© EXPERIENCE MUSIC PROJECT

Detail from 1961 LP All Star Top Hits on the Coxsone label
Before reggae there was…

Jazz to
Skaa
Ma i
n You don’t drive so much
city, many streets in Jam
ai
By Christopher Porter

as duck and weave in Kin

gston. Like uch of the
holes, narrow paths and ca’s capital need fixing, and the combinam
ride. The horn is your beseemingly random traffic patterns can maktio
st
Pianist Monty Alexander,friend.
e
n of pot-
fo r a wild
by side in our van. Neither 60, and guitarist Ernest Rangl
one se em in, 72, are sitting side
s particularly happy abou
today. It’s an intense plac t being Kingston
these two friends, but Ale. Touring the city brings up many good min
that plague the cultural ceexander and Ranglin see the harsh economem ories for
ic realities
nter of Jamaica and their
thoughts turn bitterswee t.
 I remember I couldn’t wait to come out here and buy the saltfish frit-
ter and the Irish moss and all the drinks. But this is where those ses-
sions took place, and Ernie was there and he did all the arranging.”
Ranglin nods and says, “Then later I was the musical director at
this place for about seven years—early ’65 to ’72.”
The mid-to-late 1950s recording sessions that Alexander is talking
about, made by jazz-loving musicians for R&B-oriented producers,
provided the foundation for all popular Jamaican music today.

J
azz came early to the island. Daniel Neely is an
ethnomusicologist who studies mento, a calypso-
sounding but distinctly Jamaican folk music that
came out of the creolization of the quadrille dance
songs that slaves were forced to perform for their
masters dating back to the 1700s. He has found
newspaper references to jazz as far back as the 1920s.

COURTESY OF SONNY BRADSHAW/JAZZ 25

“I have articles with the word jazz used as if it were not a new
thing,” Neely says. “I can say with certainty that jazz was in
Jamaica by the early ’20s, if not earlier. In fact, I have read sugges-
tions that jazz was in Jamaica as early as the late teens. It’s likely
that the Gleaner wouldn’t pay attention,” he says of the leading
Jamaican newspaper, which has published since 1834 and, until
relatively recently, ignored downtown cultural trends in favor of
the upper crust.
Neely says that the Ward Theatre, which still stands in the heart of
Duke Ellington snaps his fingers in Jamaica to Count Ossie (seated, left)
and the Mystic Revelation of Rastafari. downtown Kingston, kept a ledger of its performances. “Along with
several concerts by sailors in port in the late teens, there were numer-
The almost preternaturally calm Ranglin, who still lives in ous minstrel groups from America who could have introduced jazz.
Jamaica, far away from these bumpy streets near Ocho Rios on the Also, Marcus Garvey was organizing concerts in the teens,” he says,
North Coast, doesn’t say too much as we drive. Alexander is mostly invoking the name of the Jamaican firebrand activist and entrepreneur
silent as well, but he’s anxiously taking in the scene of the city he who is now a national hero. “I don’t know if he had jazz in them
called home until he moved with his family to Miami in 1962. He explicitly, but it’s possible that with his international connections jazz
was 17 then, and how Kingston has changed since. A couple times got to Jamaica rather quickly. However, it wasn’t until the mid-1930s
during our trip Alexander wonders if we are in a safe area. Our that organized, annual dance-band competitions began being held in
driver assures him we are fine each time, and
Alexander goes back to gazing upon
Kingston, where almost 700,000 people—
about a third of the island’s population—live,
with shantytowns right next to gated yards.
It’s not until we pull up to 220 Marcus
Garvey Drive that Alexander and Ranglin
become animated. Now called Tuff Gong
Recording Studio since the Marley family
bought it in 1981, the structure used to be
known as Ken Khouri’s Federal Recording
Studio. It was in this building, located in an
COURTESY OF SONNY BRADSHAW/JAZZ 25

industrial part of south Kingston, that histo-

ry was made.
The studio has been added on to, but
Ranglin and Alexander remember the orig-
inal structure, which is still visible from
outside the large metal fence that sur-
rounds the compound.
“Way behind the back there—” Ranglin
says.
“—with the zinc roof,” Alexander finishes. Jamaica All Stars in 1947 or ‘48. Front: Joe Harriott, Harold “Little G” McNair, Bobby Gaynair, Tommy
McCook, Wilton “Bogey” Gaynair. Back: Baba Motta, Ken Williams, Sonny Bradshaw, Sonny Grey, Von
“That’s where all the early sessions took place. Mullo, Ben Bowers and promoter Count Buckram

68 JA Z Z T I M E S > > J U LY / AU G U S T 2 0 0 4
 Kingston. Some of the bands that com-
peted in these competitions included the
King’s Rhythm Aces and the Rhythm
Raiders. A major performer of that era
was Milton McPherson. They were very,
very popular.”
Carlos Malcolm, 69, remembers his
dad playing in one of these musical
throwdowns: “In 1936 my father took
an orchestra to Jamaica called the Jazz

CHRISTOPHER PORTER
Aristocrats from Panama to play at
Liberty Hall in a competition with
Jamaican jazz musicians.” Malcolm is a
trombonist, composer and arranger
who formed the Afro-Jamaican
Ernest Ranglin and Monty Alexander in Kingston, Jamaica, January 2004
Rhythms in 1962 after conversations
with Machito and Mongo Santamaria. His group was by far the musicianship was developed on the matrix of jazz,” says longtime
tightest and most advanced ska group in the era, seamlessly blend- Jamaican broadcaster Dermot Hussey, now a programmer for XM
ing Jamaican folk music and jazz and easily mixing harmonic and Satellite Radio. “Those musicians used to play arrangements and scores
rhythmic complexities into their always grooving dance-band that they got out of England, largely, but also Ellington or Erskine
sound. He lived in Panama as a youth because, like so many other Hawkins or whoever. There was always a love for the music in the
West Indians, his trombone-playing father went there to work on country, especially among the musicians. When jazz changed to bebop
the Panama Canal. in the ’40s, Jamaican musicians were right there and abreast of what
In the early 1940s two U.S. military bases opened in Jamaica, and was happening. American music has really been like a colonizing agent
soldiers and sailors would trade records with the locals, sometimes in in that it really has permeated almost every corner of the globe.”
exchange for trips to houses of ill repute. A USO club on Old Hope The island’s 1940s big-band scene birthed two groups of musi-
Road in Kingston provided entertainment for the servicemen and cians: those who left Jamaica to make their mark on the jazz world,
work for Jamaican musicians. “World War II really decimated the big such as trumpeter Dizzy Reece, who left for England in 1948, and
bands in the United States,” Malcolm says, “but the big bands in alto saxophonist Joe Harriott, who left in 1951, and those who con-
Jamaica were going full blast all the way through the war. Because tinued to play the hotel and club circuit right through the birth of
there was no recording industry there, [the music has] been lost.” Jamaica’s indigenous recording industry in the 1950s and new musi-
“The whole tradition of the dance bands in Jamaica, a lot of that cal creations in the 1960s.
The elder statesman of jazz in Jamaica is
trumpeter Sonny Bradshaw, a lifelong
Kingston resident. The 78-year-old is sitting
in his comfy home in a T-shirt promoting
the Ocho Rios Jazz Festival, which he and
his wife, singer Myrna Hague-Bradshaw,
have run for the past 14 years. Despite being
in the hospital the day before because of a
health scare, brought about by stress from
producing a recent big-band concert,
Bradshaw is chatty and amiable.
Jamaica had just one radio station, ZQI,
in the 1940s and through most of the ’50s,
so many people used to tune in overseas
stations from as far away as WLAC in
Nashville to get their music fix. “I was a
radio experimenter, ham radio,” Bradshaw
says. “I used to build my own little set, have
my headphones on. At home, at work, I lis-
ten straight through the night. I could get
URBAN IMAGE

Armed Forces Radio Service, all the

American stations and now again BBC.
Miami [WINZ], Cuba, all that Latin music
and all that music from New Orleans. I
Ernest Ranglin is seated behind saxophonist-bandleader Eric Deans, in the late ’40s or early ’50s learned [about jazz] on radio.”

JAZZTIMES.COM 69
 trumpeter Reece, alto saxophonist Harriott, tenor saxo-
phonist Cedric “Im” Brooks and more, plus four members
of the original Skatalites: saxophonists Tommy McCook
and Lester Sterling, trombonist Don Drummond and
trumpeter Johnny “Dizzy” Moore.
“She’s great,” Reece, 73, says of Davies. “I think she
bought Blues in Trinity, one of my first records. She
used to have all my records.”
“She was a jazz listener,” Bradshaw says of Davies.
“The music of the day—she was with it. Swing, then
to the bebop period, and then we come to the Jamaican
period from ’59—ska, rocksteady and reggae.” In fact,
Sister Iggy would even have sound-system dances for
her pupils, where she would spin records from her per-
sonal collection.
“Most of the musicians who came out of Alpha were
largely jazz musicians,” Hussey says, “but they were
mostly learning on their own. Hearing recordings and
sitting down and assimilating the stuff. Don
Drummond was apparently very fond of Bennie Green.
Tommy McCook was a great admirer of Charlie Parker
and John Coltrane. If you listen to some of McCook’s
solos you hear Coltrane’s influence. And Johnny ‘Dizzy’
Moore was influenced by Dizzy Gillespie.”
“People like Ranglin and myself, we never got the
opportunity to go in there,” Bradshaw says jokingly,
because only the difficult kids went to Alpha. While
Bradshaw taught himself to read music by studying the
lessons in Metronome at the local library, he says, “We on
the outside were at a disadvantage, because they were
getting everything in there, everything: rudiments,
instruments. So when those guys come out of there they
could really play—but they couldn’t play jazz because
they played marching band and semi-classical. So we had
© EXPERIENCE MUSIC PROJECT
that little advantage over them in that way, but we had
Malcolm also cites the influence of Armed Forces Radio Service, to work to read as quickly and precisely as they could.”
which broadcast in Panama to entertain the U.S. troops working It was Sister Iggy who pushed Harriott to the Sonny Bradshaw 7,
on the Canal and played Stan Kenton, Charlie Parker, Dizzy which the trumpeter formed in 1950. “He had about another year
Gillespie and other jazz greats. “The first time I heard Count Basie’s or so, but Sister Ignatius said she liked our behavior, said we looked
‘One O’Clock Jump,’ I said, ‘Hey, this thing is for me,’” Malcolm decent, and she said, ‘I have just the boy for you.’ And she let out
laughs. “The lope of that dotted eighth [note] chugs you along like Harriott to come play,” Bradshaw says. “She really wanted him to
a locomotive. But I discovered that a dotted eighth is not really a progress. He learned very quickly because he was quite competent.
dotted eighth; it’s a triplet with the tongue missing—the middle We really played well. He stayed with us until [bandleader] Ozzie
note is missing, and that is really the essence of jazz.” Da Costa asked us if Joe could go to England with him. And Joe
To get even deeper into the music he heard on the radio, Bradshaw ended up staying there,” where he became an experimental cult fig-
got a job at an instrument and sheet-music store, Montague’s ure in his lifetime and later a spiritual mentor to black British jazzers
Musicke. “While I was there my father got me a trumpet—an old of West Indian heritage such as Courtney Pine.
trumpet. During that time there were those bands on the road, and I Alpha also fed the popular jazz-dance big bands who played
wanted to get in one of them. At that time the musicians were com- Kingston and the North Coast hotels and clubs, groups led by
ing out of Alpha, and they were the ones getting the training.” Carlisle Henriques, George Moxey, Count Buckram, Milton
Alpha Boys’ School is a legendary institution in Jamaican music. McPherson, Jack Brown, Roy Coburn, Redver Cooke, Roy White,
The Sisters of Mercy established the home in 1884 as a Catholic home John Weston, Val Bennett and more, with Eric Deans’ Orchestra
for wayward boys, but over the years it has produced some of the being one that seemed to have all the best musicians, Alpha grads or
island’s top musicians under the guiding hands of dedicated bandmas- otherwise. “Pretty much anyone who was anyone in Jamaican music,
ters and a tiny woman named Sister Mary Ignatius Davies. Sister Iggy, at some time or another, played in a hotel band, because that’s where
as she was affectionately known, died in 2003 at 81 after having served the money was,” says David Katz, author of Solid Foundation: An
at Alpha since 1939. Some of Alpha’s most famous musicians include Oral History of Reggae.

70 JA Z Z T I M E S > > J U LY / AU G U S T 2 0 0 4
 The Skatalites
Jazz in a Ska Background
The Skatalites’ influence on Jamaican popular music cannot be
underestimated—and neither can the role jazz played in influencing the
Skatalites. The musicians would often put the ska beat behind the chord
changes they cribbed from jazz songs, including the Crusaders’ “Tough
Talk,” Lee Morgan’s “The Sidewinder” (retitled as “Malcolm X”), Juan
Tizol’s “Caravan” (dubbed “Skaravan”), Duke Ellington’s “In a Mellow
Tone” (as “Surftide Seven”) and the Artie Shaw-associated “Jungle
Drums” (cut as “African Blood”). And Ken Stewart, the Skatalites’ current
keyboardist and manager, says, “Almost the entire Watermelon Man
album by Mongo Santamaria has been covered by the Skatalites.”
The Skatalites are celebrating their 40th anniversary this year—
disregarding the time apart during the many long and often acrimonious
breakups they’ve had—but with just three of its original members: Don Drummond
bassist Lloyd Brevett, drummer Lester Knibb and alto saxophonist Lester
Sterling. Sitting backstage before a show at New York City’s Knitting
Factory, Sterling remembers when jazz first grabbed him: “My first instru-
ment was trumpet. The trumpeter I was hearing about at that time was
Harry James, so I started to learn from a Harry James book—learn the
fingerings and such. Then I start hearing about Dizzy Gillespie and Charlie
Parker, and I really started listening to the bebop. I got the influence of
playing alto sax from Charlie Parker. He was playing ‘La Paloma.’
Somebody put on that record [starts humming melody]. I stay there all
KNIBB, STERLING & BREVETT BY CHRISTOPHER PORTER. MCCOOK & HAYNES BY DAVID CORIO. DRUMMOND, ALPHONSO & MITTOO COURTESY OF STUDIO ONE. MOORE BY KEITH WATTKIS

night and listen to the LP.”

Even after the Skatalites broke up, Sterling looked to jazz for
inspiration. His late ’60s hit single “Bangarang” is built from Kenny
Dorham’s version of Ernie Henry’s “Cleo’s Chant,” while “Forest Gate Lloyd Knibb Lester Sterling
Rock” is based on Parker’s “Barbados.”
Reggae historian David Katz says, “Lester Sterling and Roland
Alphonso told me that they were really happy to migrate to America
because America was the home of the jazz greats. Lester said, ‘You get
the opportunity of seeing great musicians. At that time, Miles Davis was
alive, Dizzy was alive, so you get that opportunity.’
Steve Barrow, co-author of the essential The Rough Guide to Reggae,
says, “Monty Alexander once described Roland Alphonso to me as like
‘a funky Stan Getz.’ Johnny Moore told me Roland’s favorite player back
in the day was Tex Beneke from the Glenn Miller Orchestra.” Alphonso
has also cited Illinois Jacquet, and Katz says, “I interviewed Roland
Alphonso shortly before he died [in 1998], and he was so enthusiastic
about the greats of jazz, particularly John Coltrane.”
Tommy McCook, who died in 1998, was the original leader of the
Skatalites, and Katz says, “I think the reason why Tommy was chosen to
be the leader was because he was so steeped in jazz. The legend goes
that Tommy initially refused to join the band because he said, ‘I’m a jazz
player. I don’t play ska.’” Ken Stewart says, “Tommy would have proba-
bly always preferred—before, during and after the Skatalites—to have
played pure jazz.”
Trombonist Don Drummond has received praise from jazz folks like
George Shearing and Sarah Vaughan, and Delfeayo Marsalis went to
Jamaica to study his work. But Drummond, who was influenced by
Bennie Green and J.J. Johnson, suffered from mental problems and he Roland Alphonso Tommy McCook
died in an asylum in 1969. Still, he was the Skatalites’ most prolific com-
poser. In Katz’s Solid Foundation book, singer Clancy Eccles says
Drummond was like one of those “‘crazy jazz cats from America.’ He
said everywhere you saw him he wasn’t wearing shoes. There was this
whole thing where they saw him putting bits of clay and dirt in his
Ovaltine. So they asked him, ‘What are you doing?’ And he said, ‘Atomic
energy. These are supposed to build atoms inside you.’”
While McCook was the leader and Alphonso was the people’s choice
among the Skatalites’ soloists, Caribbean jazz historian Herbie Miller
says Drummond “was the most musically advanced” of the group and
“a true visionary.” Jah Jerry Haynes Jackie Mittoo
To explain these Jamaican musicians’ love of jazz, Miller looks to the
Duke: “As Ellington suggests in Music Is My Mistress, before the ingredi-
ents of jazz came to New Orleans it made its presence felt in the West
Indies. That ingredient or a major part of it came with these people who
were brought to the West Indies. Duke went on to say that when you
ask a West Indian to play jazz, he plays what he thinks is jazz. He said
Tricky Sam Nanton and his people from the West Indies were followers
of Marcus Garvey, and bebop is the Marcus Garvey of jazz.”
It’s no wonder the Skatalites loved it so.

Johnny “Dizzy” Moore Lloyd Brevett

 Another problem facing jazz musicians was the amount of travel
they had to do in less than ideal conditions in order to play the rela-
tively few music spots spread out across the island. Even today the heart
of Jamaica is primarily rural and mountainous. Bands in the old days
had to drive over treacherous roads in overstuffed cars in order to get
from one coastal gig to another. Bradshaw says that they used to strap
the string bass and drums on top of their car, making for an unwieldy
vehicle. “We used to do Portland two or three times a month, and we
had to go through that winding road over the hills. We were coming
back one night, and we fell asleep—and the car turn over on its side.
And guess what? We didn’t turn all the way over because the drum and
bass on top! That drum and rack up there saved us.”
Feeling that Jamaica was too small for them to fully express their tal-
ents and work steadily, jazz men like Reece, Harriott, Wilton “Bogey”
Gaynair, Andy Hamilton and Harold “Little G” McNair joined an ear-
lier generation of Jamaicans such as Bertie King and Coleridge Goode
in England to seek work and broaden their horizons. “They had to go
away,” Malcolm says, who himself stayed in Jamaica until the end of
the 1960s before moving to the U.S. to be a music educator. “I know
when Wilton Gaynair went away, he didn’t want to see Jamaica again.

the liner notes, “My hero. It’s his tone, man,”

Jazz to Ska From JA
A Listener’s Guide
and Art Farmer adds: “So soulful, so mellow,
so beautiful.” So true.

Wilton “Bogey” Gaynair, Blue Bogey

JA Jazz
Monty Alexander, Rocksteady (Telarc)
with Ernest Ranglin; Stir It Up (Telarc); Yard
Movement (Island Jazz); Jamento (Pablo);
Island Grooves: Jamboree & Ivory and Steel
(Concord)
The CDs listed here are the cream of
what could be termed Monty Alexander’s
“Jamaican roots” series, where he mixes his
R&B-steeped bop piano with rhythms and
tunes from the Caribbean. Alexander has
also issued umpteen groovy trio recordings;
take yer pick.
Ernest Ranglin, Sounds & Power (Studio
One); Boss Reggae (K&K); Ultimate Ranglin
Roots (Tropic); Now Is the Time (MPS);
Memories of Barber Mack (Island Jazz);
Below the Bassline (Island Jazz); Modern
Answers to Old Problems (Telarc); Gotcha!
(Telarc); In Search of the Lost Riddim (Palm)
For a guitarist as astoundingly talented as
Ernest Ranglin is, his leader discography is as
small and his sideman credits are large. But
he’s been on a great run these past few
years with the albums he did for Island Jazz,
Telarc and Palm. Lost Riddim is especially
good because it features Ranglin with African
star Baaba Maal and his band. From the
early years, Sounds & Power, Boss Reggae
and Ranglin Roots are perfect mixes of deep
reggae and killer lead guitar. Now Is the Time
is a collection of Ranglin and Alexander’s
finest moments for the German label MPS.
Dizzy Reece, Mosaic Select 11 (Mosaic);
A New Star (Jasmine) Progress Report
(Jasmine); Asia Minor (New Jazz)
On Miles Davis’ recommendation to the
label, Jamaican-born trumpet hero and Alpha
school attendee recorded some blistering
hard-bop albums for Blue Note from 1958 to
1960. Mosaic’s essential comp has them all.
The pre-Blue Note recordings Reece did in
Britain are excellent, and his lone widely
available post-Blue Note recording is 1962’s
Asia Minor, and it’s also a keeper.
Joe Harriott, Indo-Jazz Suite (Koch); Indo-
Jazz Fusion I & II; (Redial); ; Free Form (Redial)
The Suite is alto saxophonist Joe
Harriott’s first album with Indian composer
John Mayer. While you can get the first vol-
ume of Indo-Jazz Fusion in the U.S. on
Collectables—though it’s inexplicably paired
on a two-fer with a Dixieland album—the
import edition has both volumes. Free Form
is from 1960, and while it’s not free in the
way we think of today, Harriott’s music was
breaking out of bop conventions. All these
albums feature fellow Jamaican expat
Coleridge Goode on bass. More Harriott is
out there on CD, but you’ll have to search a
bit. For more about Jamaicans and West
Indians in the British jazz scene, check out
Goode’s autobiography Bass Lines: A Life in
Jazz and Alan Robertson’s book Joe Harriott:
Fire in His Soul.
Cecil Lloyd, I Cover the Waterfront
(Studio One)
Roy Burrowes Reggae Au Go Jazz
(Studio One)
V/A, Jazz Jamaica (Studio One); Reggae
Jazz and More (Moodisc)
Studio One’s Clement Dodd was a jazz
man at heart. But he had to keep the dance-
hall dancing with ska and reggae, which is
why over his long career he produced just
three jazz albums. Cecil Lloyd’s 1962 album
Waterfront is available only on LP right now,
but it’s worth getting just to hear future
Skatalites Roland Alphonso and Don
Drummond soloing over some easygoing
swing. Jazz Jamaica, cut specifically to honor
the country’s independence in 1962, features
a who’s who of Jamaican jazzmen, including
Ernest Ranglin, Lloyd, Drummond and
Alphonso. Reggae Au Go Jazz features for-
mer Ellington trumpeter Roy “Bubbles”
Burrowes soloing over classic Studio One rid-
dims with contributions from American saxo-
phonists Clifford Jordan and Charles Davis.
The instrumental album Reggae Jazz and
More features jazzy soloing over reggae
beats, and it includes Tommy McCook,
Johnny “Dizzy” Moore, Dean Fraser and
Lennie Hibbert.
Andy Hamilton, Silvershine (World
Circuit)
Tenor saxophonist Andy Hamilton left
Jamaica for Britain in 1949, but he didn’t cut
his sweetly swinging debut album,
Silvershine, until 1991—when he was 73
years old. David Murray says of Hamilton in
(Jasmine); Alpharian (Konnex)
While he’s little known outside of British
jazz circles—and even there he’s a cult fig-
ure—Dizzy Reece describes Wilton Gaynair
as “the best saxophonist out of Jamaica.”
Sonny Bradshaw, Jamaica Big Band Live
(Jamaica Roots); Do It Reggae, 1969-1975
(Jamaican Gold)
Sonny Bradshaw’s big band runs through
Ellington as easily as they do Marley.
Available from Bradshaw at 876-927-3544;
ochoriosjazz.com. To hear the pop side of
the traditionally jazzy Sonny Bradshaw 7,
check out Do It Reggae.
Jazz Jamaica All Stars, Massive (Dune)
Imagine Mingus’ band with a ska beat
and you’ve got Gary Crosby’s Jazz Jamaica.
Excellent, richly layered jazz that still makes
you want to dance. This band is ultimate syn-
thesis of American swing and Jamaican
groove—from a crew of Brits mostly of West
Indian heritage. Their Hannibal albums
Double Barrel and Skaravan are well worth
searching out as well.
Ska
The Skatalites, Foundation Ska
(Heartbeat/Studio One); Phoenix City (Trojan);
Ska Boo-Da-Ba: Top Sounds From Top Deck,
Volume 3 (Westside); Stretching Out (ROIR);
Ball of Fire (Island Jamaica Jazz); Hi-Bop Ska
(Shanachie)
Foundation Ska is a perfectly named two-
CD collection. The double disc Phoenix City
highlights the records the band made for
Duke Reid. Ska Boo-Da-Ba features the cream
of Justin Yap’s recordings with the group and
includes the band’s take on Juan Tizol’s
“Caravan”; meanwhile, volume six of the
essential Top Deck series has the Crusaders’
“Tough Talk” done in a ska style. The killer live
album Stretching Out features the band
reunited after almost 20 years apart. And Ball
of Fire and Hi-Bop Ska are among the group’s
jazziest efforts, with a lot of room for solos;
the latter disc even features guest appear-
ances from Monty Alexander, Lester Bowie,
David Murray and Steve Turre. Also, the vari-
ous Studio One memorial albums to
deceased Skatalites Don Drummond, Tommy
McCook and Roland Alphonso are worth
 W
Not that it did anything to him, it’s just when you graduate to the e’re in the heart of downtown Kingston,
wider sphere of consciousness you tend to leave it behind.” and school kids are swarming the area
The musicians who stayed in Jamaica continued in the hotel around St. William Grant Park. Our
and club circuits and many would play the annual jazz concerts driver swings past the Ward Theatre,
that Bradshaw organized in Kingston from 1954 to 1957, with the passing goats feeding on a nearby desert-
first happening at the Ward Theatre and then at the Carib Theatre ed lot, and we head up King Street
the following year. But these concerts were the last hurrah for big- toward the bustling Cross Roads to see the Carib Theatre, rebuilt after
band jazz in Jamaica. A new sound, based in jump blues and R&B, a fire gutted its interior in 1997.
and a new way of listening to music among Jamaica’s underclass The Carib was the largest building on the island when it opened
had taken hold—and it wouldn’t let go. in April 1938, and it quickly became as important to Kingston as the

seeking out; there are many duplicate tracks

to the comps above, but there are also
swinging rarities.
COURTESY OF PETER ROTH/FREEDOMSOUNDS.DE
V/A: The Rough Guide to Ska (World
Music Network); Skatalites & Friends at
Randy’s (VP); Kings of Ska (King Edwards);
Prince Buster Record Shack Presents the
Original Golden Oldies (Jet Star; two vol-
umes); Deep Ska (Proper); Trojan Ska Box Set
(Trojan; two volumes)
These discs could all go under the
Skatalites listing as well since they played on
practically every track. The Rough Guide CD
features top-notch ska from Randy Chin’s
label, including the Skatalites’ rewrite of Lee
Morgan’s “The Sidewinder” as “Malcolm X”;
for more Chin-produced tracks, check out An early Studio One record sleeve (left) mimics one from Motown
Skatalites & Friends at Randy’s. King of Ska
compiles two albums worth of King Edwards
releases onto one CD and it includes Roland Beyond Ska calypso-sounding Jamaican folk music that
featured call-and-response vocals and
Alphonso’s “Jazz Ska.” Both volumes from Jackie Mittoo, Tribute to Jackie Mittoo
improvisations on the topics of the day. The
Prince Buster’s productions are essential, (Heartbeat/Studio One); Last Train to Skaville
comp collects Motta’s finest mento
but the second CD has both Count Ossie’s (Soul Jazz); The Keyboard King at Studio One
moments from 1951 to 1956.
“Oh! Carolina”—the first recording to feature (Universal Sound)
Rastafarian drumming—and Raymond These three excellent comps (with rela-
Count Ossie & the Mystic Revelation
Harper and the Skatalites rewrite of the Artie tively little crossover) highlight the prolific
of Rastafari, Tales of Mozambique (Dynamic)
Shaw-associated jazz standard “Jungle and deeply greasy organ playing of the
V/A, Trojan Nyabinghi Box Set (Trojan)
Drums” as “African Blood.” Deep Ska is an Skatalites’ Jackie Mittoo.
Count Ossie brought nyabinghi drumming
inexpensive, four-CD collection of recordings and Rastafarianism into Jamaican music, and
made for Duke Reid’s labels, and the two V/A, Interpretations & Improvisations: A
you can hear him and his crew in fine form
Trojans are inexpensive three-CD sets. Tribute to Reggae’s Keyboard King Jackie
on Mozambique—an album that Duke
Mittoo (VP)
Ellington coveted from Jamaican DJ Dermot
Rico Rodriguez, Rico’s Message: Monty Alexander and long-time Jamaican
Hussey during one of his trips to the island.
Jamaican Jazz (Jet Set); Tribute to Don jazz pianist, percussionist and ethnomusicol-
The Trojan set has music by Ossie and others
Drummond (Trybute) ogist Marjorie Whylie are but two of the fine
in an inexpensive three-CD package.
Original Jamaican ska star and jazz- musicians who celebrate Mittoo on this 18-
trained trombonist Rico Rodriguez has lived track CD.
V/A: Drums of Defiance (Smithsonian
in England for more than 40 years, acting a Folkways); Music of the Maroons of Jamaica
musical ambassador for the island in groups Cedric “Im” Brooks & The Light of
(Smithsonian Folkways)
as diverse as the Specials and Jazz Jamaica. Saba (Honest Jon’s)
The Jamaican Maroons are escaped
These albums highlight Rodriguez’s way This excellent collection of Rastafarian
slaves, and they kept their heritage alive
with sweet-toned solos, gutbucket ska and roots and dub reggae from the Light of Saba
through music. These ritualistic drum cele-
reggae grooves. band features loads of Cedric Brooks’ jazz-
brations are part of the Kromanti tradition,
informed tenor sax. Sun Ra and Sonny
named after a historic slave port on the Gold
Carlos Malcolm, The Royal Ska Rollins are two of his biggest influences.
Coast of West Africa.
(Jamaican Gold); Ska Mania (RPH); Bustin’
Outta of the Ghetto (BGP) V/A, Studio One Story (Soul Jazz)
Trombonist Carlos Malcolm was one of A DVD, CD and mini book about Coxsone Mail Order
the most talented arrangers and musicians Dodd’s label. The film is low budget and www.ebreggae.com
in Jamaica, and you can hear his ear for meandering, but it’s still a nice romp through Ernie B’s Reggae should be your first
harmony in full effect on The Royal Ska, Studio One’s history. stop. It has a great selection, fantastic prices
which includes the Ska Mania LP and more. and the best service.
Bustin’ was originally released on Ahmad JA Roots
Jamal’s label, AJP, in 1970 and it’s a joyful www.jammyland.com
V/A, Mento Madness (V2)
mix of funk, ska and jazz. Beat junkies will This New York City store has a nuts and
In 1951, Stanley Motta became the first
not be disappointed. bolts Web site, but if you call, chances are
person to record and release records in
Jammyland will have the CD you want.
Jamaica, and he concentrated on mento, the
73

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Apollo was to Harlem. Movies and concerts, pan-
tomimes and talent shows such as the Vere Johns
Opportunity Hour were held here. Monty Alexander
remembers the many performances he saw there. “This
place had such a big stage,” he enthuses, “and I saw
everybody from Nat ‘King’ Cole to Frankie Lymon and
the Teenagers to Louis Armstrong.”
In the liner notes to Alexander’s 1992 album for
Chesky, Caribbean Circle, the pianist tells the tale of how
he and his father cooked up a scheme for Little Monty
to cut school and see Armstrong: “I wore braces that the
dentist put on to try to straighten out my buff teeth of
the time. I found out that I could simply pull out one of
the wires to make it look like it was jooking out mi jaw.”
Sent home from school so he could go to the dentist,
Alexander ran over to get his choppers fixed and then
accompanied his father to the Carib to see Satchmo’s
afternoon performance.
The next day Alexander’s dad bought him the trum-
pet Little Monty had been asking for ever since he saw
Armstrong blow in the 1956 movie High Society.
At this point Alexander was already playing accor-
dion, and he would sit in with older musicians. “I would
go see bands play at a party or a hotel, and I would go sit
in and play with them, from when I was 10 years old.”
Alexander started seeing Ranglin play at these events,
and he was hooked on the master guitarist. Switching to
piano meant Alexander could go play jazz jam sessions,
and that’s when he could join his heroes on stage.
“This guy,” Ranglin says, pointing a thumb at
Alexander without looking at him, “from the first time I
hear this guy, we don’t have to invite him up [on stage];
we were dying to get him up.”
“I remember one thing,” Alexander says. “I come
with plenty enthusiasm. Rather than being light and
right, I was wrong and strong!”
The two share a big laugh.
By the mid-1950s Ranglin was a veteran of numerous
big bands and jazz combos, and he was one of the most
respected musicians on the island. But he was supplement-
ing his income by hanging out at the Federal Recording
Studio, cutting records for sound system operators
Clement “Coxsone” Dodd, Prince Buster and Duke Reid.
The sound-system dances go as far back as the late
1940s, but by the mid-1950s they were at their peak.
Live music, radios, records and playback systems were
out of reach of poorer Jamaicans, but anyone could hear
loud, dynamic, exciting music from the sound systems,
which boomed in the streets and lawns through home-
made speakers housed in brightly painted cabinets that
promoted the sound-system owners.
Though sound systems were a downtown Kingston
phenomenon, some middle-class Jamaicans like Alexander
were attracted to the new craze. “The sound system help
grab me away from the live music and the clubs where jazz
musicians were playing. I heard the dances going on, and
a man would drive a truck and on the back of a truck was
 a big, big homemade speaker, with all the
paintings and drawings. The most famous
men were Duke Reid and Coxsone Dodd. I
would hear this music, and I hear this bass
and the shuffle beat, and the people danc-
ing—and that grabbed me, people dancing
to this rhythm.”
The music consisted primarily of hot
jump-jazz and blues-boogie by the likes of
Louis Jordan, Bill Doggett, Rosco Gordon
as well as Afro-Cuban music by Perez
Prado, Machito and Mario Bauza, swing by
76 JA Z Z T I M E S > > J U LY / AU G U S T 2 0 0 4
Basie, Ellington, Louis Prima and Lionel
Hampton, bebop by Charlie Parker, Dizzy
Gillespie and Harold Land, vocal jazz by
Billy Eckstine and Sarah Vaughan and
dashes of calypso and mento by singers like
Lord Flea and Count Lasher.
In order to keep people coming to their
dances, producers had to find the newest,
hottest, most obscure records to entice the
crowd. Records were acquired through fre-
quent trips to America, trades with U.S. ser-
vicemen and mail order, and labels were
scratched off to foil snooping competitors.
(For instance, it wasn’t until years later that
patrons found out that Dodd’s theme song,
“Coxsone Hop,” was actually Willis “Gator”
Jackson’s “Later for the Gator.”)
By the late 1950s Dodd decided that
another way to get exclusive records was to
make them himself. He rented time at
Federal Recording Studios and hired local
jazz musicians that variously included
Ranglin, bassist Cluett Johnson, pianists
Aubrey Adams and Cecil Lloyd, trombon-
ist Rico Rodriguez, trumpeter Baba
Brooks and future Skatalites such as
drummer Lloyd Knibb and saxophonist
Roland Alphonso. They cut shuffle tunes
and hard-edged R&B exclusively for
sound system use.
Other sound-system men soon followed,
with people like Prince Buster, King
Edwards and Duke Reid turning into record
producers in order to support their dances.
But as these musicians tried to duplicate
the U.S. music that was so popular, some-
thing funny happened. The woozy, loping
beats of Rosco Gordon and the swingin’ jive
of Louis Jordan was being twisted by the
Jamaican musicians, with the second and
fourth beats being accented more heavily
than in the American music they were emu-
lating. The offbeat accents of Jamaican boo-
gie in the late 1950s morphed into afterbeat
or upbeat accents in the 1960s with the cre-
ation of ska. In this new style the guitar and
piano nipped at the two and the four albeit
in an exaggerated, highly syncopated and
clipped style, while the horn sections played
melody lines borrowed from jazz, Latin
music, mento and R&B.
Marjorie Whylie, an ethnomusicologist,
pianist and percussionist at the University
of the West Indies, says, “It felt natural.
What happened is that afterbeat of the
boogie was just taken up by horns—we had
not heard that before. What we find in ska
is a dynamic tension that is set between reg-
ular subdivisions of the beat with irregular
subdivision of the beat. So you find that
there was an ease in dropping the stress on
the afterbeat, and very often on the fourth
beat of the bar. The other thing is the har-
monic language of jazz. We have a saying in
Jamaica, ‘It nedge ya teeth’—it goes a little
against the grain. And at times you wonder
whether or not they intended that kind of
dissonance or whether it was an accident.”
Continued on page 148
 Myrna Hague-Bradshaw and Sonny Bradshaw in Kingston, January 2004

tion, were excited about the country’s ty gigs. Jamaica was a British colony until it
impending separation from British colonial achieved independence in 1962, by which
rule and they wanted to create a new style of point a class system was well instilled. “The
music for the new Jamaica. Myrna Hague- uptown didn’t like the association with

MICHAEL EDWARDS
JAZZ & SKA MANIA
(continued from page 76)
Whether the creation of the ska beat
was intentional or not is like much of the
history of Jamaican music: open to debate.
Everyone from Clement Dodd and Prince
Buster to Ernest Ranglin and Lloyd Knibb
claimed ska (or at least parts of it) as his
own invention. Popular bassist Cluett
Johnson used to call people “Skavoovie,”
and that’s sometimes considered as one of
the sources for the music’s rubric; another is
the onomatopoeic sound that a guitar
makes: ska ska ska.
Another theory behind ska’s creation is
that musicians, like the rest of the popula-
Bradshaw says, “Jamaica was in a transition-
al period, politically and socially, so whatev-
er you were doing before, this whole thing of
being part of your country’s growth, birthing
this nationalism, was what everybody was
getting involved in.”
The truth is, we’ll never know the exact
origin of ska because music doesn’t develop
in a tidy and linear fashion—and neither
does memory.
Unlike jazz sessions in the U.S., the ins
and outs of making specific recordings in the
late ’50s through the late ’60s aren’t well-
documented affairs in Jamaica. Many times
it’s hard to figure out who plays on which
record because nothing was written down.
Ranglin’s playing has appeared on hundreds
and hundreds of songs, from Bob Marley to
Jimmy Cliff, but he wasn’t credited either as
a player or as an arranger on many of the
early records because he needed to keep his
work secret to retain his better-paying socie-
downtown and their music,” Ranglin says.
“It’s hard to associate yourself with both in
those days. It lessened your ability to earn. So
Cluett Johnson, who was my bass player
most of the time, he was the person who had
his name [as leader] on the records—but that
was me. Baba Brooks’ records? That was me.”
With producers like Duke Reid, Prince
Buster and Justin Yap starting to produce
indigenous Jamaican music, the flood of
recordings that came out of the country in
the 1960s is astounding. “There were times
when we didn’t even know what the guy’s
going to sing,” Ranglin says, “and you have
to try to tailor this—cut this up, put that
down—and eventually we get a tune. It was
done so fast that I don’t know how we used
to do those things,” he laughs.
It wasn’t until 1963 that Dodd opened his
own facility, Jamaican Recording and
Publishing Studio—aka Studio One—at 13
Brentford Road in a former jazz nightclub,

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148 JA Z Z T I M E S > > J U LY / AU G U S T 2 0 0 4


the End. This allowed him the freedom to
cut as much music as he wanted, for retail or
for sound-system exclusives, and he needed a
core group of skilled musicians who could
tackle tune after tune with very little practice.
Many of the nine musicians who went on to
call themselves the Skatalites for the brief
period of May 1964 to August 1965 were the
primary members of that house band.
In fact, the Skatalites musicians free-
lanced for all of the producers because of
their ability to adapt to any style, play it
well and work efficiently. But they were
also rebels, as evidenced by their song
titles and their embracing of Rastafarian
ideals about repatriation to Africa. In fact
Knibb learned the burru style of African
drumming from hanging out in the
Wareika Hills Rasta camp with Count
Ossie, who was a favorite of Duke
Ellington and whom Randy Weston
invited to play at the Newport Jazz
Festival in 1973. Don Drummond and
Johnny “Dizzy” Moore were also frequent
participants in Count Ossie’s “grounda-
tions,” which included a lot of drums, a
Carlos Malcolm in an early 1960s publicity shot
Miller says. “Listen to ‘Mesopotamia,’ ‘Far
East,’ ‘Eastern Standard Time,’ ‘Addis
Ababa,’ ‘Beardman Shuffle,’ and you find
him making these statements not only in
song titles but in tonality and mood that is
all about imagination and memory and
retention of roots culture.”
Because of the Skatalites’ “Marcus Garvey
spirit,” the more presentable Byron Lee and
the Dragonaires received the government’s
nod to represent Jamaica and promote ska at
the 1964 World’s Fair in New York City.
But other than the odd hit single—such
as the Ernest Ranglin-arranged Millie Small
lot of improvisation and a lot of weed. single “My Boy Lollipop”—ska didn’t catch
Ethnomusicologist Herbie Miller says on in America.
unequivocally that the Skatalites’ Don “It was too fast, it just keeps going. That
Drummond “made Marley what Marley may have been one reason why [the ska
is.” Miller is writing a dissertation titled period] didn’t last long: You couldn’t dance
Syncopated Rhythms: Jazz and Caribbean all night to it—the Americans couldn’t,”
Culture; he also managed Peter Tosh for a Bradshaw laughs. “The ska was very ener-
while in the 1970s, ran the short-lived Blue getic, because we could play and we wanted
Monk jazz club in Kingston and then man- to stretch out. We’re coming from bebop.
aged the reformed Skatalites for several That may have been the spearhead.”
years in the 1980s. “Marley blew up what Ska started slowing down by the mid-
Drummond’s trombone was saying,” 1960s, with bass lines becoming more
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COURTESY OF SONNY BRADSHAW/JAZZ 25
prominent and vocalists rather than instru-
mentalists handling the songs’ melody
lines. One tale has it that the summer of
1966 was so hot in Jamaica that the pro-
ducers decided to cut the ska tempo by
half so the sound systems wouldn’t wear
out their dancer-patrons so early into
the night. Whatever the case, the new
music, dubbed rocksteady, became sim-
pler, and jazz-level skills weren’t necessary.
Rocksteady morphed into the slightly pep-
pier reggae at the end of the ’60s; reggae
birthed dub music in the 1970s. Even
today the roots of ska can be heard in
the computer-driven, intensely rhythmic
Jamaican style called dancehall, which
150 JA Z Z T I M E S > > J U LY / AU G U S T 2 0 0 4
Late ‘50s All Star big-band rehearsal: Rico Rodriguez, Don Drummond,
Carlos Malcolm, Rupert Anderson, Tony Brown, Blue Buchanan, Jimmy Lee
relies on almost
no musicianship
whatsoever.
“There are two
strains of musicians
from Jamaica,”
says Gary Crosby,
a British bassist
and nephew of
Ernest Ranglin
who leads the remarkable Jazz Jamaica All
Stars—mostly musicians of West Indian
heritage who tackle Wayne Shorter and the
Skatalites with equal vigor and invention.
“There’s the guys who were Jamaican
musicians who listened to jazz and were
associated with ska, but there was another
strain of musicians who were jazz musi-
cians who were Jamaican. I used to think it
was split by class lines, but that was proven
wrong to me by listening to people like
Cedric Brooks. It’s more based on age.
People like Sonny Bradshaw are jazz peo-
ple through and through—they know har-
mony, they can talk about harmony and
they’ve been studying it from pre-bebop.”
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F
our months after our
Kingston tour, Monty
Alexander and Ernest
Ranglin are at the stu-
dios of XM Satellite
Radio in Washington,
D.C. As the twosome soundchecks, their old
friend Dermot Hussey prepares for his inter-
view with them. Alexander and Ranglin are in
town to promote their new CD, Rocksteady
(Telarc), which takes on such Jamaican clas-
sics as Don Drummond’s “Confucius,”
Winston Riley’s “Double Barrel” and “Stalag
17,” Augustus Pablo’s “East of the River
Nile,” the Congos’ “Row Fisherman,” Toots
and the Maytals’ “Pressure Drop” and Bob
Marley’s “Redemption Song.”
Rocksteady was recorded with a full
band, which allows for the leaders to stretch
out on their solos while the ska, rocksteady
and reggae riddims provide the thrust. But
how will the duo of Alexander and Ranglin
approach such groove-heavy material with-
out a percussionist or bassist?
Easy. To echo Gary Crosby, they’re jazz
musicians through and through. JT