Generoso and Lily’s Bovine Ska and Rocksteady: Prince Buster’s Islam Label 9-29-2015

A Top Tune From The Maytals on Islam

Welcome Bovine Ska and Rocksteady Listeners!

This week’s program began with a massive triple version of Johnny Clarke’s 1974 tune,”None Shall Escape The Judgement.” We followed that set with another set of early reggae gems beginning with two awesome versions of The Impressions gem, “You Must Believe Me” performed by Ninety and Dennis Alcapone and the Rupie Edwards All Stars. Our mento set began with an awesome track from Roy Shurland and the Trenton Spence Quartet who gave us their take on the classic which was released on the Kalypso Label, “Matty Belly.” After two more mento cuts, we played you a set of skas which featured one of our favorites from the smooth voice of Ken Parker, “Before and After” which he recorded for Studio One in 1966. We ended the first hour with another Coxsone Dodd production, this time from Winston Stewart from 1964,”Leave Me Alone.” We started the second hour of the show with our spotlight on Prince Buster’s ISLAM label.

Another Prince Buster label for the spotlight you ask? Why yes! Two months ago, we featured the earliest Buster imprint, Wild Bells and this week, we are looking at his Islam label. In 1964, Prince Buster, under the invitation and encouragement of Muhammad Ali, attended a Nation of Islam talk at Mosque 29 in Miami. Upon returning to Jamaica, he converted from his original Christian faith to the Islam faith. Upon this spiritual change, Buster created a new imprint in honor of his conversion, appropriately named Islam. We begun the spotlight on this Prince buster label with a full set of tracks from the year of the Islam label’s foundation, 1964. One of the reasons why we selected the Islam label was the variety of artists who recorded for the label, including Lord Inventor, who you just heard from Lord Inventor was a Guayanese singer who traveled to Jamaica to cut some sides for notable producers, including Prince Buster. We also played a track from The Watermen, who were actually The Royals and they were: Roy Cousins, Errol Green, Berthram ‘Harry’ Johnson, and Maurice ‘Professor’ Johnson. For some odd reason, the pressings of Save Mama at the time, for Islam and the English press on Blue Beat listed group under the name of The Watermen, and this would be the only single for The Royals under this pseudonym. Also played in this spotlight were The Charmers, the duo of Lloyd Tyrell and Roy Willis. They were super prolific in 1964, recording for Coxone Dodd, Duke Reid, and that one for Prince Buster on the Islam label in its primary year. As the duo’s career continued, they would also record for Sonia Pottinger while continuing their recordings with Coxsone.

You can hear our show from September 29th, 2015 HERE.

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Love,
Generoso and Lily

Generoso and Lily’s Bovine Ska and Rocksteady: Pat Hardy’s Kismet Label 9-22-15

A gem from the late great Freddie McKay

Welcome Bovine Ska and Rocksteady Listeners!

This week we have a spotlight for those of you who love rocksteady and reggae as we delve deep into Pat Hardy’s KISMET LABEL! We opened up the show with two sets of ska featuring a rare release by Vic Taylor on the Pussy Cat Label entitled “Yes.” Another gem from the first two sets of ska that opened the show is “You Say, She Say” from the Sneer Townersl, a fun vocal group that we always wish had recorded more. That cut came out on Kentone in 1965. We also realize that we rarely mention the background disco albums on this blogpost and as this week contained two gem LP, we must mention Lalomie Washburn superb 1977 LP on Parachute Records entitled, “MY Music Is Hot.” The second hour featured the Eurodisco sounds of La Pamplemousse from the self-titled record that came out on AVI in 1976. After a mento set and a long set of rare rocksteady tracks, we went into the Kismet Label spotlight which began the second hour of the show.

Little is known about the Kismet label, even though it was quite prolific.Some represses of Amalgamated records also existed on the label, making us suspect that Kismet may have been a Joe Gibbs imprint. We do know that Pat Hardy was the owner of Kismet, which emerged as an avenue for releases of The Progressions, his vocal group. The Progressions original members were Pat Hardy, Tony Russell, and Milton Henry with Derrick Bucknor and Rudy Mills joining as later members. As a result of the label’s focus on the group, multiple members would take a stab at producing and arranging for the label. The group and many other Kismet recordings were introduced to England with the Pama compilation, Reggae to the UK With Love. On early tracks from The Progressions, you’ll hear Lynn Taitt and the Jets backing the vocalists and Timmy George as the producer, including the track that opened the spotlight entitled, “Give Me Love.” You’ll hear some amazing cuts on this spotlight from Dave And Ansel Collins, Freddie McKay, The Emotions and more!

You can hear our show from Sept 22nd, 2015 HERE.

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Love,
Generoso and Lily

Generoso and Lily’s Bovine Ska and Rocksteady: Ronnie Nasralla’s BMN Label 9-15-15

The Brilliant Maytals On BMN

Hello Bovine Ska and Rocksteady Listeners:

First, we wish Happy Birthday to our dear friend and Studio One artist Dudley Sibley. Over the years Dudley has been a source of vital information to our show and we really appreciate it. In honor of Dudley, we began this week’s show with our favorite track that he recorded, “Message Of Old.” We followed with two sets of rocksteady to begin the show before going into a mento set that featured another gem from Chin’s Calyposo Sextet “Woman’s Tenderness.” We ended that first hour with a set of rare ska beginning with The Monarch’s 1965 cut for Kentone Records, “All Of Me” and ending with Roland Alphonso’s mighty instrumental “Jazz Ska” from King Edwards. We then began the second hour with our spotlight of the BMN Label…

Owned and founded by Ronnie Nasralla, BMN is an acronym. B for the Blues Busters. M for the Maytals. And, N for Nasralla.

A high school classmate of Byron Lee, Ronnie was an early member of the Byron Lee’s Dragonaires. The group received their first major moment of fame when featured as the house band seen in Dr. No. Then, in 1964, Ronnie as the manager and Byron as the band leader arranged for a special dance at the Glass Bucket, an uptown Kingston club, to promote ska to Edward Seaga and executives from Atlantic records in order to represent Jamaican culture to America. With this promotion, the group traveled to America to perform on TV and in American clubs and would eventually represent Jamaica at the World’s Fair, with Ronnie choreographing the dancers for the performance.

On a more production side, Ronnie worked with George Benson, the owner of WIRL after Edward Seaga sold it to him, in order to build a recording studio in the backyard of the WIRL building. In turn, he developed the knowledge for production and began to produce the bands he managed, including the major two in the name of his label and many others that you will hear on this BMN label spotlight.

Ronnie formed the Federation of Musicians with Byron Lee and Sonny Bradshaw to prevent musicians from getting exploited, creating new rules to prevent overlong hours and new standards to creating recording contracts and paying salary. In 1966, the label won the festival song of the year with Toots and the Maytals Bam Bam Festival song. Winner of the first ever Jamaican Independence Festival song competition. Ronnie received the Order of Distinction in 2013.

Listen to the entire program from September 15th, 2015 with the BMN spotlight HERE:

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XO
Lily and Generoso

Generoso and Lily’s Bovine Ska and Rocksteady: Celebrating Pre-1962 Rico Rodriguez 9-8-15

R.I.P. Rico Rodriguez

Hello Bovine Ska and Rocksteady Listeners:

Both Lily and I are deeply saddened by the news of the passing of legendary trombonist, Emmanuel “Rico” Rodriguez, who died on September 4th, 2015 at the age of 80. Many of you may know him from his work with The Specials or with Jools Holland’s Rhythm and Blues Orchestra, but long before his recordings and performances in England, Rico was performing on the tracks of early ska and Jamaican Rhythm and Blues, and these earliest recordings are the ones we want to highlight to pay our respects to the mighty Rico. For this tribute show, we decided to examine Rico’s work prior to his emigration to England in 1962 for the second hour of the program.

Born in Havana, Cuba to a Jamaican mother and Cuban father, Rico and his family moved to Kingston as a child and attended the Alpha Boys School in the company of many future Jamaican music all-stars. In fact, his time at the Alpha Boys School allowed him to cross paths with another trombone king in Jamaica, Don Drummond, who would introduce Rico to the instrument he came to master and taught and mentored as a young musician. While learning from Don, Rico joined the Jamaica Jazz Orchestra with Don, Rupert Anderson, and Carlos Malcom. There’s a bit of contention around which track is the first recorded track by Rico. In interviews, we’ve seen The Jiving Juniors, “Over the River” as the first and in others, we’ve seen Continental Shuffle as the other. Given the dating of the record pressings, we began this spotlight on Rico’s spectacular trombone playing with Bridgeview Shuffle by the Matador All Stars.

By the time Rico left for England in 1962, he was in high demand, and as thus, it is no surprise he recorded for multiple labels and played on many many sessions.. Beyond his records for Lloyd Daley, Dada Tuari, and Duke Reid, Rico, like many artists in Jamaica, also recorded for Coxone Dodd. We heard Rico backing up Lascelles Perkins on “Lonely Robin,” recorded for Worldisc in 1961. In the late 50s, Rico moved to Count Ossie’s community in Wareika Hills, which was introduced to him by Don Drummond, who would invite Rico up to the hills after school to practice and perform. During this time, he got to explore multiple forms of music and would perform with Ossie, consequently, allowing him to perform on Ossie’s records in the early 60s.

In 2007, Rico received the Member of the Order of the British Empire award for his contributions to music. And, in 2012, he received the Silver Musgrave Medal for his musical contributions to Jamaica. We thank him for his legacy, and we send much respect to his family and to all of the artist who had the opportunity to work with him.

Listen to the entire program from September 8th, 2015 with the one hour tribute to Rico Rodriguez on MIXCLOUD HERE.

Please let us know what you think of the show via the comments and if you you enjoyed what we did, please subscribe to us on Mixcloud. It is FREE!

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XOXOXO
Generoso and Lily

Generoso and Lily’s Bovine Ska and Rocksteady: Reggae Takes A Voyage To The Moon 9-1-15

The Jay Boys And Harry J Are Going On A Moon Walk

Welcome Bovine Ska and Rocksteady Listeners!

On this week’s episode of Generoso and Lily’s Bovine Ska and Rocksteady WE WILL TAKE REGGAE TO THE MOON!

Shortly before and for years after Neil Armstrong became the first man to step on the moon, Jamaican and UK artist began churning out a wild assortment of amazing tracks dedicated to Earth’s only natural satellite. This past week we put together a two hour show featuring reggae tracks inspired by the 1969 NASA moon landing! And whether they directly address human exploration of the moon or old classics that speak lovingly about that gorgeous glowing orb, we pulled many of our favorites. We then mixed those rare and well known JAMAICAN SIDES FROM 1969-1978 in between news reports of the that moment in history and some wild late 1970s SPACE DISCO in the background! It is an exploration into deepest darkest silliness with a reggae beat!

You can listen to the Sept 1st, 2015 Reggae Goes To The Moon show HERE!

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Bovine Ska and Rocksteady 8/25/2015: Winston Lowe’s Tramp Label

A Tramp Label Classic From Leroy Smart

Hello Bovine Ska and Rocksteady Listeners:

This week’s edition of Generoso’s Bovine Ska and Rocksteady began with a two sets of ska classics and rarities starting with Red Sea, a rare vocal cut from the king of the ska harmonica, Charley Organaire and ending with Rolando Alphonso magnificent ska instrumental from 1966 for Winston Blake’s Merritone label, “Sai Pan” We rarely mention it on the blogpost but our backing album was just too good not to mention here, and that was Zulema’s 1975 disco classic, Ms. Z. After an upbeat mento set, we ended the first our with two version to version pairings, starting with Ken Boothe’s “I Don’t Want To See You Cry,” and Delroy Wilson’s “I’m Not A King.” We then began the second hour with a spotlight of the rare Winston Lowe produced label, TRAMP.

Two years ago, Generoso finished a documentary he had been working on for the previous four years on Chinese Jamaicans and their contribution to Jamaican music. From artists to producers, there is an amazing history of Chinese Jamaican participation in turning reggae into a worldwide phenomenon. Many know the names of Byron Lee, Leslie Kong, and Vincent and Pat Chin, but rarely is the name Winston Lowe mentioned. A friend of Bunny Lee, Winston Lowe ran his Tramp label in Greenwich Farm, creating some truly illustrious productions during its brief period of activity from 1968 to 1972. Amongst the artists who would stop by at Tramp, the Melodians and Lloyd Charmers would cut some of their finest sides for the label. Of the rotating artists, The Uniques recorded some of their best material at Tramp on loan from Bunny Lee, including an outstanding version of “For What It’s Worth” by Buffalo Springfield entitled “Watch This Sound,” which started this evening’s label spotlight.

Soul Syndicate backed up many of the Tramp label tracks of the early 70s, with members including Bovine Ska friend Tony Chin, Earl “Chinna” Smith, Carlton “Santa” Davis, and George “Fully” Fullwood. The band still performs today, with many of the original members performing at Don the Beachcomber in Huntington Beach every Sunday, which is an awesome thing!

You can listen to our show from August 25th, 2015 by clicking HERE.

Subscribe to the show on Mixcloud to get reminders when we post up the show, and join us on Facebook to get updates on upcoming spotlights, record discoveries, and upcoming Jamaican music performances and shows in the Southern California area!

Enjoy!

XOXOXO Lily & Generoso

Bovine Ska and Rocksteady 8/18/2015: Saying Goodbye To Maurice Roberts And A Spotlight On Justin Yap’s Top Deck Label

BB Seaton Thrills On This Top Deck Cut

Hello Bovine Ska and Rocksteady Listeners,

Unfortunately, we started off the show this week with some very sad news from BB Seaton of The Gaylads…He posted that his friend, bandmate and co-founder of The Gaylads, Maurice Roberts had passed away. “Joe” as he was affectionately called by his friends, died after a long period of illness. We first heard of Joe’s passing health when we interviewed BB Seaton back in the spring of 2012, but there was little information being released on the status of his health so this comes as a surprise. We started off our program with a few of our favorite Gaylads tracks that were recorded in the early reggae period, including “Someday I Will Be Free,” “Wha She Do Now,” and “My Jamaican Girl” as well as the version of that tune recorded by the Conscious Minds, to which Joe also passed bass. We send our love and respect to Maurice Robert’s family, and The Gaylads. RIP Joe. We ended the first hour with some rare Jamaican rhythm and blues tracks before going into the spotlight of Justin Yap’s Top Deck Label.

Born in 1944 as Phillip Yap, Justin Yap had an early entry into the music industry. As the son of ice cream parlour and restaurant owners, he had the opportunity to play music for his parents customers, setting up an in house sound system. Like so many other sound system operators, Yap realized that in order to stand out, especially to a girl he had a crush on, he had to record original music. Consequently, he began writing songs, and he recruited Ephraim Joe Henry to record a few tracks for his emerging Top Deck label, including“There She Goes,” which is the track that kicked off our spotlight on the Top Deck label. After the first recordings of Joe Henry, Top Deck was not quite a successful label, but after the arrival of Fitzroy “Larry” Marshall, the label began to gain traction with his cover of Paul Martin’s “Snake in the Grass,” which reached the number one spot in the Jamaican charts. After working with Baba Brooks and recording his hit of “Jungle Drums,” Yap began to search for more instrumentals. And as a result, he arrived to The Skatalites after finding out that they were not exclusive to Coxone Dodd through a friend. To make the most of his recording time with the Skatalites, which he offered a double rate for, Yap had one enormous session with them that resulted in Ska-Boo-Da-Ba. This outstanding record was recorded in an intense 18 hour session in November of 1964.

Yap moved to America in 1966, where he became a soldier and would eventually fight in the Vietnam War. Consequently, no Top Deck recordings exist in reggae, but thankfully, Yap brought his master tapes with him to America, and consequently, his tapes have been re-mastered and re-released over time. Sadly, Justin Yap passed away in 1999 in liver cancer, but the legaacy of his recordings have continued to live on.

You can listen to our show from August 18th, 2015 by clicking HERE.

Enjoy!

XOXOXO Lily & Generoso

Bovine Ska and Rocksteady 8/11/2015: Coxsone Dodd’s Tabernacle Label

Great Jamaican Gospel From The Marvetts

Howdy there Bovine Ska listeners!

For this past week’s show, we decided to take the spotlight in a bit of a different direction by focusing on the Gospel recordings of Coxone Dodd’s Tabernacle label. We’ve always talked about how some of Studio One’s stars recorded beautiful tracks for the Tabernacle label, and we realized it was time to shine a light on a genre of Jamaican music we’ve only briefly touched upon in the past. But, before that spotlight, we had two sets of ska, one set of mento, and one set of rocksteady to build up to the midway spotlight. In the first hour, we shared two skas from Prince Buster’s Islam label: “Country Girl” by The Charmers and “The Soldier Man” by Prince Buster himself. We also were thrilled to play the airplane opening “One Minute to Zero” by Karl Walker & The All Stars. In our rocksteady track, we included the lovely vocal stylings of The Heptones with “Cool It Amigo” and The Wrigglers with “Get Right.”

Then, we proceeded to the Tabernacle spotlight, starting off with “I Left My Sins,” a stunning Gospel recording from none other than Bob Marley and The Wailers.

As many know, Coxone Dodd was a major fixture of the Jamaican music industry. Originally trained as a cabinet maker and auto mechanic, Coxone Dodd was inspired to enter the music industry after spending some time in America as a farm laborer and then returning to Jamaica with jazz and blues records in hand, allowing him to get a jump start on his Downbeat sound system and marking his arrival into Jamaica’s music industry. From his initial sound system emerged plenty of record labels as he began to record artists. Beyond Studio One, the other familiar imprints are Worldisc, D. Darling, Muzik City, Allstars, Supreme, and C&N. While most of Coxone Dodd’s productions focused on secular music, Coxone did have a gospel label, appropriately named Tabernacle. As a lifelong Christian, Coxone recorded Tabernacle tracks on Sundays, and many artists from his secular music labels would record a gospel track for Tabernacle on those Sundays.

And after the Tabernacle spotlight, we closed off the show with a reggae set filled with outstanding cuts, including the sensational “Face Your Trouble” from Vin Morgan and The Soul Defenders.

Listen to the Tabernacle spotlight and the ska, rocksteady, mento, and reggae tracks of the August 11, 2015 edition of the Bovine Ska and Rocksteady on Mixcloud HERE.

Enjoy!

XOXOXO Lily & Generoso

Bovine Ska and Rocksteady 8/4/15: The UK “Giant” Label

A Rare Giant LP Featuring It’s Star, Dandy Livingstone

Hello Bovine Ska and Rocksteady Listeners,

Thanks for making last week’s show, our two hour tribute to Jamaican Doo Wop Covers such a success as it was the number five ranked ska show on Mixcloud last week! If you missed the show, it is here for your enjoyment: https://www.mixcloud.com/bovineska/generoso-and-lilys-bovine-ska-and-rocksteady-jamaica-covers-doo-wop/

For this past week’s show on August 4, 2015, we went back to our label spotlights by focusing on the releases of the UK Giant Label. But before we did, we did an hour of reggae and rocksteady, beginning with version to version to version excursion of Dennis Brown’s 1972 hit for producer Lloyd Daley, “Things In Life” which was released on the Syndicate label in 1972. We ended that four song set with possibly the most popular side of the night, the ruthlessly catchy 1972 Techniques Label classic by Johnny Osbourne, “Ready Or Not.” Our second set began with a version to version of the Toots Hibbert penned “Come Down” sung by Carey and Lloyd. After a mento set and a long rocksteady set, that began with a exceptional soul cut from Prince Buster called “Land Of Imagination,” Lily and I launched into the second hour and a spotlight of the rocksteady-heavy UK “Giant” Label.

Benny and Rita King distributed a lot of Jamaican music in England. In 1959, they opened up their R&B record shop in Stamford Hill where they would originally sell records, but by the early sixties, the two began to distribute their own records through their parent label R&B. Rita would often go to Jamaica to find talent and to talk to Jamaican record labels, and over their career in the record industry, the Kings redistributed Ken Lack’s Caltone releases along with tracks from U Roy, Roy Shirley, and Max Romeo, along with their star, Dandy Livingstone, who prompted the creation of one of R&B’s imprints, the Giant label, which is our label spotlight tonight. In 1967, Dandy’s Rudy, A Message to You was released on Ska Beat, another R&B subsidiary, and saw quite a bit of commercial success, and as a result, the Kings decided to open Giant as a label that same year dedicated to Dandy’s work. The label had a total of 39 issues with 26 of them including Dandy’s involvement either as a vocalist or producer. Given Dandy’s seminal role in the creation of the Giant label, we felt it was appropriate to start off with one of his great tracks for the label, People Rocksteady. Beyond Dandy works, Giant also pressed/distributed some work from Jamaica, including Albert Tomlinson’s Don’t Wait For Me and Roy Shirley’s Dance Arena.

The August 4th, 2015 show with its Giant Label spotlight is available for your listening pleasure HERE ON MIXCLOUD. If you like what we do, please subscribe to our show, its FREE!!!

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XOXO
Lily and Generoso

Bovine Ska and Rocksteady 7/28/2015: Jamaica Covers Doo Wop

The Heptones brilliant cover of the classic, “Sea Of Love”

For many years, Generoso and Lily have talked about collecting all of the Doo Wop covers we know of in Jamaican music into a show. Generoso was born and raised in a Doo Wop center, and he carried over that love to Lily, so this show was built on a great love for American Doo Wop and the humming of melodies to try to match them to what we heard in Jamaican music. Consequently, as each show happened and a Doo Wop cover was identified, we would tag and label the tracks in the hope to eventually culminate all of the songs into one grand Doo Wop extravaganza.

Finally, this past week, our celebration of Jamaica’s Doo Wop covers occurred. Despite all of our efforts to collect tracks over the years, this show took a particularly unique amount of hunting, given that plenty of the covers did not have the same name as the original tracks. Thankfully, we uncovered plenty of gems and are thrilled to share them with you.

This Doo Wop show had plenty of highlights. In the first set, Prince Buster and his All Stars showed how to improve on the slightly offensive “Ling Ting Tong” by the Five Keys. Then, in the third set, one of our favorite discoveries appeared, a lesser known cover of Gene Chandler’s “Duke of Earl” by Cornell Campbell, which emphasized how much a doo wop track could be transformed and enhanced by a reggae rhythm and vocal styling. In the second hour, we also included a 4 song set of different versions of The Moonglows’ “Sincerely” from Dorothy Russell and Ken Parker, Owen Gray, and Joe Higgs.

Listen to this special Bovine Ska and Rocksteady from July 28, 2015 HERE. Enjoy!

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