The night after the Bovine Ska and Rocksteady this week, The Rastafarians played a brilliant set at Dub Club here in LA, that was further enhanced by Scientist, who was manning the boards and spinning the band’s sound into wild beautiful experiments. We are still a bit tired as their set went very very late which is tough for a Wednesday but who’s complaining. It was great.
The opening set of the May 24th 2016 Bovine Ska and Rocksteady was inspired by my good friend Douglas Purdy, who posted Kris Kristofferson’s 1971 classic, Loving Her Was Easier which started a conversation about the famed singer/songwriter and actor. We wondered if the current generation was even aware of Kristofferson’s huge impact on music during the 1960s and 70s and as a response, I selected a few of my favorite Jamaican versions of his songs including: Ken Parker’s take on Help Me Make It Through The Night which he cut for Treasure Isle in 1972 and Glen Adams interpretation of For The Good Times, released on Straker in 1971.
After the next set of early reggae from 1971-1973, we went to our weekly mento set that started with Count Owen’s Draw Down More from the Rock Steady Calypso record which was released on Kalypso in 1968. We then ended the first hour with a long set of Jamaican rhythm and blues to get you ready for this week’s spotlight on the early Coxsone Dodd imprint, SENSATIONAL. The set of rhythm and blues began with the very first recording by famed vocalist Gene Rondo, who cut a two sides for the Magico label in 1960. We played his track with Roy entitled Little Queenie. We followed that with a rare cut from the famed duo of Joe Higgs and Roy who cut the early rude boy tune, Gun Talk for Luxor in 1961. When the set was over, we started the second hour with our spotlight on The Sensational Label…
We’ve been focusing quite a bit on reggae labels recently, and for this week’s show, we thought we should go back in time and genre to the Jamaican Rhythm & Blues. This early style had plenty of smaller producers such as BSR favorites Charlie Moo and Simeon Smith, but the era was dominated by Coxsone Dodd. The man of the Downbeat Sound System, Clement Seymour Dodd received the nickname Coxsone from the sport of cricket, far from the world of music where he would make his name. As a young man, he was a strong cricket player, and for that he was given the nickname “Coxsone” after Alec Coxon, a member of the Yorkshire County Cricket Club.
Dodd had many imprints that released R&B tracks, and Sensational was one of them. It’s a special one because there was a lot variety in sounds here, with the short life of the label including multiple backing groups and distinct arrangements. And to begin the spotlight, we’ll start off from a group that epitomized the R&B sound, The Jiving Juniors. In these early days of Coxsone productions, two of the backing bands he relied on a great deal were Rolando Alphonso and his Alley Cats and Hersang & the City Slickers.
We hope that you enjoy the show. Here is the May 24th, 2016 Bovine Ska and Rocksteady:
How’s it going, Bovine Ska and Rocksteady Listeners!
Lily and I were super excited after dancing to a fantastic set of original reggae and ska from David Hillyard and The Rocksteady Seven at La Cita on Friday night that we went home at 1AM and began pulling a massive Bovine Ska and Rocksteady for May 17th! Sure, we were a bit danced out, but we still grabbed some killer tracks for you, beginning with two sets of ska which started with Lee “Scratch” Perry’s anti-Prince Buster tune for the N&D Label in 1963, Don’t Copy! Our second set of ska began with a version to version of Count Ossie and The Upsetters’ ( the vocal group, not the Lee Perry backing band) Studio One gem, Turn Me On, which was followed by the version from Rolando Alphonso, also on Studio One in 1965, Tall In The Saddle.
A mento set followed with Percy Dixon and His Merry Boys leading the way with their version of the naughty, Ben o Dict. We ended the first hour with rocksteady to get you in the mood for the DOUBLE B Label spotlight. Part of that rocksteady set had a tune from beautiful voice of Ken Parker, from the DOUBLE D Label which has nothing to do with your spotlight label, DOUBLE B, called The Search Is Over from 1968. Yes, we did that just to confuse you. Soon, we were off to do the DOUBLE B Label spotlight! Major props to Lily for doing the research on this one as there is very little known about this small, but vital label.
The Double B label existed from 1972 to 1975, and all of the records were produced in Jamaica and based on the early releases and the name of the label, we have reason to believe that the owner of the label was Baba Brooks. Baba Brooks produced the debut single for Double D, and then most of the remaining productions were created by vocalist Glen Lee. We began the label spotlight, with Barbara Jones’s Sad Movies, followed by Sir Harry’s version of the track, both produced by Baba Brooks. Sad Movies is a cover of Sue Thompson’s track of the same name from 1961, which went to #5 on the American Billboard charts. Sad Movies is also Barbara Jones’s debut recording.
As mentioned in the introduction, Glen Lee was both a vocalist and a producer. He recorded as a singer for Double B as he produced other artists. In the early 70s, he would gain further notability as a producer for his work with George Faith. And Glen Lee’s recording studio was not too far from Lee Scratch Perry’s record shop, and this proximity would facilitate the beginning of Lee Scratch Perry’s collaboration with George Faith. We hope you enjoy the spotlight!
I don’t know too many men my age that never delved into the occasional Gilligan’s Island episode during their youth for a glimpse of Daisy Dukes wearing Mary Ann. A silly, yet borderline offensive show at times, Gilligan’s Island fit in well with the panorama of inane shows of The Beverly Hillbillies and Green Acres variety that intentionally seemed to have a bare minimum plot so that you could see an Elly May Clampett type parade around scantily-clad group of unwashed yokels to get an instant jolt of middle class superiority. There was perhaps one positive benefit from my years of watching the seven castaways fumble around the island trying to make batteries out of coconuts, and that came from of a 1965 episode entitled, “Sorry, My Island Now,” in which a lost “Japanese” sailor, ( “Japanese” because the sailor was played by Neapolitan actor, Vito Scotti) complete with super thick Mickey Rooney Breakfast At Tiffany’s-styled Asian glasses, holds the gang hostage as he is under the belief that World War Two was still an ongoing conflict in 1965. The episode is a morass of terrible racial stereotypes that were common for the time, so it is not worth hunting down, but the positive that emerged was that twelve year old me wondered if such a thing had ever occurred, and I subsequently made my way to the main library to find out, and the truth was a tough one to swallow.
The “holdouts” as they would come to be known, were Japanese soldiers who had served in the Pacific Theater who were either stationed in remote islands or cut off from official communications, and as a result, they simply didn’t know that the war was over. Or, they were dogmatic fighters who refused to believe that the war was over, even though they had heard communications of the fact but yet held firm their military appointments without conflict or found another fight somewhere else and pretended that World War Two was still happening. What boggled my mind was that some of these “holdouts” held on until the early 1990s! The last of these men, Shigeyuki Hashimoto and Kiyoaki Tanaka, returned to Japan from Malaysia. After the Japanese surrender, they joined with the Communist Party of Malaysia guerrilla forces to continue fighting against the British, only returning after the CPM laid down its arms and signed a peace treaty. The story of the “holdouts” was not wildly reported on in Philadelphia, where I was an adolescent in the 1970s, but I imagine that this was commonly known in Manila, the hometown of Death Force director, Cirio H. Santiago.
I often refer to director Santiago as the “Roger Corman Of The Philippines” as the producer/director was not only a pioneer of blaxploitation films like 1974’s TNT Jackson and 1976’s She Devils In Chains but also a production platform that helped launch the careers of Jonathan Demme, Joe Dante, and Carl Franklin. He can film action, and in the case of Death Force, he can, along with screenwriter, Howard Cohen, come up with some rich characters and dialog that is at times, dare I say, touching. Death Force begins with three American Vietnam Veterans, Doug Russell (James Iglehart, the hunky weightlifter from Russ Meyer’s Beyond The Valley Of The Dolls), Morelli (Carmen Argenziano), and McGee (played by a pre-Penitentiary Leon Issac Kennedy), who have just stolen a ton of gold from Santiago’s native Philippines. Doug just wants his cut so that he could reunite with his gorgeous wife, Maria, and who could blame him as she is played by Jayne Kennedy, fresh from her appearance at the Miss USA Pageant, but Morelli and McGee want to take their cut back to Los Angeles and become ruthless crime kingpins, which suits Doug fine, so they board a boat with their new found riches and head for home. But boys will be boys, and McGee and Morelli, like five year old kids on Christmas Eve, cannot be patient and start their Michael Corleone fantasy trip on the boat as they cut poor Doug’s throat and toss him overboard so that the greedy jerks can keep his cut too. Michael Corleone at least waited until Fredo screwed him over before having him plugged on a fishing boat. Get with the program boys!
Amazingly (though not for blaxpolitation) Doug washes up on a beach with a pulse and is discovered by two Japanese “holdouts”(Filipino actors Joe Mari Avellana and Joonee Gamboa), an enlisted man and an officer. Even though they perceive him as the enemy, the holdouts nurse Doug back to health in the hope that he can at least help out with gathering coconuts on the island. Doug makes a smashing recovery, and the officer begins to see Doug’s immense strength and size as an asset, so he begins to show him the way of the Bushido and turns him into a samurai. It is in these early scenes that Death Force begins to stand out among the usual mid-1970s action film, as these scenes on the island, which may have gotten the Gilligan’s Island treatment in Hollywood, are done tastefully and more importantly are sympathetic to the holdouts and their code of honor. The holdouts instill in Doug their particular code of honor and teach him to use the katana, and he becomes one of them. After the enlisted man tragically dies in an accident and the officer commits seppuku when a group of Filipino soldiers attempt to peaceably locate holdouts on their island, Doug returns to Los Angeles where, as you can imagine, he is looking to get some payback on Morelli and McGee. The latter now hounds Doug’s wife and makes it impossible for her to get work as a singer after she remains loyal to Doug and rejects his advances. Doug wants revenge, but as his his Japanese mentor warns him, “You never win battles in anger.”
What occurs next is what you would expect from a mid-1970s blaxpolitation film in terms of violence, but the pacing of the film becomes another positive aspect of the narrative. This could easily go down after the island scenes as a quick bang-bang revenge film, which was so prevalent in the post-Death Wish era, but Santiago allows the characters whom Doug meets to develop along with the plot, and you start to develop genuine empathy for not only our main protagonist but also those who aid him on his quest to find honor, where honor has been removed from his life. There are no quick solutions and as the film veers towards an ending, you have some much needed space between the beheadings (yes, there are a bunch) to feel the stories of all involved.
Original Trailer for Death Force
Though not as tightly put together as Mike Hodges’ masterfully crafted 1971 British gangster revenge film, Get Carter, Death Force does remain true to Doug, our hero, as Hodges’ film does to Jack Carter. Death Force is an impressive feat for a low budget film shot in the Philippines, which at the time was a breeding ground for many a schlockfest, which were quickly done to get the most bang for your dollar. Death Force is not Melville’s Le Samourai, but it does wisely incorporate the code of the Bushido, allowing that doctrine to energize the story and provide a interesting motivation, past simple revenge, for its main character which is more than I can say for any Hollywood production of its time. One can only credit the influence of Bruce Lee and the proliferation of martial arts films in the West during the 1970s for the change in the stereotypical depiction of Asians in films here in Hollywood. Sadly, this didn’t last long as the 1980s brought in an entirely new middle class generation that needed to pray on these outdated Asian stereotypes with characters like Long Duk Dong in Sixteen Candles and Ben Jabituya in Short Circuit. After John Woo and the bullet throwing Hong Kong action films of the 1990s, there was a brief reprieve from the thick glasses and funny English found in the Asian characters of 80s films, but here it is, 2016, and we have Fresh Off The Boat and Outsourced. I guess the only thing that Hollywood can ever respect from the East, is when they can depict violence like the West.
Now that summer is approaching, Generoso loves making this simple sweet and slightly sour eggplant and caper based antipasto that is quick to make (about 40 minutes) and delicious. For this recipe you will need one large Italian eggplant, 1/2 cup of capers, three medium sized tomatoes, five cloves of garlic, one cup of red wine, one red onion, two stalks of fresh basil, extra virgin olive oil, sea salt, and pepper. Let us know how yours turns out and thanks for watching! XO Generoso and Lily
Music: Ottorino Respighi’s Ancient Airs and Dances, Suite No. 1
A lovely week of weather and good eating lead into the festive May 10th, 2016 Bovine Ska and Rocksteady so we decided to do a deep and extended spotlight on Pete Weston’s wonderful, reggaerific ADVANCE LABEL which features top tune from Junior Byles, Alton Ellis, Shorty The President, Ken Boothe and many more. The spotlight, as always, begins in the middle of the show!
The show began with two sets of ska, beginning with Eric Monty Morris’s forthright tune for Duke Reid from 1964, Drop Your Sword! Prince Buster and Hazel followed with World Peace, a top cut on Buster’s own Voice Of The People label from 1963. Sammy and the Drumbago Band was next with You’ve Been Drunk which was originally released on Count John The Lion in 1963 and we ended that first set with the Spanishtown Ska Beats and King Solomon from 1964. The mento set started with a track never before played on The Bovine Ska, a mento from the Chin’s label entitled, Not Guilty, which is amazing considering we have been doing a mento set for almost fifteen years! A long rocksteady set was next and that began with a cool one from the vocal group, The Lyrics on Coxsone’s Studio One, called A Get It from 1966. That set ended with a Tommy McCook instrumental released on Sure Shot in 1967, Soul For Sale. We then got into the special one hour spotlight on the ADVANCE LABEL.
We do not know a ton about the Advance label, but we do know that it was a subsidiary of Micron Music, which was owned by Michael Johnston, Ronnie Burke, and Pete Weston. Michael Johnston and Ronnie Burke were roommates at Jamaica College who loved jazz, and the two founded Micron Music together. They soon brought Pete Weston on board, with Pete adding his production gift to Johnston and Burke’s distribution and promotion sensibilities. Pete Weston entered the world of production when he approached Herman Chin Loy. At the time, Pete wanted to leave his work in the insurance industry to become a producer, and Herman Chin Loy took him in, allowing him to work on Chin Loy’s projects. Quickly, Weston established himself as a strong producer, and he headed over to Micron Music. It is unclear when the Advance imprint opened up, but it must have been shortly after the creation of Micron and Pete Weston’s arrival because Weston’s productions dominate the releases. However, the label had some flexibility with production, and as a result, a variety of artists and producers released a handful of tracks for the imprint.
Scouty Whyte was one of these producers, recording one of Advance’s earliest releases in 1971, Ken Boothe’s Make Me Feel Alright, which is the track that kicked off the spotlight. As a producer, Pete Weston attracted quite a bit of talent to Advance, and one of the major artists was Lee Scratch Perry. Their collaboration was solidified in 1975, and Scratch would distribute records through Micron, and he would also collaborate with Pete as a producer and as an engineer on the Advance label.
The show started with two sets of ska, beginning with a lost classic from Derrick Morgan and Patsy Todd entitled Money, which was released on Voice Of The People in 1964. The set also featured It’s Impossible a pretty 1966 mid-temp ska on Studio One from the late great Delroy Wilson. For our mento set, we started with a track, courtesy of our friend, and longtime listener, Scott, who years ago gave us a perfect copy of Scandal In Montego Bay, the 1964 Sue Label LP from Percy Dixon and His Merry Boys. From that wonderful record, we played the tune, Balimbo. We then went into a rocksteady set and the wonderful voice of keyboardist Glen Adams on S-H-I (I’m Shocking) on the Lee Label. After that set of rocksteady, we rolled into our STAG label spotlight.
We’re not 100% sure of the primary owner of the Stag label, but we definitely know who was responsible the rocksteady sounds of Stag. Lynn Taitt arranged and produced most of the singles released on the label, and as a result, you’ll hear some fine rocksteadys along with pretty soul cuts in this spotlight. Born in Trinidad, Lynn Taitt began performing and creating music on steel pan at the age of eight. Around the age of fourteen, Taitt hid a guitar for his friend who had taken it from a drunken sailor. His friend did not pick up the guitar for sometime later, and as a result, by the time he returned to get it, Taitt was already learning how to play the instrument, so Taitt simply purchased it from his friend. After he learned how to play guitar, Taitt joined a group called the Dutch Brothers for a couple of years and then formed his own group. This group received an offer to perform at the Jamaica Independence celebration, and on this trip, Taitt decided Jamaica would be his new home, and he joined the stage band known as the Sheiks, kicking off the beginning of his presence in the Jamaican music industry. Despite not being labeled as the primary producer on countless rocksteady tracks, Lynn Taitt was in fact the arranger on a large percentage of that rhythm’s output from 1966-1968. On Stag, we do see him listed as a producer on the predominance of tracks, and we started off with two soul tracks from the vocalist Glen Miller backed up by the Lynn Taitt orchestra.
As far as the era we cover here on The Bovine Ska (1955-1975), Lloyd Robinson is an artist whom we love and have played frequently . During the Jamaican Rhythm and Blues, Robinson performed with Basil Gabbidon in the Mellowlarks. During rocksteady, he recorded as a member of the group The Tartans and as a member of a duo with Glen Brown, and during reggae, he recorded with Devon Russell and in dancehall, he saw fame as a soloist again.
Back in March of this year, I was fortunate to have chatted at great length with one of my favorite actresses of my youth, Mary Woronov, for an interview that I conducted for Forces Of Geek to help promote her appearance at a screening at The Cinefamily here in Los Angeles of the uproariously funny, 1982 dark comedy that Mary starred in and Paul Bartel directed, Eating Raoul. If you’ve never seen Eating Raoul, I highly recommend an immediate viewing; it is an outrageously funny, last nail in the coffin of the 1970s swinger scene in Los Angeles as its plot revolves around an exceedingly straight couple, played to eerie 1950s perfection by Bartel and Woronov, who pose as swingers to rob and kill oversexed deviants for the cash they bring as payment for a promise of fetishistic pleasure.
The midnight screening of Eating Raoul drew a full house, which seemed to surprise Mary and her costars from the film who were also in attendance, Robert Beltran and Susan Saiger, who were visibly touched that so many people came out to this old film that they viewed as more of a lark when they starred in it over thirty years ago. I, for one, was not so surprised, as I still find the film as funny and as audacious as I did when I watched it for the first time in the dorm room of my friend Ian Koss during our freshman year of college back in 1986 when we were forced to reside in a sub-leased hall at Emmanuel, a Boston-area all-girl Catholic college (it sounds cheekier than it was). I have always been indebted to Ian for picking that film out of the video store rental racks from a shop in the school’s neighborhood, the Fenway, which was, at the time, a predominantly LGBT area in Boston (again, sounds more daring than it was, but it oddly fit the film that we were watching). OK, I will say that the location of our 1986 screening made watching the film a better overall experience (Catholic guilt kicked in there), but it was the pairing of Bartel and Woronov that made it a movie that I will always turn to when I am feeling a bit off.
From my conversation with Mary earlier this year, there were a few surprises that came up whenever I mentioned her multiple collaborations with Paul Bartel. Most surprising was her hatred for a film of theirs that I have always loved, the Mazursky-esque 1989 film, Scenes From The Class Struggle In Beverly Hills, which Mary loathed due to Bartel’s desire to make a more “serious” film with no improvisation, and her love of their 1976 Roger Corman/exploitation film send-up, Hollywood Boulevard, that was co-directed by Joe Dante of Gremlins fame and Allan Arkush, who would later direct Mary and Paul in the classic Rock ‘n’ Roll High School. I was surprised by this opinion from Mary, as even though I love both her and Bartel, I had never heard of this film, but based on her effusive review, I quickly hunted down a copy.
The backstory for Hollywood Boulevard is nutty, even by Roger Corman standards… Producer Jon Davison wagered Corman that he could create the least expensive movie in the history of Corman’s New World Pictures. Corman gave Davison ten days to shoot this magnum opus and a budget of sixty thousand, which, again, is low for even mid-1970s Corman standards. As per usual in the Roger Corman factory, young talent who were already working for Roger and who were eager to direct something with any budget were brought in to helm the film. In this case, Allan Arkush and Joe Dante were tabbed for the honor of assembling a narrative from clips of New World’s previous exploitation films and whatever acting they could get out of a cast in the aforementioned time period allotted.
Our film opens when a stunt woman is killed after her parachute fails to open much to the disaffected dismay of Miracle Pictures director, Eric Von Leppe (Paul Bartel). If they are going to finish this movie, they are going to need a new stunt woman and quick. We soon meet the buxom Candy Wednesday (Candice Rialson), who has just landed in Los Angeles in the hopes of making it as a actress, and like a true exploitation thespian, Candy meets her up to no good agent Walter Paisley (the eternally shifty Dick Miller), who signs her up to replace the recently squashed stunt woman for his friends at Miracle Pictures. It’s the classic Hollywood story you’ve come to love with the bonus sleaziness of a 1970s Roger Corman production.
Candy takes to her new role as a daring stunt woman and makes friends with her fellow starlet, Jill (Tara Strohmeier) and the screenwriter Pat (Jeffrey Kramer), but Mary (Mary Woronov), the grand dame at Miracle, isn’t too happy with the way that Candy is quickly fitting into her role and becomes quite threatened. Despite the tension from Mary, the crew is off to the Philippines to shoot Machete Maidens of Mora Tau with the help of a lot of footage from previous Corman films with bigger budgets to add that certain something, but the production takes its toll as Jill is shot in the stomach. No matter, the show must go on, and they wrap this classic and head home, where they attend the premiere of their new film at a local drive-in theater. The night turns into disappointment when Candy finally realizes that she isn’t making the next Citizen Kane as she is horribly disgusted at what she sees, but she still stays with the company, even though it soon becomes clear that someone else is also not too happy with Miracle Pictures as some other foul play wreaks havoc on the set of the next film, sending everyone into a panic while they continue to work diligently to finish the film.
You almost have to invoke the Tarantino “Grindhouse” rule when watching Hollywood Boulevard, meaning that when you are making a movie that emulates something that is inherently flawed, you have the a lot of latitude in making it as messy as you want and believe me, Hollywood Boulevard is messy as it parodies the shambolic New World universe, but it is really the stars who carry you through the film. Dick Miller plays Walter Paisley as a wonderfully sweet sleaze, a kind of affectionate uncle who appears to means well, but might “accidentally” grab your friend’s ass when he is saying goodbye. Paul Bartel as the pompous director and Mary Woronov as the psychotic lead actress steal the film away , as they do in many a Corman production with their wit and larger than life presence, from the supremely adorable but bland lead character. Mary’s performance as the villainous soon to be forgotten starlet in Hollywood Boulevard recalls the absurdity and expressiveness of her role as Calamity Jane in Death Race 2000, overshadowing many of the other performances because Mary is just too entertaining in her caricature of the maniacal actress taken to the extreme. Candice Rialson does the most with her role as Candy, but, again, invoking the “Grindhouse” rule, she is, like most leads in an exploitation film, a lovely woman for you to put in the middle of the poster to sell more tickets.
Original Trailer for Hollywood Boulevard
During our interview, Mary brought up Hollywood Boulevard to exemplify the comedic talents of her late friend, Paul Bartel, who she claims was one of the funniest people whom she has ever met. As the audacious director of slop in the film, Bartel delivers every line of ridiculousness with deliberateness and the slightest touch of surprise; Bartel knows what he is saying is absurd, and he says it with contradictory seriousness and humor. A man who could improvise brilliantly at the drop of a hat to make anyone in the room burst out with laughter, Bartel proves that here and in the countless films that he and Mary starred in together for years to come, and although Hollywood Boulevard may be purposefully or accidentally rough around the edges, I am still glad that I gave it a watch. Thanks Mary.
For those who love music like we do, this last week has been a tough one to take. On April 21st, Prince and Lonnie Mack passed away. Two days later Philly soul legend Billy Paul also passed at the age of 82 and a few days before them all, the great vocalist, Lord Tanamo died at the same age of 82 as Billy Paul. A sad week indeed.
Lord Tanamo was born Joseph Abraham Gordon and was raised in Denham Town in Kingston. He began singing mento on the street and then in hotels with Cecil Lawes, a rhumba box player but eventually Tanamo would cut great mentos at Caribou. With ska quickly becoming the island’s national rhythm, Tanamo, along with Doreen Shaffer and Jackie Opel, would eventually become one of the main singers of The Skatalites. In fact it was Tanamo himself who gave the band their name as he would proudly tell me himself whenever we met.
I first met Tanamo back in 1998, when The Allstonians, who did a great job his backing band at the time, graciously brought him down to WMBR where I got a chance to interview him. I would chat with him on a few occasions after that over the years. A great singer and performer. He will be very missed by many. Before the April 26th, 2016 Bovine Ska and Rocksteady, Melanie Gordon, the daughter of Lord Tanamo, kindly asked me to read the following statement before our tribute on our program: Speaking on behalf of my family ..we would love to pass our heartfelt appreciation and thanks to you and your listeners for their tributes and kind words. We celebrate with joy, dads music forever.
We honored Lord Tanamo by opening our show with four of our favorite tracks that he sang on. Three amazing skas: You’ll Never Know (caribou-1965) , If You Were Only Mine (caribou-1965) , and Come Down (SEP-1965) and a superb mento, Little Fist (caribou-1955). R.I.P. Tanamo. Thank you for all you did.
Anglo-Indian Charles Ross as a producer in Jamaica, Charley Ross was best known for his rocksteady productions from his Flame label and from the records that were distributed in England on the Blue Cat label, a subsidiary of Trojan. Given Ross’ reach to England, it is no surprise that he would continue to work with labels there, and in 1969, the Sugar label, a subsidiary of Pye Records, the label responsible for releases from Lonnie Donegan, The Kinks, and Petula Clark, opened, and Ross was named as the production director of the label.
Ross would produce the records in Jamaica, and Pye Records would press and distribute the records in the UK and then Bell Records would distribute them in the U.S. For reasons unclear, this deal with Pye somewhat came to a close, and Sugar was then under the supervision and control of Decca. Hoping that Sugar would be Decca’s definitive reggae arm, the label giant became disappointed in the very short lived output of the label, and Sugar’s last record would be released in 1970.
Sadly, that was the last the music world heard from Charley Ross, and it’s such a shame because his productions were recorded exceptionally well. We kicked off this spotlight with the beautiful vocals of Joe White and My Guiding Star from 1969.
Sugar released two full-length LPs in its final year: Claude Sang’s World of Reggae Volume One and Charles Ross Reggae Combo’s World of Reggae Volume Two. The Two Zorro Five tracks that we played on the spotlight before our favorite cut from Sugar were supposed to be released on Sugar toward the end of the label, but given its mysterious termination, the Zorro Five singles were transferred to Decca.
As our Pat’s Label spotlight was a mix of hot ska and early reggae, we decided to start the April 19th, 2016 Bovine Ska and Rocksteady with some smooth, pretty rocksteady…Two sets worth actually, beginning with Dandy Livingstone and Play It Cool from his 1967 LP release on Giant, Rock Steady With Dandy.
A mento set followed the rocksteady sets which had a wonderful tune from The Jamaican Calypsonians on Times Record entitled, Donkey City and for the final set of the hour, we have you a fierce set of ska beginning with the Buster’s All Stars and their TV inspired song, The Fugitive which came out of Voice Of The People in 1965. After that set, we went full force into the Pat’s Label spotlight.
In terms of dynasties in Jamaican music, there is no family more prolific than the Chins. Born in Kingston, Vincent “Randy” Chin got started in the music industry working for Isaac Issa, who owned jukeboxes across the island. Vincent would rotate in new records and remove older ones from the jukeboxes. With this job, the old records were discarded, and knowing that these records, while not the newest should not be wasted, Vincent accumulated them, creating the starting inventory for the Randy’s Record Mart when it opened in Kingston in 1958.
First, Vincent recorded and produced artists in Jamaican Rhythm and Blues in the early sixties for his Randy’s label, seeing success with Lord Creator and Bunny and Skitter and by 1962, Vincent and Patricia, his wife and business partner, built the formal recording studio known as Studio 17, which would see the talents of everyone from The Skatalites to John Holt to Lee Scratch Perry to Bob Marley as the studio progressed. Besides the signature Randy’s label, during the early sixties, the Chins also created Pat’s Record as an imprint, which is the subject of our record spotlight tonight. Absolutely named after his wife, Vincent would take the helm of producing the tracks released on Pat’s Record.
While Vincent did produce the recordings, this spotlight would not be right without discussing the role of the lovely Miss Pat, the inspiration for Pat’s Record, in the Chin family music career. Pat was seminal in the creation of a one-stop record store in Kingston while Randy’s Record Mart did of course sell in house productions, it also sold the records of other producers, and those distribution deals were created by Miss Pat.
The Tuesday, April 12th edition of Generoso and Lily’s Bovine Ska and Rocksteady began with a hearty tribute to Toots and the occasion that he will be on tour again this summer after a three year hiatus due to the jerk who hit him with a bottle for no reason whatsoever. We have always loved Toots and have honored him multiple time during the twenty years of the radio show but this time means something more so we started off the beautiful cut that he and the Maytals recorded in 1964 for Coxsone, Heaven Declare. We stayed on the ska for the first two sets of the show with a highlight being BB Seaton as Bibby with The Astronauts on the Astronaut label from 1964 and Wicked Men.
For our mento set, we began with one of the many tunes featuring a mento band attached to a Jamaican hotel, which was the thing back in the day. Here we have the Montego Beach Hotel Calypsonians on the (you guessed it) Montego Beach Hotel Gift Shop Label and the song, Red Head, from 1959. Thanks as always to Mike from mentomusic.com for the information on many of the mento cuts we play on the show. An invaluable resource for us over the years on the Bovine Ska.
The final set of the first hour started with a version to version of Lloyd Young’s killer reggae from 1972 on Shalimar, Butter and Bread which we followed with The Shalimar All Stars and Bread and Butter. After a few more early reggae cuts, we launched into our spotlight of Keith Hudson’s IMDIBIMTS LABEL!
Often referred to as the Dark Prince of Reggae, Keith Hudson is an amazing figure in Jamaican music. He attended the Boys Town School in Kingston and frequented Coxsone’s Downbeat sound system constantly which would lead to also hanging around Coxsone’s studio musicians, carrying Don Drummond’s trombone to recording sessions. As a teenager, Hudson became very well known for his sense of style and his pragmatic sensibilities when it came to his music
First, Hudson was a newspaper salesman, and afterwards, he became a dental technician, specializing in fitting dentures, and from this work, he used his earnings to fund his first record label, Imbidimits, named for the patois word for dental embedments. Imbidimits featured plenty of stars, including John Holt, who recorded for Keith Hudson in 1969, and who will kick off the spotlight with “Never Will Hurt My Baby”
Zap Pow were a Jamaican reggae band, whose members have included guitarist Dwight Pinkney, singer Beres Hammond and trumpeter David Madden. They existed from 1969 to 1979. In terms of great talents at Imbidimits, the house band for the label was Soul Syndicate, who Hudson somewhat strongarmed into working with. Hudson’s muscle, Derrick Stamma Hobson, was sent to convince the group to record for Imbidimits, and though that almost led to a violent confrontation, Hudson reassured the group that he was simply a fan of the group and would like to work with them
Ken Boothe’s Old Fashioned Way put Keith Hudson on the map as a producer and after that, his collaboration with Dennis Alcapone would launch Alcapone’s career. Speaking of deejays, Hudson would also be integral in the rise of Big Youth, who recorded S90 Skank for the Imbidimts label which had the rhythm of Keith Hudson’s own We Will Make.
Trojan’s imprint Green Door would distribute Hudson productions. By the mid 70s, Hudson stopped producing and transitioned into a career as a singer. He moved to London then New York, where he signed a deal with Virgin records, who hoped he would be the next Bob Marley. Always trying to record something new, Hudson was always trying out something. It’s such a sin that he was diagnosed with lung cancer in August 1984 and passed only three months later. He was an enormous talent
LILY & GENEROSO 4EVER! 