romantically linked to Peter Asher of Peter and Gordon. Her next single, though, “Sweet William”, only made number thirty, as the brief first wave of interest in ska among the white public subsided: [Excerpt: Millie, “Sweet William”] Over the next few years, there were many attempts made to get her back in the charts, but the last thing that came near was a remake of “Bloodshot Eyes”, without the intimate partner violence references, which made number forty-eight on the UK charts at the end of 1965: [Excerpt: Millie, “Bloodshot Eyes”] She was also teamed with other artists in an attempt to replicate her success as a duet act. She recorded with Jimmy Cliff: [Excerpt: Millie and Jimmy Cliff, “Hey Boy, Hey Girl”] and Jackie Edwards: [Excerpt: Jackie and Millie, “Pledging My Love”] and she was also teamed with a rock group Blackwell had discovered, and who would soon become big stars themselves with versions of songs by Edwards, on a cover version of Ike and Tina Turner’s “I’m Blue (the Gong Gong Song)”: [Excerpt: The Spencer Davis Group, “I’m Blue (The Gong Gong Song)”] But the Spencer Davis Group didn’t revive her fortunes, and she moved on to a succession of smaller labels, with her final recordings coming in the early 1970s, when she recorded the track “Enoch Power”, in response to the racism stirred up by the right-wing politician Enoch Powell: [Excerpt: Millie Small, “Enoch Power”] Millie spent much of the next few decades in poverty. There was talk of a comeback in the early eighties, after the British ska revival group Bad Manners had a top ten hit with a gender-flipped remake of “My Boy Lollipop”: [Excerpt: Bad Manners, “My Girl Lollipop”] But she never performed again after the early seventies, and other than one brief interview in 2016 she kept her life private. She was given multiple honours by the people of Jamaica, including being made a Commander in the Order of Distinction, but never really got any financial benefit from her enormous chart success, or from being the first Jamaican artist to make an impact on Britain and America. She died last year, aged seventy-two.

This week's episode looks at "My Boy Lollipop" and the origins of ska music. Click the full post to read liner notes, links to more information, and a transcript of the episode. Patreon backers also have a ten-minute bonus episode available, on "If You Wanna Be Happy" by Jimmy Soul. Tilt Araiza has assisted invaluably by doing a first-pass edit, and will hopefully be doing so from now on. Check out Tilt's irregular podcasts at http://www.podnose.com/jaffa-cakes-for-proust and http://sitcomclub.com/ ----more---- Resources As usual, I have created a Mixcloud playlist containing every song heard in this episode -- a content warning applies for the song "Bloodshot Eyes" by Wynonie Harris. The information about ska in general mostly comes from Bass Culture: When Reggae Was King by Lloyd Bradley, with some also from Reggae and Caribbean Music by Dave Thompson. Biographical information on Millie Small is largely from this article in Record Collector, plus a paywalled interview with Goldmine magazine (which I won't link to because of the paywall). Millie's early recordings with Owen Gray and Coxsone Dodd can be found on this compilation, along with a good selection of other recordings Dodd produced, while this compilation gives a good overview of her recordings for Island and Fontana. Patreon This podcast is brought to you by the generosity of my backers on Patreon. Why not join them? Erratum I refer to "Barbara Gaye" when I should say "Barbie Gaye" Transcript Today, we're going to take our first look at a form of music that would go on to have an almost incalculable influence on the music of the seventies, eighties, and later, but which at the time we're looking at was largely regarded as a novelty music, at least in Britain and America. We're going to look at the birth of ska, and at the first ska record to break big outside of Jamaica. We're going to look at "My Boy Lollipop" by Millie: [Excerpt: Millie, "My Boy Lollipop"] Most of the music we've looked at so far in the podcast has been from either America or Britain, and I'm afraid that that's going to remain largely the case -- while there has been great music made in every country in the world, American and British musicians have tended to be so parochial, and have dominated the music industry so much, that relatively little of that music has made itself felt widely enough to have any kind of impact on the wider history of rock music, much to rock's detriment. But every so often something from outside the British Isles or North America manages to penetrate even the closed ears of Anglo-American musicians, and today we're going to look at one of those records. Now, before we start this, this episode is, by necessity, going to be dealing in broad generalisations -- I'm trying to give as much information about Jamaica's musical culture in one episode as I've given about America's in a hundred, so I am going to have to elide a lot of details. Some of those details will come up in future episodes, as we deal with more Jamaican artists, but be aware that I'm missing stuff out. The thing that needs to be understood about the Jamaican music culture of the fifties and early sixties is that it developed in conditions of absolute poverty. Much of the music we looked at in the first year or so of the podcast came from extremely impoverished communities, of course, but even given how utterly, soul-crushingly, poor many people in the Deep South were, or the miserable conditions that people in Liverpool and London lived in while Britain was rebuilding itself after the war, those people were living in rich countries, and so still had access to some things that were not available to the poor people of poorer countries. So in Jamaica in the 1950s, almost nobody had access to any kind of record player or radio themselves. You wouldn't even *know* anyone who had one, unlike in the states where if you were very poor you might not have one yourself, but your better-off cousin might let you come round and listen to the radio  at their house. So music was, by necessity, a communal experience.  Jamaican music, or at least the music in Kingston, the biggest city in Jamaica, was organised around  sound systems -- big public open-air systems run by DJs, playing records for dancing. These had originally started in shops as a way of getting customers in, but soon became so popular that people started doing them on their own. These sound systems played music that was very different from the music played on the radio, which was aimed mostly at people rich enough to own radios, which at that time mostly meant white British people -- in the fifties, Jamaica was still part of the British Empire, and there was an extraordinary gap between the music the white British colonial class liked and the music that the rest of the population liked.  The music that the Jamaican population *made* was mostly a genre called mento. Now, this is somewhere where my ignorance of this music compared to other musics comes into play a bit. There seem to have been two genres referred to as mento. One of them, rural mento, was based around instruments like the banjo, and a home-made bass instrument called a "rhumba box", and had a resemblance to a lot of American country music or British skiffle -- this form of mento is often still called "country music" in Jamaica itself: [Excerpt: The Hiltonaires, "Matilda"] There was another variant of mento, urban mento, which dropped the acoustic and home-made instruments and replaced them with the same sort of instruments that R&B or jazz bands used. Everything I read about urban mento says that it's a different genre from calypso music, which generally comes from Trinidad and Tobago rather than Jamaica, but nothing explains what that difference is, other than the location. Mento musicians would also call their music calypso in order to sell it to people like me who don't know the difference, and so you would get mento groups called things like Count Lasher and His Calypsonians, Lord Lebby and the Jamaica Calypsonians, and Count Owen and His Calypsonians, songs called things like "Hoola Hoop Calypso", and mentions of calypso in the lyrics. I am fairly familiar with calypso music -- people like the Mighty Sparrow, Lord Melody, Roaring Lion, and so on -- and I honestly can't hear any difference between calypso proper and mento records like this one, by Lord Power and Trenton Spence: [Excerpt: Lord Power and Trenton Spence, "Strip Tease"] But I'll defer to the experts in these genres and accept that there's a difference I'm not hearing. Mento was primarily a music for live performance, at least at first -- there were very few recording facilities in Jamaica, and to the extent that records were made at all there, they were mostly done in very small runs to sell to tourists, who wanted a souvenir to take home. The music that the first sound systems played would include some mento records, and they would also play a fair number of latin-flavoured records. But the bulk of what they played was music for dancing, imported from America, made by Black American musicians, many of them the same musicians we looked at in the early months of this podcast. Louis Jordan was a big favourite, as was Wynonie Harris -- the biggest hit in the early years of the sound systems was Harris' "Bloodshot Eyes". I'm going to excerpt that here, because it was an important record in the evolution of Jamaican music, but be warned that the song trivialises intimate partner violence in a way that many people might find disturbing. If you might be upset by that, skip forward exactly thirty seconds now: [Excerpt: Wynonie Harris, "Bloodshot Eyes"] The other artists who get repeatedly named in the histories of the early sound systems along with Jordan and Harris are Fats Domino, Lloyd Price, Professor Longhair -- a musician we've not talked about in the podcast, but who made New Orleans R&B music in the same style as Domino and Price, and for slow-dancing the Moonglows and Jesse Belvin. They would also play jazz -- Dizzy Gillespie, Duke Ellington, and Sarah Vaughan were particular favourites. These records weren't widely available in Jamaica -- indeed, *no* records were really widely available . They found their way into Jamaica through merchant seamen, who would often be tasked by sound men with getting hold of new and exciting records, and paid with rum or marijuana. The "sound man" was the term used for the DJs who ran these sound systems, and they were performers as much as they were people who played records -- they would talk and get the crowds going, they would invent dance steps and perform them, and they would also use the few bits of technology they had to alter the sound -- usually by adding bass or echo. Their reputation was built by finding the most obscure records, but ones which the crowds would love. Every sound man worth his salt had a collection of records that nobody else had -- if you were playing the same records that someone else had, you were a loser. As soon as a sound man got hold of a record, he'd scratch out all the identifying copy on the label and replace it with a new title, so that none of his rivals could get hold of their own copies. The rivalry between sound men could be serious -- it started out just as friendly competition, with each man trying to build a bigger and louder system and draw a bigger crowd, but when the former policeman turned gangster Duke Reid started up his Trojan sound system, intimidating rivals with guns soon became par for the course. Reid had actually started out in music as an R&B radio DJ -- one of the few in Jamaica -- presenting a show whose theme song, Tab Smith's "My Mother's Eyes", would become permanently identified with Reid: [Excerpt: Tab Smith, "My Mother's Eyes"] Reid's Trojan was one of the two biggest sound systems in Kingston, the other being Downbeat, run by Coxsone Dodd. Dodd's system became so popular that he ended up having five different sound systems, all playing in different areas of the city every night, with the ones he didn't perform at himself being run by assistants who later became big names in the Jamaican music world themselves, like Prince Buster and Lee "Scratch" Perry. Buster performed a few other functions for Dodd as well -- one important one being that he  knew enough about R&B that he could go to Duke Reid's shows, listen to the records he was playing, and figure out what they must be -- he could recognise the different production styles of the different R&B labels well enough that he could use that, plus the lyrics, to work out the probable title and label of a record Reid was playing. Dodd would then get a merchant seaman to bring a copy of that record back from America, get a local record pressing plant to press up a bunch of copies of it, and sell it to the other sound men, thus destroying Reid's edge. Eventually Prince Buster left Dodd and set up his own rival sound system, at which point the rivalry became a three-way one. Dodd knew about technology, and had the most powerful sound system with the best amps. Prince Buster was the best showman, who knew what the people wanted and gave it to them, and Duke Reid was connected and powerful enough that he could use intimidation to keep a grip on power, but he also had good enough musical instincts that his shows were genuinely popular in their own right. People started to see their favourite sound systems in the same way they see sports teams or political parties -- as marks of identity that were worth getting into serious fights over. Supporters of one system would regularly attack supporters of another, and who your favourite sound system was *really mattered*. But there was a problem. While these systems were playing a handful of mento records, they were mostly relying on American records, and this had two problems. The most obvious was that if a record was available publicly, eventually someone else would find it. Coxsone Dodd managed to use one record, "Later For Gator" by Willis "Gatortail" Jackson, at every show for seven years, renaming it "Coxsone Hop": [Excerpt: Willis "Gatortail" Jackson, "Later For Gator"] But eventually word got out that Duke Reid had tracked the song down and would play it at a dance. Dodd went along, and was allowed in unmolested -- Reid wanted Dodd to know he'd been beaten.  Now, here I'm going to quote something Prince Buster said, and we hit a problem we're likely to hit again when it comes to Jamaica. Buster spoke Jamaican Patois, a creole language that is mutually intelligible with, but different from, standard English. When quoting him, or any other Patois speaker, I have a choice of three different options, all bad. I could translate his words into standard English, thus misrepresenting him; I could read his words directly in my own accent, which has the problem that it can sound patronising, or like I'm mocking his language, because so much of Patois is to do with the way the words are pronounced; or I could attempt to approximate his own accent -- which would probably come off as incredibly racist. As the least bad option of the three, I'm choosing the middle one here, and reading in my own accent, but I want people to be aware that this is not intended as mockery, and that I have at least given this some thought: "So we wait. Then as the clock struck midnight we hear “Baaap… bap da dap da dap, daaaa da daap!” And we see a bunch of them down from the dancehall coming up with the green bush. I was at the counter with Coxsone, he have a glass in him hand, he drop it and just collapse, sliding down the bar. I had to brace him against the bar, then get Phantom to give me a hand. The psychological impact had knocked him out. Nobody never hit him." There was a second problem with using American records, as well -- American musical tastes were starting to change, and Jamaican ones weren't. Jamaican audiences wanted Louis Jordan, Fats Domino, and Gene & Eunice, but the Americans wanted Elvis and Jerry Lee Lewis and Bobby Darin. For a while, the sound men were able to just keep finding more and more obscure old R&B and jump band records, but there was a finite supply of these, and they couldn't keep doing it forever. The solution eventually became obvious -- they needed Jamaican R&B. And thankfully there was a ready supply. Every week, there was a big talent contest in Kingston, and the winners would get five pounds -- a lot of money in that time and place. Many of the winners would then go to a disc-cutting service, one of those places that would record a single copy of a song for you, and use their prize money to record themselves. They could then sell that record to one of the sound men, who would be sure that nobody else would have a copy of it. At first, the only sound men they could sell to were the less successful ones, who didn't have good connections with American records. A local record was clearly not as good as an American one, and so the big sound systems wouldn't touch it, but it was better than nothing, and some of the small sound systems would find that the local records were a success for them, and eventually the bigger systems would start using the small ones as a test audience -- if a local record went down well at a small system, one of the big operators would get in touch with the sound man of that system and buy the record from him. One of the big examples of this was "Lollipop Girl", a song by Derrick Harriott and Claudie Sang. They recorded that, with just a piano backing, and sold their only copy to a small sound system owner. It went down so well that the small sound man traded his copy with Coxsone Dodd for an American record -- and it went down so well when Dodd played it that Duke Reid bribed one of Dodd's assistants to get hold of Dodd's copy long enough to get a copy made for himself. When Dodd and Reid played a sound clash -- a show where they went head to head to see who could win a crowd over -- and Reid played his own copy of "Lollipop Girl", Dodd pulled a gun on Reid, and it was only the fact that the clash was next door to the police station that kept the two men from killing each other. Reid eventually wore out his copy of "Lollipop Girl", he played it so much, and so he did the only sensible thing -- he went into the record business himself, and took Harriott into the studio, along with a bunch of musicians from the local big bands, and cut a new version of it with a full band backing Harriott. As well as playing this on his sound system, Reid released it as a record: [Excerpt: Derrick Harriott, "Lollipop Girl"] Reid didn't make many more records at this point, but both Coxsone Dodd and Prince Buster started up their own labels, and started hiring local singers, plus people from a small pool of players who became the go-to session musicians for any record made in Jamaica at the time, like trombone player Rico Rodriguez and guitarist Ernest Ranglin. During the late 1950s, a new form of music developed from these recordings, which would become known as ska, and there are three records which are generally considered to be milestones in its development. The first was produced by a white businessman, Edward Seaga, who is now more famous for becoming the Prime Minister of Jamaica in the 1980s. At the time, though, Seaga had the idea to incorporate a little bit of a mento rhythm into an R&B record he was producing. In most music, if you have a four-four rhythm, you can divide it into eight on-beats and off-beats, and you normally stress the on-beats, so you stress "ONE and TWO and THREE and FOUR and". In mento, though, you'd often have a banjo stress the off-beats, so the stresses would be "one AND two AND three AND four AND". Seaga had the guitarist on "Manny Oh" by Higgs and Wilson do this, on a track that was otherwise a straightforward New Orleans style R&B song with a tresillo bassline. The change in stresses is almost imperceptible to modern ears, but it made the record sound uniquely Jamaican to its audience: [Excerpt: Higgs and Wilson, "Manny Oh"] The next record in the sequence was produced by Dodd, and is generally considered the first real ska record. There are a few different stories about where the term "ska" came from, but one of the more believable is that it came from Dodd directing Ernest Ranglin, who was the arranger for the record, to stress the off-beat more, saying "play it ska... ska... ska..." Where "Manny Oh" had been a Jamaican sounding R&B record, "Easy Snappin'" is definitely a blues-influenced ska record: [Excerpt: Theo Beckford, "Easy Snappin'"] But Duke Reid and Coxsone Dodd, at this point, still saw the music they were making as a substitute for American R&B. Prince Buster, on the other hand, by this point was a full-fledged Black nationalist, and wanted to make a purely Jamaican music. Buster was, in particular, an adherent of the Rastafari religion, and he brought in five drummers from the Rasta Nyabinghi tradition, most notably Count Ossie, who became the single most influential drummer in Jamaica, to record on the Folkes brothers single "Oh Carolina", incorporating the rhythms of Rasta sacred music into Jamaican R&B for the first time: [Excerpt: The Folkes Brothers, "Oh Carolina"] 1962 was a turning point in Jamaican music in a variety of ways. Most obviously, it was the year that Jamaica became independent from the British Empire, and was able to take control of its own destiny. But it was also the year that saw the first recordings of a fourteen-year-old girl who would become ska's first international star. Millie Small had started performing at the age of twelve, when she won the Vere Johns Opportunity Hour, the single biggest talent contest in Kingston. But it was two years later that she came to the attention of Coxsone Dodd, who was very interested in her because her voice sounded spookily like that of Shirley, from the duo Shirley and Lee. We mentioned Shirley and Lee briefly back in the episode on "Ko Ko Mo", but they were a New Orleans R&B duo who had a string of hits in the early and mid fifties, recorded at Cosimo Matassa's studio, pairing Leonard Lee's baritone voice with Shirley Goodman's soprano. Their early records had been knock-offs of the sound that Little Esther had created with Johnny Otis and his male vocalists -- for example Shirley and Lee's "Sweethearts": [Excerpt: Shirley and Lee, "Sweethearts"] bears a very strong resemblance to "Double-Crossing Blues": [Excerpt: Little Esther, Johnny Otis, and the Robins, "Double-Crossing Blues"] But they'd soon developed a more New Orleans style, with records like "Feel So Good" showing some of the Caribbean influence that many records from the area had: [Excerpt: Shirley and Lee, "Feel So Good"] Shirley and Lee only had minor chart success in the US, but spawned a host of imitators, including Gene and Eunice and Mickey and Sylvia, both of whom we looked at in the early months of the podcast, and Ike and Tina Turner who will be coming up later. Like much New Orleans R&B, Shirley and Lee were hugely popular among the sound system listeners, and Coxsone Dodd thought that Mille's voice sounded enough like Shirley's that it would be worth setting her up as part of his own Shirley and Lee soundalike duo, pairing her with a more established singer, Owen Gray, to record songs like "Sit and Cry", a song which combined the vocal sound of Shirley and Lee with the melody of "The Twist": [Excerpt: Owen and Millie, "Sit and Cry"] After Gray decided to continue performing on his own, Millie was instead teamed with another performer, Roy Panton, and "We'll Meet" by Roy and Millie went to number one in Jamaica: [Excerpt: Roy and Millie, "We'll Meet"] Meanwhile, in the UK, there was a growing interest in music from the Caribbean, especially Jamaica. Until very recently, Britain had been a very white country -- there have always been Black people in the UK, especially in port towns, but there had been very few. As of 1950, there were only about twenty thousand people of colour living in the UK. But starting in 1948, there had been a massive wave of immigration from other parts of what was then still the British Empire, as the government encouraged people to come here to help rebuild the country after the war. By 1961 there were nearly two hundred thousand Black people in Britain, almost all of them from the Caribbean.  Those people obviously wanted to hear the music of their own culture, and one man in particular was giving it to them. Chris Blackwell was a remarkably privileged man. His father had been one of the heirs to the Crosse and Blackwell fortune, and young Chris had been educated at Harrow, but when not in school he had spent much of his youth in Jamaica. His mother, Blanche, lived in Jamaica, where she was a muse to many men -- Noel Coward based a character on her, in a play he wrote in 1956 but which was considered so scandalous that it wasn't performed in public until 2012. Blanche attended the premiere of that play, when she was ninety-nine years old. She had an affair with Errol Flynn, and was also Ian Fleming's mistress -- Fleming would go to his Jamaican villa, GoldenEye, every year to write, leaving his wife at home (where she was having her own affairs, with the Labour MPs Hugh Gaitskell and Roy Jenkins), and would hook up with Blanche while he was there -- according to several sources, Fleming based the characters of Pussy Galore and Honeychile Ryder on Blanche. After Fleming's death, his wife instructed the villa's manager that it could be rented to literally anyone except Blanche Blackwell, but in the mid-1970s it was bought by Bob Marley, who in turn sold it to Chris Blackwell. Chris Blackwell had developed a fascination with Rasta culture after having crashed his boat while sailing, and being rescued by some Rasta fishermen, and he had decided that his goal was to promote Jamaican culture to the world. He'd started his own labels, Island Records, in 1959, using his parents' money, and had soon produced a Jamaican number one, "Boogie in My Bones", by Laurel Aitken: [Excerpt: Laurel Aitken, "Boogie in My Bones"] But music was still something of a hobby with Blackwell, to the point that he nearly quit it altogether in 1962. He'd been given a job as a gopher on the first James Bond film, Dr. No, thanks to his family connections, and had also had a cameo role in the film. Harry Saltzman, the producer, offered him a job, but Blackwell went to a fortune teller who told him to stick with music, and he did. Soon after that, he moved back to England, where he continued running Island Records, this time as a distributor of Jamaican records. The label would occasionally record some tracks of its own, but it made its money from releasing Jamaican records, which Blackwell would hand-sell to local record shops around immigrant communities in London, Manchester, and Birmingham. Island was not the biggest of the labels releasing Jamaican music in Britain at the time -- there was another label, Blue Beat, which got most of the big records, and which was so popular that in Britain "bluebeat" became a common term for ska, used to describe the whole genre, in the same way as Motown might be. And ska was becoming popular enough that there was also local ska being made, by Jamaican musicians living in Britain, and it was starting to chart. The first ska record to hit the charts in Britain was a cover of a Jimmy Cliff song, "King of Kings", performed by Ezz Reco and the Launchers: [Excerpt: Ezz Reco and the Launchers, "King of Kings"] That made the lower reaches of the top forty, and soon after came "Mockingbird Hill", a ska remake of an old Les Paul and Mary Ford hit, recorded by the Migil Five, a white British R&B group whose main claim to fame was that one of them was Charlie Watts' uncle, and Watts had occasionally filled in on drums for them before joining the Rolling Stones: [Excerpt: Migil Five, "Mockingbird Hill"] That made the top ten. Ska was becoming the in sound in Britain, to the point that in March 1964, the same month that "Mockingbird Hill" was released, the Beatles made a brief detour into ska in the instrumental break to "I Call Your Name": [Excerpt: The Beatles, "I Call Your Name"] And it was into this atmosphere that Chris Blackwell decided to introduce Millie. Her early records had been selling well enough for him that in 1963 he had decided to call Millie's mother and promise her that if her daughter came over to the UK, he would be able to make her into a star. Rather than release her records on Island, which didn't have any wide distribution, he decided to license them to Fontana, a mid-sized British label. Millie's first British single, "Don't You Know", was released in late 1963, and was standard British pop music of the time, with little to distinguish it, and so unsurprisingly it wasn't a hit: [Excerpt: Millie, "Don't You Know"] But the second single was something different. For that, Blackwell remembered a song that had been popular among the sound systems a few years earlier; an American record by a white singer named Barbara Gaye. Up to this point, Gaye's biggest claim to fame had been that Ellie Greenwich had liked this record enough that she'd briefly performed under the stage name Ellie Gaye, before deciding against that. "My Boy Lollipop" had been written by Robert Spencer of the Cadillacs, the doo-wop group whose biggest hit had been "Speedoo": [Excerpt: The Cadillacs, "Speedoo"] Spencer had written “My Boy Lollipop”, but lost the rights to it in a card game -- and then Morris Levy bought the rights from the winner for a hundred dollars. Levy changed the songwriting credit to feature a mob acquaintance of his, Johnny Roberts, and then passed the song to Gaetano Vastola, another mobster, who had it recorded by Gaye, a teenage girl he managed, with the backing provided by the normal New York R&B session players, like Big Al Sears and Panama Francis: [Excerpt: Barbie Gaye, "My Boy Lollipop"] That hadn't been a hit when it was released in 1956, but it had later been picked up by the Jamaican sound men, partly because of its resemblance to the ska style, and Blackwell had a tape recording of it. Blackwell got Ernest Ranglin, who had also worked on Dr. No, and who had moved over to the UK at the same time as Blackwell, to come up with an arrangement, and Ranglin hired a local band to perform the instrumental backing. That band, Jimmy Powell and the Five Dimensions, had previously been known as the Moontrekkers, and had worked with Joe Meek, recording "Night of the Vampire": [Excerpt: The Moontrekkers, "Night of the Vampire"] Ranglin replaced the saxophone solo from the original record with a harmonica solo, to fit the current fad for the harmonica in the British charts, and there is some dispute about who played it, but Millie always insisted that it was the Five Dimensions' harmonica player, Rod Stewart, though Stewart denies it: [Excerpt: Millie, "My Boy Lollipop"] "My Boy Lollipop" came out in early 1964 and became a massive hit, reaching number two on the charts both in the UK and the US, and Millie was now a star. She got her own UK TV special, as well as appearing on Around The Beatles, a special starring the Beatles and produced by Jack Good. She was romantically linked to Peter Asher of Peter and Gordon. Her next single, though, "Sweet William", only made number thirty, as the brief first wave of interest in ska among the white public subsided: [Excerpt: Millie, "Sweet William"] Over the next few years, there were many attempts made to get her back in the charts, but the last thing that came near was a remake of "Bloodshot Eyes", without the intimate partner violence references, which made number forty-eight on the UK charts at the end of 1965: [Excerpt: Millie, "Bloodshot Eyes"] She was also teamed with other artists in an attempt to replicate her success as a duet act. She recorded with Jimmy Cliff: [Excerpt: Millie and Jimmy Cliff, "Hey Boy, Hey Girl"] and Jackie Edwards: [Excerpt: Jackie and Millie, "Pledging My Love"] and she was also teamed with a rock group Blackwell had discovered, and who would soon become big stars themselves with versions of songs by Edwards, on a cover version of Ike and Tina Turner's "I'm Blue (the Gong Gong Song)": [Excerpt: The Spencer Davis Group, "I'm Blue (The Gong Gong Song)"] But the Spencer Davis Group didn't revive her fortunes, and she moved on to a succession of smaller labels, with her final recordings coming in the early 1970s, when she recorded the track "Enoch Power", in response to the racism stirred up by the right-wing politician Enoch Powell: [Excerpt: Millie Small, "Enoch Power"] Millie spent much of the next few decades in poverty. There was talk of a comeback in the early eighties, after the British ska revival group Bad Manners had a top ten hit with a gender-flipped remake of "My Boy Lollipop": [Excerpt: Bad Manners, "My Girl Lollipop"] But she never performed again after the early seventies, and other than one brief interview in 2016 she kept her life private. She was given multiple honours by the people of Jamaica, including being made a Commander in the Order of Distinction, but never really got any financial benefit from her enormous chart success, or from being the first Jamaican artist to make an impact on Britain and America. She died last year, aged seventy-two.

This week’s episode looks at “My Boy Lollipop” and the origins of ska music. Click the full post to read liner notes, links to more information, and a transcript of the episode. Patreon backers also have a ten-minute bonus episode available, on “If You Wanna Be Happy” by Jimmy Soul. Tilt Araiza has assisted invaluably by doing a first-pass edit, and will hopefully be doing so from now on. Check out Tilt’s irregular podcasts at http://www.podnose.com/jaffa-cakes-for-proust and http://sitcomclub.com/ (more…)

The great Ken Boothe talks about his start in the music business after teaming up with Stranger Cole to do sessions for Duke Reid and then Coxsonne Dodd. Ken describes early dancehall days in the 60s, why he holds Coxsonne in very high regards, and his gratitude for the things music has given to him and to all of us. We ask him about a handful of specific tunes, and he sings a cappella snippets of all of them! Ken Boothe: what a guy.Records of The Week:Dev's Record: "Talawah" by The GladiatorsRog's Record: "Sufferation" by Trevor ClarkeSHOP PODCLASH MERCH! Every sale helps support the show. Thank you. https://rootfire-intl.myshopify.com/collections/the-reggae-podclash***Man-Like-Devin and Roger Rivas talk all things reggae with original and modern artists in the scene, every Saturday at 6pm PT on http://Rootfire.net/tvDevin and Roger have a passion for sharing and discussing Jamaican 45 records. Each week they are joined by original and modern guests in the genre to talk all things Reggae.#ReggaePodclash #KenBoothe #Rootfirehttp://www.TheReggaePodClash.comFollow us on socials @reggaepodclashSupport the show (https://rootfire.net/tv/)

Después de 18 meses JN vuelve a EPSA con un Especial Musical dedicado al sonido Treasure Isle. Mientras un temporal de Nieve y Hielo asolaba Madrid en el exterior de los Estudios Romanones, JN fue desgranando 20 canciones que, didáctica y seductoramente, fueron cubriendo las etapas estilísticas y el misterioso sonido que brotaba de aquel estudio construido por Duke Reid sobre una licorería. Un EM que a la vez puede servir como iniciación a la música jamaicana deleitando también a los oyentes que ya conocen las mieles de este fenómeno geográfico musical. Un EM que además, hace un recorrido secreto a través del mood que se genera, de modo universal y atemporal entre las almas solitarias que se encuentran aleatoriamente tras los matorrales en los parques y dunas, las oscuras butacas de un cine o los anónimos servicios de una estación de autobuses.

Después de 18 meses JN vuelve a EPSA con un Especial Musical dedicado al sonido Treasure Isle. Mientras un temporal de Nieve y Hielo asolaba Madrid en el exterior de los Estudios Romanones, JN fue desgranando 20 canciones que, didáctica y seductoramente, fueron cubriendo las etapas estilísticas y el misterioso sonido que brotaba de aquel estudio construido por Duke Reid sobre una licorería. Un EM que a la vez puede servir como iniciación a la música jamaicana deleitando también a los oyentes que ya conocen las mieles de este fenómeno geográfico musical. Un EM que además, hace un recorrido secreto a través del mood que se genera, de modo universal y atemporal entre las almas solitarias que se encuentran aleatoriamente tras los matorrales en los parques y dunas, las oscuras butacas de un cine o los anónimos servicios de una estación de autobuses.

24 Bigmikeydread Reggae Radio - The Gorgon - A Tribute to Bunny Lee Bunny Lee passed away on the 6th October this year of 2020. This show is offered in respect of I believe the greatest of all the Jamaican record producers. Not only did he virtually single handedly define the ‘Skinhead’ era of Early Reggae but he excelled in the era of the Golden age of Roots Reggae, a mission seemingly past the capabilities of Coxsone Dodd and Duke Reid, who only re-packed and re-dubbed their earlier output for a new era, fantastic though it was, while Lee produced fresh rhythms and entirely new music. Not only did he encourage the creativity of the greatest of house bands, but he employed the early creative talents of King Tubby, a genre defining artist (in the true meaning of the word) himself. He produced one of the first tunes to be called ‘Reggae’ Bangarang by Max Romeo and Lester Sterling.. he truly was ‘The Gorgon’ a Monster of Music. With thanks to Ken Jones aka Charlie Reggae for the Unity and Gas Singles. Charlie passed away many years ago, but was my original Reggae music mentor. 1. Ken Parker - How Could I - Trk 10 from Sir Lee’s Rocksteady Party At Buckingham Palace Cd - Jamaican Gold 2. Lloyd Clarke - Summertime - Trk 9, Sir Lee’s Rocksteady Party At Greenwich Farm Cd - Jamaican Gold 3. The Sensations - Long Time Me No See You Girl - Trk 17 Sir Lee’s Rocksteady Party at King’s House Cd - Jamaican Gold 4. Lester Sterling - Bangarang - Cd 2 Trk 3 of The Bunny Striker Lee Story 5. Errol Dunkley - I Take You in My Arms - FAB 7” Single 6. Pat Kelly - Striving For The Right - Gas 7” Single 7. Dave Barker - Wet Version - Attack 7” Single 8. Slim Smith - Zip-Pa-Di-Do-Da - Unity 7” Single 9. Pat Kelly as ‘Little Boy Blue’ - Dark End Of The Street - Lee’s 7” Single 10. Karl ‘King Cannonball’ Bryan - Fire Ball - 7” Unity Single 11. Jackie Mittoo & The Bunny Lee All Stars - Hook Up - 7” Unity Single 12. John Holt - Sometimes - Unity 7” Single 13. Slim Smith and The Uniques - My Conversation - Cd4 Track 19 of ‘The Bunny Lee Story’ 14. George Dekker - Foey Man - Carib-Disco (Pressure Sounds) 7” Single 15. Jeff Barnes and the Uniques - People’s Voice - Unity 7” Single 16. Delroy Wilson - Stay By Me - Jackpot 7” Single 17. U-Roy - Hat Trick - Trojan 7” Single 18. Jackie Brown - What Is Your Plan - Harry J (UK) 7” Single 19. Johnnie Clarke - Lemon Tree - Pyramid 7” Single 20. Johnnie Clarke - Joshua’s Word + Horns Dub - Jackpot 7” Single 21. Cornell Campbell - The Gorgon + Version - Angen 7” Single 22. Leroy Smart - I Don’t Like It - Attack Gold 10” Single 23. Dillinger - Jah Show Them The Way - Attack Gold 10” Single 24. Ken Boothe - Satta Massagana - Attack 7” Single 25. Lloyd Parks - Everybody Needs Love + Version - Horse 7” Single 26. Linval Thompson - No Escape - Gorgon 7” Single 27. Barry Brown - Cool Pon Yu Corner - Jackpot 7” Single 28. Ronnie Davis - The Power Of Love = King Tubby In A Fine Style - King Tubby The Dub Master Trojan 10” Single 29. Linval Thompson - Cool Down Your Temper / U-Roy - Cool Down - Jaguar 7” Single 30. Ronnie Davis - Kaya - Attack 7” Single That’s All Folks If you fancy helping the show out you can send money via PayPal. Don’t use Patreon it’s horrible. Send it via the link on the show page on Podomatic, this show is available on iTunes, Podomatic and Mixcloud. I thank you, this money is used to keep the servers pumping out the show, and occasionally to purchase a new tune to play you all. GOD BLESS BUNNY LEE

Caribbean Radio Show presents  RockSteady Original Sounds from Duke Reid

Legendary Jamaican bass player Val Douglas makes a grand entrance with a revelation that surprises both the hosts! We go on to discuss his work with producers like Duke Reid, Joe Gibbs, Lee Perry and many more, as well as with almost every notable artist from 1970s Jamaica including Bob Marley, Dennis Brown, Burning Spear, Delroy Wilson, The Now Generation Band, and an incredible list that goes on and on. Val talks about why a 4-string bass is vastly superior to a 5 or 6 string, and tells us about the 1-string bass he played on tour with Maxie Priest. This was one of our favorite episodes yet!Tunes Of The Week:Roger’s = The Upsetters - “The Vampire”Devin’s = Danny Clarke & The Meditations - “Changing Of The Times”SHOP PODCLASH MERCH! Every sale helps support the show. Thank you.https://rootfire-intl.myshopify.com/collections/the-reggae-podclash***Man-Like-Devin and Roger Rivas talk all things reggae with original and modern artists in the scene, every Saturday at 6pm PT on http://thereggaepodclash.comIn addition to their weekly discussion of hand-selected records from their collections of Jamaican music on vinyl, Roger and Devin are joined this week by legendary Jamaican bass player Val Douglas. #ReggaePodclash #ValDouglas #Reggae http://www.Rootfire.nethttp://www.TheReggaePodClash.comSupport the show (https://rootfire.net/tv/)

One of Jamaica's most beloved singers, Dobby Dobson, has died at the age of 78. Dobson passed away at 4:30 p.m on Tuesday at a hospital in Florida. Tommy Cowan of Glory Music reported that Dobson had COVID-19. “I was told a couple days ago that he was in a bad way. He had Alzheimer's for a while now and was in a home, then he was diagnosed with COVID." Highland 'Dobby' Dobson was nicknamed 'Loving Pauper' after one of his better-known songs. Dobson started singing in the early 1950s and recorded hit songs such as That Wonderful Sound and Mexican Divorce. He had stints with legendary producers Coxsone Dodd and Duke Reid, recording as a member of both The Virtues and The Sheiks. His signature song, Loving Pauper was done for Reid.

La invención del remix que brillará en las pistas disco anterior a la llegada del torbellino imperativo del Techno y del House, se debió, pues, a un error. En Jamaica, a finales de 1967, todo sucede. Sound Systems y Dance Halls. El remix nace, así como también la música dub. Personajes como Duke Reid y Ruddy Redwood crean por error algo gigante. Luego King Tubby, genio del sonido, le da forma y magia a la música de las atmósferas.

Al programa d’avui el Lluís Nutty ens ha preparat un programa especial dedicat als Rude Boys jamaicans. Tracklist: – Duke Reid’s All Stars “The Rude Boy” – The Wailers “Rude Boy” – The Wailers “Good, Good Rudie (a.k.a. Jailhouse)” – … Continua llegint →

Label inglese fondata nel 1968 da Lee Gopthal, già collaboratore dei Chris Blackwell, come sottoetichetta della Island Record. Ha contribuito a diffondere il sound ska, rocksteady, roots e reggae in europa e nel mondo.....Il nome Trojan deriva dal nome della marca di furgoni inglesi, usato da Duke Reid per il suo sound system in Giamaica, chiamato proprio Trojan...TRACKLIST TROJAN..1 Max Romeo- Wet Dream..2 Harry J Allstars- The Liquidator..3 John Holt - Ali Baba..4 Dave and Ansel Collins - Double Barrel..5 Marcia Aitken and Trinity- I'm Still In Love With You..6 Toots and The Maytals- 54-46 Was My Number..7 Bob Andy and Marcia Griffiths- Young, Gifted and Black..8 Dandy Livingstone - Rudy, A Message To You..9 Desmond Dekker - 007 (shanty town)..10 The Upsetters- Return Of Django..11 tex and keith- stop that train..12 Jimmy Cliff- Wonderful World, Beautiful People..13 Toots and The Maytals- pressure drop

Label inglese fondata nel 1968 da Lee Gopthal, già collaboratore dei Chris Blackwell, come sottoetichetta della Island Record. Ha contribuito a diffondere il sound ska, rocksteady, roots e reggae in europa e nel mondo.....Il nome Trojan deriva dal nome della marca di furgoni inglesi, usato da Duke Reid per il suo sound system in Giamaica, chiamato proprio Trojan...TRACKLIST TROJAN..1 Max Romeo- Wet Dream..2 Harry J Allstars- The Liquidator..3 John Holt - Ali Baba..4 Dave and Ansel Collins - Double Barrel..5 Marcia Aitken and Trinity- I'm Still In Love With You..6 Toots and The Maytals- 54-46 Was My Number..7 Bob Andy and Marcia Griffiths- Young, Gifted and Black..8 Dandy Livingstone - Rudy, A Message To You..9 Desmond Dekker - 007 (shanty town)..10 The Upsetters- Return Of Django..11 tex and keith- stop that train..12 Jimmy Cliff- Wonderful World, Beautiful People..13 Toots and The Maytals- pressure drop

Crucial Reggae Time #71 26052019 Radio Canut 1H30 long Frankie Wilmott – Sensimilla 1987 repress sur Sipho International distribué par Top Ranking Sound Martin Campbell - Got to pray dubplate mix Roots Youths Records 2019 label de Vinny Kullar Ashanti Selah meets Junior Roy – Deep call Roots Youths Records 2019 Kenny Knots – Black Iration New Exodus Liberation Groupe – Namibia Studio One Bitty McLean & Duke Reid's All Stars – I'm in love with a girl Peckings The Wailers – Habit Michael Buckley – My selector Lewe Culture & Anthony Selassie - Yao Leroy Smart – Ballistic Affair 1976 Channel One Mix Ballistic Affair riddim : Carlton Livingston « Rasta corner »/ Trevor Junior « Give me some more »/Skarra Mucci « Thieves & liars »/ Rootsamala « The Joy of life »/Joseph Cotton «Everyday is a mother's day » /Glen Ricks & Papa Kojak « Blowing in the wind »/Neto Yuth « Turf war » /Stoneman (from Atomic Spliff) « Champion inna di sound » /Original Uman « Soundman » Speng Bond - Dem Nah Take It Ram Goat Records 2019 Fikir Amlak & Go a Chant - Bless the place album Akashic Records 2019 Forgive me dub INFOS CONCERTS Wellette Seyon – Spiritual Thing 2018 Dub Invasion Juli Jupiter (de Spellbreakers) – Do good Rafiki – Emancipate Chezidek – Harvest time Xterminator Jah Cure – Stronger than before Sizzla – Life's road Zia – Black magic woman Culture D – Jah Jah set us free + Dub Amelia Harmony – New world order

After World War II, Jamaicans purchased radios in increasing numbers and were able to hear rhythm and blues music from Southern United States cities such as New Orleans by artists such as Fats Domino and Louis Jordan. Domino's rhythm, accentuating the offbeat as in the song "Be My Guest", was a particular influence. The stationing of American military forces during and after the war meant that Jamaicans could listen to military broadcasts of American music, and there was a constant influx of records from the United States. To meet the demand for that music, entrepreneurs such as Prince Buster, Coxsone Dodd, and Duke Reid formed sound systems.

Ken Boothe OD (born 22 March 1948) is a #Jamaican vocalist known for his distinctive vibrato and timbre. Boothe achieved an international reputation as one of #Jamaica's finest vocalists through a series of crossover hits that appealed to both #reggae fans and mainstream audiences. Ken Boothe was born in Denham Town, #Kingston.  Boothe cites singer Owen Gray as a major influence, particularly after hearing Gray perform the Leiber and Stoller rhythm and blues version of the #1920s blues standard, "Kansas City Blues", written by E L Bowman and notably performed by Jim Jackson in 1927. Stranger Cole, who was an established artist and neighbor to Boothe, had already worked with Boothe on the Sir Percy sound system as well as recording two songs for independent producer Sir Mike though Boothe's major breakthrough came in 1963 after Cole arranged an audition at #Duke Reid's studio. The audition with Cole and Boothe performing the song "Unos Dos Tres" was a success and Boothe and Cole formed the duo 'Stranger & Ken' with the first track released by them being "Hush Baby" on the B-side of Cole's #Island Records single "Last Love".

In 1957 Morgan entered the Vere Johns Opportunity Hour, a talent show held at the Palace Theatre in #Kingston. He won with rousing impressions of Little Richard and, shortly after that, was recruited to perform around the island with the popular Jamaican comedy team Bim and Bam. In 1959 Morgan entered the recording studio for the first time. Duke Reid, the acclaimed sound system boss, was looking for talent to record for his Treasure Isle record label. Morgan cut two popular shuffle-boogie sides "Lover Boy", a.k.a. "S-Corner Rock", and "Oh My". Soon after, Morgan cut the bolero-tinged boogie "Fat Man", which also became a hit. He also found time to record for Coxsone Dodd. In 1960 Morgan became the only artist ever to fill the places from one to seven on the Jamaican pop chart simultaneously. Among those hits were "Don't Call Me Daddy", "In My Heart", "Be Still", and "Meekly Wait and Murmur Not". But it was the following year that Morgan released the biggest hit of his career, the Leslie Kong production of "Don't You Know", later retitled "Housewives' Choice" by a local #DJ. The song featured a bouncing #ska riddim, along with a duet by Morgan and Millicent "Patsy" Todd.

#Jamaica #Ska #Oldies-and-Goodies-#60s-#70s-#80s Ska  Jamaican: is a music genre that originated in Jamaica in the late 1950s and was the precursor to rocksteady and reggae. It combined elements of Caribbean mento and calypso with American jazz and rhythm and blues. Ska is characterized by a walking bass line accented with rhythms on the offbeat. It was developed in Jamaica in the 1960s when Prince Buster, Clement "Coxsone" Dodd, and Duke Reid formed sound systems to play American rhythm and blues and then began recording their own songs

In #1957 #Morgan entered the Vere Johns Opportunity Hour, a talent show held at the Palace Theatre in #Kingston. He won with rousing impressions of Little Richard and, shortly after that, was recruited to perform around the island with the popular Jamaican comedy team Bim and Bam. In 1959 Morgan entered the recording studio for the first time. Duke Reid, the acclaimed sound system boss, was looking for talent to record for his Treasure Isle record label. Morgan cut two popular shuffle-boogie sides "Lover Boy", a.k.a. "S-Corner Rock", and "Oh My". Soon after, Morgan cut the bolero-tinged boogie "Fat Man", which also became a hit. He also found time to record for Coxsone Dodd. #nowplaying #trending,#jamaica #reggae #70s #80s #90s

The previous episode's revelation of how King Django got his name leads us to continue our discussion of Duke Reid and early Ska and Mento music. Vincent gets distracted and send us on a tangent, exploring some Jazz and early Beguine music from Martinique. We close the podcast with some helpful tips on how to properly care for your grandfather's sweaters. Intro: Kapaichie Baba Brooks & His Band - Twilight Zone Don Drummond - Last Call (intro only) Jessie Hill - Ooh Pooh Pah Doo Lord Power - Chambolina Roland Alphonso & the Soul Brothers - James Bond Lord Power - Penny Reel Sonny Rollins - St. Thomas Sonny Stitt - On Green Dolphin Street (very short clip) Sonny Rollins - On Green Dolphin Street (live in Denmark 1968) Sam Manning - Slide Mongoose Scott Joplin - Original Rags Orchestre Antillais de Alexandre Stello - Ah! Gade Chabine La Orchestre de la Boule Blanche - C'est Biguine

Music historians typically divide the history of ska into three periods: the original Jamaican scene of the #1960s; the 2 Tone #ska revival of the late #1970s in Britain, which fused #Jamaican ska rhythms and melodies with the faster tempos and harder edge of punk rock; and third wave ska, which involved bands from the #UK, other European countries (notably Germany), Australia, Japan, South America and the United States, beginning in the #1980s and peaking in the 1990s. Jamaican: is a music genre that originated in Jamaica in the late 1950s and was the precursor to rocksteady and reggae. It combined elements of Caribbean mento and calypso with American jazz and rhythm and blues. Ska is characterized by a walking bass line accented with rhythms on the offbeat. It was developed in Jamaica in the 1960s when Prince Buster, Clement "Coxsone" Dodd, and Duke Reid formed sound systems to play American rhythm and blues and then began recording their own songs.

King Django explains how he got his name. Meanwhile, Vincent gets drunk on his honey whiskey green milk tea, as only an ex-bubble tea barista can. Exploring the Upsetters and Duke Reid "the Trojan" takes them on a short journey through the history of Trojan trucks and condoms, and why you should never steal other peoples jokes. Intro: Milton Henry Parliament - FlashlightThe Upsetters - Return of DjangoThe Upsetters - Django Shoots FirstDuke Reid & His Group - What Makes HoneyDuke Reid & His Group - Duke's CookiesDuke Reid's Group - Rude BoyDuke Reid - Treasure Dub (Ba Ba Boom Time riddim)Baba Brooks & His Band - Twilight Zone

Jamaican: is a music genre that originated in Jamaica in the late 1950s and was the precursor to rocksteady and reggae. Ska combined elements of Caribbean mento and calypso with American jazz and rhythm and blues. It is characterized by a walking bass line accented with rhythms on the off-beat. Ska developed in Jamaica in the 1960s when Prince Buster, Clement "Coxsone" Dodd, and Duke Reid formed sound systems to play American rhythm & blues and then began recording their own songs. Some suggest ska dates to earlier times, however. In the early 1960s, ska was the dominant music genre of Jamaica and was popular with British mods. Later it became popular with many skinheads.Music historians typically divide the history of ska into three periods: the original Jamaican scene of the 1960s; the 2 Tone ska revival of the late 1970s in Britain, which fused Jamaican ska rhythms and melodies with the faster tempos and harder edge of punk rock; and the third wave of ska, which involved bands from the UK, other European countries (notably Germany), Australia, Japan, South America and the United States, beginning in the 1980s and peaking in the http://www.crsradio.com #crsradio #nowplaying #reggaebillboard

Jamaican: is a music genre that originated in Jamaica in the late 1950s and was the precursor to rocksteady and reggae. Ska combined elements of Caribbean mento and calypso with American jazz and rhythm and blues. It is characterized by a walking bass line accented with rhythms on the off-beat. Ska developed in Jamaica in the 1960s when Prince Buster, Clement "Coxsone" Dodd, and Duke Reid formed sound systems to play American rhythm & blues and then began recording their own songs. Some suggest ska dates to earlier times, however. In the early 1960s, ska was the dominant music genre of Jamaica and was popular with British mods. Later it became popular with many skinheads.Music historians typically divide the history of ska into three periods: the original Jamaican scene of the 1960s; the 2 Tone ska revival of the late 1970s in Britain, which fused Jamaican ska rhythms and melodies with the faster tempos and harder edge of punk rock; and the third wave of ska, which involved bands from the UK, other European countries (notably Germany), Australia, Japan, South America and the United States, beginning in the 1980s and peaking in the http://www.crsradio.com #crsradio #nowplaying #reggaebillboard

Jamaican: is a music genre that originated in Jamaica in the late 1950s and was the precursor to rocksteady and reggae. Ska combined elements of Caribbean mento and calypso with American jazz and rhythm and blues. It is characterized by a walking bass line accented with rhythms on the off-beat. Ska developed in Jamaica in the 1960s when Prince Buster, Clement "Coxsone" Dodd, and Duke Reid formed sound systems to play American rhythm & blues and then began recording their own songs. Some suggest ska dates to earlier times, however. In the early 1960s, ska was the dominant music genre of Jamaica and was popular with British mods. Later it became popular with many skinheads.Music historians typically divide the history of ska into three periods: the original Jamaican scene of the 1960s; the 2 Tone ska revival of the late 1970s in Britain, which fused Jamaican ska rhythms and melodies with the faster tempos and harder edge of punk rock; and the third wave of ska, which involved bands from the UK, other European countries (notably Germany), Australia, Japan, South America and the United States, beginning in the 1980s and peaking in the http://www.crsradio.com #crsradio #nowplaying #reggaebillboard

Jamaican: is a music genre that originated in Jamaica in the late 1950s and was the precursor to rocksteady and reggae. Ska combined elements of Caribbean mento and calypso with American jazz and rhythm and blues. It is characterized by a walking bass line accented with rhythms on the off-beat. Ska developed in Jamaica in the 1960s when Prince Buster, Clement "Coxsone" Dodd, and Duke Reid formed sound systems to play American rhythm & blues and then began recording their own songs. Some suggest ska dates to earlier times, however. In the early 1960s, ska was the dominant music genre of Jamaica and was popular with British mods. Later it became popular with many skinheads.Music historians typically divide the history of ska into three periods: the original Jamaican scene of the 1960s; the 2 Tone ska revival of the late 1970s in Britain, which fused Jamaican ska rhythms and melodies with the faster tempos and harder edge of punk rock; and the third wave of ska, which involved bands from the UK, other European countries (notably Germany), Australia, Japan, South America and the United States, beginning in the 1980s and peaking in the http://www.crsradio.com #crsradio #nowplaying #reggaebillboard

Jamaican: is a music genre that originated in Jamaica in the late 1950s and was the precursor to rocksteady and reggae. Ska combined elements of Caribbean mento and calypso with American jazz and rhythm and blues. It is characterized by a walking bass line accented with rhythms on the off-beat. Ska developed in Jamaica in the 1960s when Prince Buster, Clement "Coxsone" Dodd, and Duke Reid formed sound systems to play American rhythm & blues and then began recording their own songs. Some suggest ska dates to earlier times, however. In the early 1960s, ska was the dominant music genre of Jamaica and was popular with British mods. Later it became popular with many skinheads.Music historians typically divide the history of ska into three periods: the original Jamaican scene of the 1960s; the 2 Tone ska revival of the late 1970s in Britain, which fused Jamaican ska rhythms and melodies with the faster tempos and harder edge of punk rock; and the third wave of ska, which involved bands from the UK, other European countries (notably Germany), Australia, Japan, South America and the United States, beginning in the 1980s and peaking in the http://www.crsradio.com #crsradio #nowplaying #reggaebillboard

Jamaican: is a music genre that originated in Jamaica in the late 1950s and was the precursor to rocksteady and reggae. Ska combined elements of Caribbean mento and calypso with American jazz and rhythm and blues. It is characterized by a walking bass line accented with rhythms on the off-beat. Ska developed in Jamaica in the 1960s when Prince Buster, Clement "Coxsone" Dodd, and Duke Reid formed sound systems to play American rhythm & blues and then began recording their own songs. Some suggest ska dates to earlier times, however. In the early 1960s, ska was the dominant music genre of Jamaica and was popular with British mods. Later it became popular with many skinheads.Music historians typically divide the history of ska into three periods: the original Jamaican scene of the 1960s; the 2 Tone ska revival of the late 1970s in Britain, which fused Jamaican ska rhythms and melodies with the faster tempos and harder edge of punk rock; and the third wave of ska, which involved bands from the UK, other European countries (notably Germany), Australia, Japan, South America and the United States, beginning in the 1980s and peaking in the http://www.crsradio.com #crsradio #nowplaying #reggaebillboard

John Kenneth Holt CD, better known as John Holt, was a reggae singer and songwriter from Jamaica who first found fame as a member of The Paragons, before establishing himself as a solo artist.In 1965 Holt joined Bob Andy, Garth "Tyrone" Evans, and Junior Menz in their group the Binders; Menz departed to be replaced by Howard Barrett and they changed their name to the Paragons. They initially recorded for Clement "Coxsone" Dodd's Studio One before cutting a succession of singles for Duke Reid at his Treasure Isle Studio in the rocksteady era of 1966–1968; They enjoyed a string of hits, including "Ali Baba", "Tonight", "I See Your Face", and the Holt-penned "The Tide Is High" (later made famous by Blondie and also covered by Atomic Kitten). "Wear You to the Ball" was another of his hits with the Paragons, and it made the charts again when U-Roy (whom he had introduced to Duke Reid) recorded a Deejay version over it. With Andy having left early on, the departures of Barrett (in 1969) and Evans (in 1970), who had both won scholarships in the US, brought the group to an end. During his time with the Paragons, he also recorded solo material for Bunny Lee ("Tonight"), and Harry J. He subsequently concentrated on his solo career, recording for Prince Buster ("Oh Girl", "Rain From the Skies"), Reid ("Stealing Stealing", "Ali Baba"), Dodd (including "Fancy Make-up", "A Love I Can Feel", "Let's Build Our Dreams" and "OK Fred"), Alvin Ranglin ("Strange Things"), and Phil Pratt ("My Heart Is Gone").

Jamaican: is a music genre that originated in Jamaica in the late 1950s and was the precursor to rocksteady and reggae. Ska combined elements of Caribbean mento and calypso with American jazz and rhythm and blues. It is characterized by a walking bass line accented with rhythms on the off-beat. Ska developed in Jamaica in the 1960s when Prince Buster, Clement "Coxsone" Dodd, and Duke Reid formed sound systems to play American rhythm & blues and then began recording their own songs. Some suggest ska dates to earlier times, however. In the early 1960s, ska was the dominant music genre of Jamaica and was popular with British mods. Later it became popular with many skinheads.Music historians typically divide the history of ska into three periods: the original Jamaican scene of the 1960s; the 2 Tone ska revival of the late 1970s in Britain, which fused Jamaican ska rhythms and melodies with the faster tempos and harder edge of punk rock; and the third wave of ska, which involved bands from the UK, other European countries (notably Germany), Australia, Japan, South America and the United States, beginning in the 1980s and peaking in the http://www.crsradio.com #crsradio #nowplaying

Ska (/'sk??/; Jamaican: is a music genre that originated in Jamaica in the late 1950s and was the precursor to rocksteady and reggae. Ska combined elements of Caribbean mento and calypso with American jazz and rhythm and blues. It is characterized by a walking bass line accented with rhythms on the off-beat. Ska developed in Jamaica in the 1960s when Prince Buster, Clement "Coxsone" Dodd, and Duke Reid formed sound systems to play American rhythm & blues and then began recording their own songs. Some suggest ska dates to earlier times, however. In the early 1960s, ska was the dominant music genre of Jamaica and was popular with British mods. Later it became popular with many skinheads.Music historians typically divide the history of ska into three periods: the original Jamaican scene of the 1960s; the 2 Tone ska revival of the late 1970s in Britain, which fused Jamaican ska rhythms and melodies with the faster tempos and harder edge of punk rock; and the third wave of ska, which involved bands from the UK, other European countries (notably Germany), Australia, Japan, South America and the United States, beginning in the 1980s and peaking in the http://www.crsradio.com #crsradio #nowplaying

In 1957 Morgan entered the Vere Johns Opportunity Hour, a talent show held at the Palace Theatre in Kingston. He won with rousing impressions of Little Richard and, shortly after that, was recruited to perform around the island with the popular Jamaican comedy team Bim and Bam. In 1959 Morgan entered the recording studio for the first time. Duke Reid, the acclaimed sound system boss, was looking for talent to record for his Treasure Isle record label. Morgan cut two popular shuffle-boogie sides "Lover Boy", a.k.a. "S-Corner Rock", and "Oh My". Soon after, Morgan cut the bolero-tinged boogie "Fat Man", which also became a hit. He also found time to record for Coxsone Dodd. In 1960 Morgan became the only artist ever to fill the places from one to seven on the Jamaican pop chart simultaneously. Among those hits were "Don't Call Me Daddy", "In My Heart", "Be Still", and "Meekly Wait and Murmur Not". But it was the following year that Morgan released the biggest hit of his career, the Leslie Kong production of "Don't You Know", later retitled "Housewives' Choice" by a local DJ. The song featured a bouncing ska riddim, along with a duet by Morgan and Millicent "Patsy" Todd. "Housewives' Choice" began the legendary rivalry between Morgan and Prince Buster, who accused Morgan of stealing his ideas. Buster quickly released "Blackhead Chiney Man", chiding Morgan with the sarcastic put-down, "I did not know your parents were from Hong Kong" – a swipe at Kong. Morgan returned with the classic "Blazing Fire", in which he warns Buster to "Live and let others live, and your days will be much longer. 

In 1957 Morgan entered the Vere Johns Opportunity Hour, a talent show held at the Palace Theatre in Kingston. He won with rousing impressions of Little Richard and, shortly after that, was recruited to perform around the island with the popular Jamaican comedy team Bim and Bam. In 1959 Morgan entered the recording studio for the first time. Duke Reid, the acclaimed sound system boss, was looking for talent to record for his Treasure Isle record label. Morgan cut two popular shuffle-boogie sides "Lover Boy", a.k.a. "S-Corner Rock", and "Oh My". Soon after, Morgan cut the bolero-tinged boogie "Fat Man", which also became a hit. He also found time to record for Coxsone Dodd. In 1960 Morgan became the only artist ever to fill the places from one to seven on the Jamaican pop chart simultaneously. Among those hits were "Don't Call Me Daddy", "In My Heart", "Be Still", and "Meekly Wait and Murmur Not". But it was the following year that Morgan released the biggest hit of his career, the Leslie Kong production of "Don't You Know", later retitled "Housewives' Choice" by a local DJ. The song featured a bouncing ska riddim, along with a duet by Morgan and Millicent "Patsy" Todd. "Housewives' Choice" began the legendary rivalry between Morgan and Prince Buster, who accused Morgan of stealing his ideas. Buster quickly released "Blackhead Chiney Man", chiding Morgan with the sarcastic put-down, "I did not know your parents were from Hong Kong" – a swipe at Kong. Morgan returned with the classic "Blazing Fire", in which he warns Buster to "Live and let others live, and your days will be much longer. 

Ska marked the true beginning of Jamaican popular music, coming to prominence during the early and mid-'60s right around the time the island was granted its independence. Ska ensembles were generally a blend of electric instrumentation and horns most popular in jazz (saxophone, trumpet, trombone). Although structurally simple, ska has a bevy of influences, synthesizing American R&B, jump blues, Jamaican mento, calypso and other Caribbean styles, big-band swing, Afro-Cuban jazz, pocomania and other local religious folk music, and European ballroom dances. Of those, the first three -- R&B, jump blues, and mento -- were the most important building blocks. Jump blues tunes -- both sax-driven instrumentals and vocal numbers by artists like Wynonie Harris and Louis Jordan -- had become wildly popular at Jamaican dance parties, with sound-system operators making frequent trips to the U.S. searching for the hottest and rarest 45s. As R&B shifted into rock & roll, less crossover-oriented American performers like Little Richard and Fats Domino also became Jamaican favorites. In 1959, when the boogie beat had become less important in rock-oriented R&B, top sound-system owners like Clement "Coxsone" Dodd and Duke Reid (as well as restaurateur-cum-producer Leslie Kong) took matters into their own hands, forming their own labels, acting as producers for local talent, and recording the music their audiences wanted to hear when it was no longer readily available in the U.S. 

HISTOIRES DE # 7 Parler de Sound sytems jamaïcains est un pléonasme, mais votre épisode de ce mercredi 05 avril pose ses platines dans une ancienne colonie anglaise, l’île de la Jamaïque.   Histoires de va s'intéresser à la Jamaïque des années 1960-1970, celle qui a vu la naissance de ces sound systems. Tenez est-ce que vous saviez par exemple que la fonction même de DJ (disc jockey) vient de cette île ? C’est en effet à ces sound systems que l’on doit cette invention. Entre COXSONE et DUKE REID, focus de quelques minutes sur les plus gros sound systems de la Jamaïque !   PLAYLIST  Jackie Mitoo - Ghetto Organ Alton Ellis - I'm Still  In Love with You Girl Clue J et his Blues Blasters - Shuffling Jug  Phyllis Dillon - Don't stay anyway  Alton Ellis - Dance Crasher  U Roy - Happy to lucky girl  The Heptones - Fattie, fattie A VOIR L'exposition "Jamaica, Jamaica !" à La Cité de La Musique.   A LIRE Bass Culture : quand le reggae était roi de Lloyd Bradley aux éditions ALLIA Le Rap est né en Jamaïque de Bruno Blum aux éditions Le Castor Astral    

HISTOIRES DE # 7 Parler de Sound sytems jamaïcains est un pléonasme, mais votre épisode de ce mercredi 05 avril pose ses platines dans une ancienne colonie anglaise, l’île de la Jamaïque.   Histoires de va s'intéresser à la Jamaïque des années 1960-1970, celle qui a vu la naissance de ces sound systems. Tenez est-ce que vous saviez par exemple que la fonction même de DJ (disc jockey) vient de cette île ? C’est en effet à ces sound systems que l’on doit cette invention. Entre COXSONE et DUKE REID, focus de quelques minutes sur les plus gros sound systems de la Jamaïque !   PLAYLIST  Jackie Mitoo - Ghetto Organ Alton Ellis - I'm Still  In Love with You Girl Clue J et his Blues Blasters - Shuffling Jug  Phyllis Dillon - Don't stay anyway  Alton Ellis - Dance Crasher  U Roy - Happy to lucky girl  The Heptones - Fattie, fattie A VOIR L'exposition "Jamaica, Jamaica !" à La Cité de La Musique.   A LIRE Bass Culture : quand le reggae était roi de Lloyd Bradley aux éditions ALLIA Le Rap est né en Jamaïque de Bruno Blum aux éditions Le Castor Astral    

A member of the classic first wave of Jamaican ska artists, Derrick Morgan was among the genre's founding fathers, emerging alongside pioneers including the Skatalites, Laurel Aitken, Prince Buster, and Desmond Dekker. Born in March, 1940, Morgan was raised in the Kingston area, exposed to a variety of musical sources spanning from New Orleans R&B to the choral music of the nearby church where his father served as deacon. At the age of 17, he took top honors at the annual Vere John's Opportunity talent show, delivering blistering renditions of Little Richard's "Long Tall Sally" and "Jenny Jenny," and in 1959 teamed with producer Duke Reid to record his debut single "Lover Boy." Morgan's follow-up, "Fat Man," was a smash throughout Jamaica, and he later scored with recordings of "Leave Earth" and "Wigger Wee Shuffle," both cut with the legendary Clement "Coxsone" Dodd.

Ska (/'sk??/, Jamaican is a music genre that originated in Jamaica in the late 1950s and was the precursor to rocksteady and reggae. Ska combined elements of Caribbean mento and calypso with American jazz and rhythm and blues. It is characterized by a walking bass line accented with rhythms on the off-beat. Ska developed in Jamaica in the 1960s when Prince Buster, Clement "Coxsone" Dodd, and Duke Reid formed sound systems to play American rhythm & blues and then began recording their own songs. Some suggest ska dates to earlier times, however. In the early 1960s, ska was the dominant music genre of Jamaica and was popular with British mods. Later it became popular with many skinheads Music historians typically divide the history of ska into three periods: the original Jamaican scene of the 1960s; the 2 Tone ska revival of the late 1970s in Britain, which fused Jamaican ska rhythms and melodies with the faster tempos and harder edge of punk rock; and the third wave of ska, which involved bands from the UK, other European countries (notably Germany), Australia, Japan, South America and the United States, beginning in the 1980s and peaking in the 1990s.

This photo appeared in the Star Newspaper on November 6, 1964.  Roy Panton who appears smiling to the right of Phyllis Dillon in the front row talk about  how this moment with the Vulcans was a happy one for him, but shortly thereafter he and Phyllis experienced a disappointment. “They went to Germany without us,” Roy said. I know that this may have been horrible for Roy at the time it happened, and still it is hard for him to remember without feeling sadness today, but I told him that had he gone, his life's path would have been altered so who knows if it was actually may have been for the better. He told me that he also had recorded a song with Rita Anderson (Marley). “At Studio One. I only recorded there once. Title was “Everyday,” but don't know if it was ever released. And by the way my first recording was for Duke Reid not Beverley. Stranger & I recorded two songs titled, “Adam & Eve b/w “Freedom Land” but Duke change the name to “Come and Hold My Hand.”

Ska Jamaican  is a music genre that originated in Jamaica in the late 1950s and was the precursor to rocksteady and reggae. Ska combined elements of Caribbean mento and calypso with American jazz and rhythm and blues. It is characterized by a walking bass line accented with rhythms on the off-beat. Ska developed in Jamaica in the 1960s when Prince Buster, Clement "Coxsone" Dodd, and Duke Reid formed sound systems to play American rhythm & blues and then began recording their own songs.[2] Some suggest ska dates to earlier times, however. In the early 1960s, ska was the dominant music genre of Jamaica and was popular with British mods. Later it became popular with many skinheads. Music historians typically divide the history of ska into three periods: the original Jamaican scene of the 1960s; the 2 Tone ska revival of the late 1970s in Britain, which fused Jamaican ska rhythms and melodies with the faster tempos and harder edge of punk rock; and the third wave of ska, which involved bands from the UK, other European countries (notably Germany), Australia, Japan, South America and the US, beginning in the 1980s and peaking in the 1990s.

Ska Jamaican  is a music genre that originated in Jamaica in the late 1950s and was the precursor to rocksteady and reggae. Ska combined elements of Caribbean mento and calypso with American jazz and rhythm and blues. It is characterized by a walking bass line accented with rhythms on the off-beat. Ska developed in Jamaica in the 1960s when Prince Buster, Clement "Coxsone" Dodd, and Duke Reid formed sound systems to play American rhythm & blues and then began recording their own songs.[2] Some suggest ska dates to earlier times, however. In the early 1960s, ska was the dominant music 

Ska Jamaican  is a music genre that originated in Jamaica in the late 1950s and was the precursor to rocksteady and reggae. Ska combined elements of Caribbean mento and calypso with American jazz and rhythm and blues. It is characterized by a walking bass line accented with rhythms on the off-beat. Ska developed in Jamaica in the 1960s when Prince Buster, Clement "Coxsone" Dodd, and Duke Reid formed sound systems to play American rhythm & blues and then began recording their own songs.[2] Some suggest ska dates to earlier times, however. In the early 1960s, ska was the dominant music genre of Jamaica and was popular with British mods. Later it became popular with many skinheads. Music historians typically divide the history of ska into three periods: the original Jamaican scene of the 1960s; the 2 Tone ska revival of the late 1970s in Britain, which fused Jamaican ska rhythms and melodies with the faster tempos and harder edge of punk rock; and the third wave of ska, which involved bands from the UK, other European countries (notably Germany), Australia, Japan, South America and the US, beginning in the 1980s and peaking in the 1990s.

Ska Jamaican  is a music genre that originated in Jamaica in the late 1950s and was the precursor to rocksteady and reggae. Ska combined elements of Caribbean mento and calypso with American jazz and rhythm and blues. It is characterized by a walking bass line accented with rhythms on the off-beat. Ska developed in Jamaica in the 1960s when Prince Buster, Clement "Coxsone" Dodd, and Duke Reid formed sound systems to play American rhythm & blues and then began recording their own songs.[2] Some suggest ska dates to earlier times, however. In the early 1960s, ska was the dominant music genre of Jamaica and was popular with British mods. Later it became popular with many skinheads. Music historians typically divide the history of ska into three periods: the original Jamaican scene of the 1960s; the 2 Tone ska revival of the late 1970s in Britain, which fused Jamaican ska rhythms and melodies with the faster tempos and harder edge of punk rock; and the third wave of ska, which involved bands from the UK, other European countries (notably Germany), Australia, Japan, South America and the US, beginning in the 1980s and peaking in the 1990s.

A member of the classic first wave of Jamaican ska artists, Derrick Morgan was among the genre's founding fathers, emerging alongside pioneers including the Skatalites, Laurel Aitken, Prince Buster, and Desmond Dekker. Born in March, 1940, Morgan was raised in the Kingston area, exposed to a variety of musical sources spanning from New Orleans R&B to the choral music of the nearby church where his father served as deacon. At the age of 17, he took top honors at the annual Vere John's Opportunity talent show, delivering blistering renditions of Little Richard's "Long Tall Sally" and "Jenny Jenny," and in 1959 teamed with producer Duke Reid to record his debut single "Lover Boy." Morgan's follow-up, "Fat Man," was a smash throughout Jamaica, and he later scored with recordings of "Leave Earth" and "Wigger Wee Shuffle," both cut with the legendary Clement "Coxsone" Dodd. By 1960, Morgan was the unrivaled King of Ska -- at the peak of his popularity, he was the first and only Jamaican artist to date to hold down the top seven slots on the national pop singles chart during the same week, generating a string of smashes including "Be Still," "In My Heart," "Don't Call Me Daddy," "Moon Hop," and "Meekly Wait and Murmur Not." In 1961, he recorded his biggest hit ever, "Housewives' Choice," and a year later -- in celebration of Jamaica's emancipation -- he recorded the first independence song, "Forward March." Morgan and Prince Buster, arguably the two biggest ska performers of the era

Born in Kingston, Jamaica, on May 24th, 1938, Campbell earned the nicknames "Prince" for his pre-music career as a street boxer and "Buster" after Jamaican Labour party leader Sir Alexander Bustamante. He fronted numerous now-obscure groups before becoming Dodd's security guard-cum–personal assistant–cum-selector. It was here where Campbell learned the machinations of Jamaica's music industry, knowledge he used in becoming his own sound system operator and the owner of record store Buster's Record Shack. Campbell's "Voice of the People" system quickly became one of the island's most revered, rivaling legends like Dodd and Duke Reid. Campbell produced and released his first single, "Little Honey"/"Luke Lane Shuffle," under the name Buster's Group in 1961, the same year he would produce ska group the Folkes Brothers' beloved "Oh Carolina." On that track, as on many subsequent songs, Campbell asked guitarist Jah Jerry to focus on the song's afterbeat — the weaker part of a musical beat — versus the more typical downbeat. The shift, combined with the use of nyabingi drummers Count Ossie and His Wareikas, would mark a huge influence on the development of ska music. Campbell would produce 13 songs during the "Oh Carolina" session, each one becoming a nationwide hit.

A member of the classic first wave of Jamaican ska artists, Derrick Morgan was among the genre's founding fathers, emerging alongside pioneers including the Skatalites, Laurel Aitken, Prince Buster, and Desmond Dekker. Born in March, 1940, Morgan was raised in the Kingston area, exposed to a variety of musical sources spanning from New Orleans R&B to the choral music of the nearby church where his father served as deacon. At the age of 17, he took top honors at the annual Vere John's Opportunity talent show, delivering blistering renditions of Little Richard's "Long Tall Sally" and "Jenny Jenny," and in 1959 teamed with producer Duke Reid to record his debut single "Lover Boy." Morgan's follow-up, "Fat Man," was a smash throughout Jamaica, and he later scored with recordings of "Leave Earth" and "Wigger Wee Shuffle," both cut with the legendary Clement "Coxsone" Dodd.1960, Morgan was the unrivaled King of Ska -- at the peak of his popularity, he was the first and only Jamaican artist to date to hold down the top seven slots on the national pop singles chart during the same week, generating a string of smashes including "Be Still," "In My Heart," "Don't Call Me Daddy," "Moon Hop," and "Meekly Wait and Murmur Not." In 1961, he recorded his biggest hit ever, 

Ska Jamaican is a music genre that originated in Jamaica in the late 1950s and was the precursor to rocksteady and reggae. Ska combined elements of Caribbean mento and calypso with American jazza nd rhythm and blues. It is characterized by a walking bass line accented with rhythms on the upbeat. Ska developed in Jamaica in the 1960s when Prince Buster, Clement "Coxsone" Dodd, and Duke Reid formed sound systems to play American rhythm & blues and then began recording their own songs.[2] Some suggest ska dates to earlier times, however. In the early 1960s, ska was the dominant music genre of Jamaica and was popular with British mods. Later it became popular with many skinheads

Eric "Monty" Morris is a ska singer, one of the foundation artists of original ska Morris grew up in the Trench Town area of Kingston and like many singers of the era, Morris started by competing in talent contests in the early 1950s, including Vere Johns' Opportunity Hour, and made his first recording with Derrick Morgan. Morris went on to record several singles for Prince Buster and Duke Reid and was the original vocalist for The Skatalites. He also recorded as a duo with Roy Panton. Morris had a hit in 1961 with the song "Humpty Dumpty". In the wake of two big Jamaican hits with "Sammy Dead Oh" and "Oil in My Lamp" he performed in the United States at the 1964 New York World's Fair as part of a Jamaican group of musicians that also included Millie Small, Jimmy Cliff, and Byron Lee & the Dragonaires. He later recorded for Clancy Eccles in 1968, including the hit "Say What You're Saying", and for Lee "Scratch" Perry in 1969. Morris left the music business and emigrated to the United States. His "Enna Bella" was used in the soundtrack of the 2003 Jim Jarmusch film Coffee and Cigarettes. His music has been included on many ska and reggae compilations.https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Eric_%22Monty%22_Morris caribbeanradioshow.com

Oh my goodness, I've been allowed on the decks again to play some ska. This Saturday all roads lead to Neuadd Ogwen in Bethesda for a night of ska with Scotland's top ska band Bombskare.If you come along you may hear one, some or all of these tunes……Tracklist1 JJ Allstars – soup2 Monty & The Cyclones - silky3 Jackie Mittoo - killer diller4 Baby Earl & The Trini-Dads - back slop5 Stranger Cole - ruff & tuff6 Roy Panton - run old man7 Prince Buster & The All Stars - madness8 Theo Beckford - ska ta brain9 Rico & Duke Reid's All Stars – magic10 Bob Marley – judge not11 Prince buster – time longer than rope12 The English beat – jackpot13 Los Hooligans – mafioso ska14 C hyman – the ska rhythm15 Tommy Mccook And Skatalites – cotton tree16 Patrick & Edwards Allstars - iron curtain 17 Dave Barker – double barrel version18 Lloyd & Glen - jezebel 19 The Soul Brothers – early bird20 Karl 'King Cannon' Bryan & The Harry J All Stars – soul scorcher21 The Soul Vendors – ringo rock

Roy Panton started his musical career at an early age, and after finishing school, decided to take his passion for music and the stage more seriously. In late 1950, Roy and Stranger Cole auditioned for Duke Reid. They subsequently recorded their first work titled “Freedom Land / Adam & Eve” under the name “The Rovers”, a name that they would not be using again given that, after the recording, each went their separate ways. Unfortunately, the recording never saw the light of day. Roy recorded some songs with Monty Morris in the studio of C.C. Dood. So, by suggestion of “Sir Coxone”, Roy Panton and Millie Small started singing together and became one of the most prolific duos of the island, leaving behind many recordings under the name “Roy and Millie”. Some of these you can find on this LP. Unfortunately, after Millie's departure to England under the management of Chris Blackwell, Roy found himself without a partner. However, this should not be for long. In the autumn of 1962, discovered by TIP TOP Label's Lynden Pottinger, Yvonne and Roy met for the first time at the West Indies Studios (WIRL) of Edward Seaga and recorded their first ever single, “Two Roads” with the B-side “Join together”. The magnificent performance of both, and perfect compatibility of 

John Kenneth Holt (11 July 1947 – 19 October 2014) was a reggae singer and songwriter who first found fame as a member of The Paragons before establishing himself as a solo artist.Holt was born in Kingston in 1947. By the age of twelve, he was a regular entrant in talent contests run at Jamaican theatres by vere Johns He recorded his first single in 1963 with "I Cried a Tear" for record producerLeslie Kong, and also recorded duets with Alton Ellis. He achieved prominence in his home country as lead singer of  The Paragans and they cut a succession of singles for Duke Reid at his Treasure Isle Studio and enjoyed a string ofhits, including "Ali Baba", "Tonight", "I See Your Face", and the Holt penned "The Tide is High" (later made famous by Blondie and also covered by Atomic Kitten). "Wear You to the Ball" was another of his hits with The Paragons, and hit the charts again when U-Roy added a Deejay verse to it. During his time with the Paragons, he also recorded solo material for Studio one (including "Fancy Make-up", "A love I can feel", "Let's Build Our Dreams" and "Ok Fred") and Prince Buster ("Oh Girl", and "My Heart Is Gone")

Uziah "Sticky" Thompson (1 August 1936 – 25 August 2014) was a Jamaican percussionist, vocalist and deejay active from the late 1950s. He worked with some of the best known performers of Jamaican music and played on hundreds of albums. Thompson found employment with Clement "Coxsone" Dodd, assisting him with running his sound system, in time becoming a deejay with the system under the name "Cool Sticky". He became one of the earliest men to record in the new deejay style, using his mouth to make clicks and other percussive sounds. As a deejay he recorded with The Skatalites and can be heard on the tracks "Ball Of Fire", "El Cat Ska", "Guns of Navarone", as well as others. While working for Dodd he became friends with Lee "Scratch" Perry, and Thompson recorded as a deejay for Perry, and for Joe Gibbs in the late 1960s, on tracks such as "Train to Soulsville. Born in Kingston, Jamaica, Lewis sang in church from an early age . forming a singing group called The Regals. By the mid-1960s, he began recording and had one of the earliest rocksteady hits with "Take It Easy" in late 1966.The track was recorded with Lynn Taitt and the Jets and is regarded as one of the first rocksteady singles.the first 'herb' song ever recorded in Jamaica, "Cool Collie". He worked for Duke Reid as an arranger and backing vocalist, and won the Festival Song Contest in 1970 with "Boom Shaka Lacka". He began working as a singer with Byron Lee & the Dragonaires, and in 1971 had a hit with "Grooving Out On Life". Lewis continued to release records, but his success after the early 1970s was limited. Lewis released This Is Gospel in 1996 on his own label, Bay City Music, founded in the 1980s.

   Trevor McNaughton had the idea of putting a group together and contacted the then fourteen year old Lloyd Brevett, who had already had success in local talent shows.[1] Brevett recruited his friend Brent Dowe and the group was formed, with Brevett taking on lead vocal duties.[1] Bramwell Brown and Ranford Cogle also had short stints in the group in its early days, and Cogle became one of the group's main songwriters.[1] The group recorded some material with Prince Buster before Ken Boothe introduced them to Coxsone Dodd's Studio One label where in 1966 they recorded "Lay It On" (one of the first records to reflect the shift from ska to rocksteady), "Meet Me", "I Should Have Made It Up" and "Let's Join Hands (Together)".[1] Lead vocal duties were now shared between Brevett and Dowe.[1] From 1967 to 1968 they had a number of hits on Duke Reid's Treasure Isle label, including "You Have Caught Me", "Expo 67", "I'll Get Along Without You", and "You Don't Need Me".[1] After recording "Swing and Dine" for record producer Sonia Pottinger, they had further hits with "Little Nut Tree" before recording their biggest hit, "Rivers of Babylon" for Leslie Kong.[1] This song became an anthem of the Rastafarian movement, and was featured on the soundtrack for the movie, The Harder They Come.[2] In the early 1970s Brevett also recorded as a solo artist, having his greatest success with "Don't Get Weary".[1] After Kong's death in 1971, they recorded for Lee Perry and Byron Lee's Dynamic Studios. In 1973, Brent Dowe left the group for a solo career. The group reformed briefly a few years later, and again in the early 1980s.

Holt was born in Kingston in 1947.  He recorded his first single in 1963 with "I Cried a Tear" for record producer Leslie Kong, and also recorded duets with Alton Ellis. He achieved prominence in his home country as lead singer of The Paragons and they cut a succession of singles for Duke Reid at his Treasure Isle Studio and enjoyed a string of hits, including "Ali Baba", "Tonight", "I See Your Face", and the Holt penned "The Tide Is High" (later made famous by Blondie and also covered by Atomic Kitten). "Wear You to the Ball" was another of his hits with The Paragons, and hit the charts again when U-Roy added a Deejay verse to it. During his time with the Paragons, he also recorded solo material for Studio One (including "Fancy Make-up", "A Love I Can Feel", "Let's Build Our Dreams" and "OK Fred") and Prince Buster ("Oh Girl", and "My Heart Is Gone"). Holt left the Paragons in 1970. By the early 1970s, he was one of the biggest stars of reggae, and his "Stick By Me" was the biggest selling Jamaican record of 1972, one of a number of records recorded with producer Bunny Lee. His 1973 album, Time Is The Master, was successful, with orchestral arrangements recorded in London. The success of the string-laden reggae led to Trojan Records issuing a series of similarly arranged albums produced by Bunny Lee starting with the 1,000 Volts of Holt in 1973, a compilation of Holt's reggae cover versions of popular hits (and later followed by similarly named releases up to 3,000 Volts of Holt). 1,000 Volts spawned the UK Top 10 hit "Help Me Make It Through the Night" (written by Kris Kristofferson), which peaked at number 6,[2] and included covers of Billy Joel's "Just the Way You Are" and "Touch Me in the Morning" by Diana Ross. http://en.wikipedia.org

Roy & Yvonne Roy Panton & Yvonne Harrison were one of the first duets in the Jamaican ska and rocksteady scenes, both singing together or as solo vocalists. Roy Panton started his musical career at an early age, and after finishing school, decided to take his passion for music and the stage more seriously. In late 1950, Roy and Stranger Cole auditioned for Duke Reid. They subsequently recorded their first work titled “Freedom Land / Adam & Eve” under the name “The Rovers”, a name that they would not be using again given that, after the recording, each went their separate ways. Unfortunately, the recording never saw the light of day. Roy recorded some songs with Monty Morris in the studio of C.C. Dood. So, by suggestion of “Sir Coxone”, Roy Panton and Millie Small started singing together and became one of the most prolific duos of the island, leaving behind many recordings under the name “Roy and Millie”. Some of these you can find on this LP. Unfortunately, after Millie's departure to England under the management of Chris Blackwell, Roy found himself without a partner. However, this should not be for long. In the autumn of 1962, discovered by TIP TOP Label's Lynden Pottinger, Yvonne and Roy met for the first time at the West Indies Studios (WIRL) of Edward Seaga and recorded their first ever single, “Two Roads” with the B-side “Join together”. The magnificent performance of both, and perfect compatibility of their voices “joint together” Roy and Yvonne in what would be one of the most requested duets in the country (continues in the record).

LIVE MUSIC :Jamaican Mento and Folk Songs Before Reggae  Mento is a style of Jamaican music that predates and has greatly influenced ska and reggae music. Mento typically features acoustic instruments, such as acoustic guitar, banjo, hand drums, and the rhumba box a large mbira in the shape of a box that can be sat on while played. The rhumba box carries the bass part of the music. Lord Flea and Count Lasher are two of the more successful mento artists.Mento is often confused with calypso, a musical form from Trinidad and Tobago. Genres of music from Jamaica:Kumina Niyabinghi Mento Ska Rocksteady Reggae Sound systems Lovers rock Dub Dancehall Dub poetry Toasting Raggamuffin Roots reggae Reggae fusion Ska Punk Sound System: Mobile sound systems that played American hits became popular in the 1950s in Kingston, Jamaica. Major figures in the early sound system scene included Duke Reid, Prince Buster and Clement "Coxsone" Dodd. In 1958, due to a shortage of new material, the first local rhythm and blues bands, most influentially the duo Higgs and Wilson (Joe Higgs and Roy Wilson), began recording to fulfil the local demand for new music. Ska is a music genre that originated in Jamaica in the late 1950s, and was the precursor to rocksteady and reggae. Ska combined elements of Caribbean mento and calypso with American jazz and rhythm and blues. The first ever ska recording was made by Count Ossie, a Nyabhingi drummer from the rasta community. It is characterized by a walking bass line accented with rhythms on the upbeat. In 1960s, ska was the dominant music of Jamaica . www.crsradio.com , www.caribbeanradioshow.com call in on 661-467-2407  email caribbeanradioshoe@gmail.com  (C)all rights reserved  caribbeanradioshow /crsradio 2014

Go #Tessanne chin #teambreadandbutter One of the most influential and prolific producers in reggae history, Bunny Striker Lee pioneered the art of the dub  expanding the parameters of studio technology like no Jamaican producer before him, he and his engineer, the equally legendary King Tubby, maximized the creative possibilities of each and every rhythm to generate a seemingly endless series of mixes. He entered the music industry in 1962 reggae singer Derrick Morgan, landing a job as a record plugger for Duke Reid's famed Treasure Isle label. By the mid-'60s, Lee was working with Ken Lack's Caltone imprint, producing his first record, Lloyd Jackson & the Groovers' "Listen to the Beat," in 1967. His first significant hit, Roy Shirley's "Music Field," followed later that year on WIRL, and  found his own label, he reeled off a series of well-received sides including Morgan's "Hold You Jack," Slim Smith's "My Conversation," and Pat Kelly's "Little Boy Blue. more at http://www.artistdirect.com/artist/bio/bunny-lee/457546#f93D4JygXQ7DmG0k.99 LOVE TRULY  brings you incredible R&B and Pop music,Love grew up in Texas, U.S.A listening to the music of Billy Ocean, Jonathan Butler, Lionel Richie, Marvin Gaye, Smokey Robinson, Bob Marley, Jimmy Cliff, The Bee Gees, Christopher Cross, Steve Perry, Pattie Labelle, Hall and Oates, Air supply and many other artist who he feels "captures the true meaning of love in their music" as he has said many times on numerous interviews.Love Truly is also a man who has a genuine heart and cares about the issues of the world that stem from poverty, abuse of women and children, world hunger, childhood diseases, breast cancer and many other issues that he says he would love to bring attention to as his name and brand grows larger. www.crsradio.com  call 661-467-2407 (c) all rights reserved

Eric "Monty" Morris is a ska singer, considered to be one of the foundation artists of original ska Morris grew up in the Trench Town area of Kingston and like many singers of the era, Morris started by competing in talent contests in the early 1950s, including Vere Johns' Opportunity Hour, and made his first recording with Derrick Morgan.[1] Morris went on to record several singles for Prince Buster and Duke Reid and was the original vocalist for The Skatalites. He also recorded as a duo with Roy Panton. Morris had a hit in 1961 with the song "Humpty Dumpty". In the wake of two big Jamaican hits with "Sammy Dead Oh" and "Oil in My Lamp" he performed in the United States at the 1964 New York World's Fair as part of a Jamaican group of musicians that also included Millie Small, Jimmy Cliff, and Byron Lee & the Dragonaires. He later recorded for Clancy Eccles in 1968, including the hit "Say What You're Saying",and for Lee "Scratch" Perry in 1969. Morris left the music business and emigrated to the United States. His "Enna Bella" was used in the soundtrack of the 2003 Jim Jarmusch film Coffee and Cigarettes.His music has been included on many ska and reggae compilations. (C) copyright  The contents of this page are private and legally privileged and confidential information, is punishable by law. ALL RIGHTS RESERVED WITHOUT PREJUDICE 661-467-2407 caribbeanradioshow@gmail.com  

Live Chat Vetran Reggae Artist Susan Cadogan and The beaufiful Starlet Chyna Nicole  Susan Cadogan is the daughter of singer Lola Cadogan, who released several 78rpm singles of devotional music during the 1950s.She spent several years of her childhood in Belize, She trained and qualified as a librarian,  Her talents as a singer led to her recording her first single, "Love My Life" for Jamaican Broadcasting DJ Jerry Lewis, Lee "Scratch" Perry was in the recording studio at the time, and was impressed by Cadogan's voice enough to record an album's worth of material with her, also renaming her Susan.One of her first recordings for Perry, a cover of Millie Jackson's soul hit, "Hurt So Good" Singer/songwriter Chyna Nicole (Tania Nicole Williams) was born in New York City to proud Jamaican parents from Kingston's Waterhouse, Carl and Yvonne Williams.  At the tender age of 5, Nicole read the the back of Michael Jackson's albums, and began her song writing techniques.  Additionally, the rich musical culture of Waterhouse, was instilled in her by her father, who was the first apprentice to the legendary U-Roy. He was an artist himself who had recorded for producers Joe Gibbs and Duke Reid. Her mom Yvonne was once a member of Reggae's first Grammy winner, Black Uhuru,Her first release was in 1994 “Love Me Tenderly” performed with LukIe D under her father's Jamaican label, Little C. This record was released under the name Nicole Williams, however, after that she decided to rename her artist name to Chyna Nicole for future releases.  Upon graduating from Howard University majoring in Radio/TV/Film and working for various media arenas including Showtime Networks, WNET, VP Records, and Westwood One Radio, she relocated to  Jamaica to record an album with her father.  

Paris DJs Soundsystem presents The Silvertones 1965-1979 (MP3 Podcast on www.ParisDJs.com) 2013-01-24 Paris DJs is celebrating the imminent release of The Silvertones' new album 'Keep On Rolling', with a 27mn mix of their hits and past recordings, from the Ska years in the 60s (with Duke Reid at Treasure Isle), to the Roots Reggae tunes from the 70s (with Lee Perry at Black Art, or Coxsone Dodd at Studio One). After albums for rubadub deejay The Lone Ranger, or sweet and soulful reggae singer Carlton Livingston, French multi-instrumentalist/sound engineer Grant Phabao keeps on bringing back legends of Jamaican music into the spotlight, so stay connected for this upcoming 15th release on the Paris DJs label! Meanwhile, enjoy this half hour history class of classic Jamaican vibes, extracted from old vinyl 45s, mixed and mastered for your optimized audio pleasure. PS Note that the podcast of mixes has ended with mix #400, but we're still publishing some new stuff on the "virtual releases" podcast, including free singles, remixes or sometimes even some mixes such as this one. Subscribe here. Tracklisting : 01. The Silvertones with Lynn Tait and The Boys - It's Real (from 'Storm Warning' 7 inch, 1966 / Treasure Isle/Doctor Bird) produced by Duke Reid 02. The Silvertones - Rejoice Jah Jah Children (from 'Rejoice Jah Jah Children' 7 inch, 1976 / Black Ark) produced by Lee Perry 03. Duke Reid and The Silvertones - True Confession (from 'True Confession' 7 inch, 1965 / Treasure Isle) produced by Duke Reid 04. Muskyteers - Kiddyo (from 'Kiddy-O' 7 inch, 1969 / Upsetter) produced by Lee Perry 05. The Silvertones - What a Situation (from 'What A Situation' 7 inch, 1977 / Trojan) produced by Jerry Maytals 06. Muskyteers - Endlessly (from 'Kiddy-O' 7 inch, 1969 / Upsetter) produced by Lee Perry 07. The Silvertones with Tommy McCook - In The Midnight Hour (from 'In The Midnight Hour' 7 inch, 1968 / Treasure Isle) produced by Duke Reid 08. The Silvertones - Smile (from 'Smile' 7 inch, 1979 / Studio One) produced by Coxsone S. Dodd 09. The Silvertones - Financial Crisis (from 'Financial Crisis' 7 inch, 1974 / Orchid) produced by Lee Perry 10. The Silvertones - He Don't Love You (from 'He Don't Love You' 7 inch, 1968 / Upset) produced by Lee Perry Total time : 27mn 05s All the original cover artworks are available on the Paris DJs blog Credits : Selection by Djouls from the Paris DJs Soundsystem (parisdjs.com) Mix and audio mastering by Grant Phabao (grantphabao.com) Artwork inspired from The Silvertones' album 'Silver Bullet' (Trojan, 1973) Links : The Silvertones : discogs | facebook | juno | myspace | wikipedia Paris DJs : parisdjs.com | bandcamp | facebook | juno | pinterest | soundcloud | twitter | youtube

 Damian Rhoden  entered the Red Label Wine Superstar Competition with the original song Who Drink Out the Red Label Wine.Munga developed his versatile style as a prodigy of the 'fireman' Capleton before grabbing the attention of the nation as a solo act. Since releasing his hit single Bad From Wi Born in 2006, Munga has become a choiced artist on, stage shows. His Flippin Rhymes, I Came To Take My Place, Not At All and Earthquake are played at parties and radio stations. His high-pitched Sizzla-like singing style has producers clamouring to voice the artiste who hopes to one day be as prolific as a Capleton, Sizzla or Bob Marley. Mr. Easy, Jamaican born, He cites Marvin Gaye, Donny Hathaway, Gladys Knight as well as Erik B and Rakim among his major musical influences. Mr. Easy was more than successful. Easy recounts how Sidney Mills, the keyboard player from Steel Pulse, helped him to write "Just Be A Lady". Easy received congratulations and encouragement from people like Patti LaBelle and Quincy Jones. The result of this early success was a record deal with Motown Records and the release of Mr. Easy's first album. 10-11pm In 2012, after 35 year hiatus, The Tennors have reunited ,George Murphy aka “Clive Tennors”, Ronnie Davis and new member Henry “Sadiki” Buckley, Jr. In 1962,  George Murphy aka “Clive Tennors” and Alvin (Cheng Cheng) formed a vocal duet called “The Tennor Twins”. They recorded their first songs for Duke Reid's Treasure Isle label with The Skatalites as session musicians. In 1967, at the invitation of Clive and Prof., Norman Davis joined the group. ‘Sir' Coxone Dodd,record their first released under the “Downbeat” label. Their song “Pressure and Slide” was their first recording as The Tennors and became the biggest hit in Jamaicafor the year 1967

  Indubious creates a sound to change music,both brothers and frontmen, Evan (Evton B) Burton, and Spencer (Skip Wicked) Burton, were born with the genetic disorder, Cystic Fibrosis. Most recently, Evton B received a double lung transplant on 7/11.Claiming their disease has always been a blessing, and making them aware of how precious each moment is. Joined by their drummer Matthew T. Wells, Indubious' foundation fans called "Indubians".Recently winning KTVL's Last Band Standing Competition, and International MMA (Global Marijuana. 9-10 The Melodians were one of Jamaica's greatest rocksteady groups, during the late '60s and early '70s that included the internationally famed "Rivers of Babylon" and "Sweet Sensation." The group formed in 1963 and included Tony Brevett (brother of Skatalites bassist Lloyd Brevett) and Brent Dowe,  plus Trevor McNaughton and  Rennie Cogle The Melodians moved over to Duke Reid's Treasure Isle imprint from 1967-68.  Singles like "You Have Caught Me," "Expo 67," "I'll Get Along Without You," "You Don't Need Me" (which featured groundbreaking chatter U-Roy), and "Come On Little Girl" established them as one of the sweetest-sounding vocal ensembles on the rocksteady scene. After "Come On Little Girl" became a hit in 1968,  8-9 Born in Jamaica,Ieye showed of her talent within her community at weddings, church activities and other such events, neighbors, friends. The debut release dubbed “FeverGrass” is without a doubt a dose of musical medicine, with over 24tracks  in the mix, the project evolves along the entire urban music spectrum, reggae, dancehall, RnB, neo-soul to afro-folk,  the album will serve up a palate guaranteed to whet the appetite of even the most discerning music lover. caribbeanradioshow@gmail.com

Augustus Pablo-Herbal Weed Dub Linval Thompson meets King Tubby in a Reggae Style-When you need a Laugh Duke Reid presents the Skatalites-Latin goes Ska Scientist meets the Space Invaders-1981-Guided Beam Prince Jammy mixing Horace Andy-Dub the Light Jah Shaka meets Mad Professor at Ariwa Sounds-H.I.M. Jackie Mittoo-Peace Treaty Don Drummond-Alipanga Rico-Jungle Music Bunny Lee presents Tommy McCook-Last flight to Reggae City Dennis Brown and Prince Jammy-Cool Runnings Rankin Joe-Steppin Down Shepherds Bush Joe Gibbs-Roots of Dub Tappa Zukie-In Dub Mikey Dread-International Field Marshall Dub Burning Spear-Farther East of Jack Culture-Prophesy Reveal