Author: haugustyn

Don Drummond’s birth certificate.

Donald Willis Drummond was born on this date, March 12, 1934. He would have been 82 today, had he not died on May 6, 1969 at Bellevue Mental Hospital. The above birth certificate took me about two years to secure from the Registrar General in Kingston but I wanted to prove once and for all when he was born, as the record from Alpha Boys School has him born in 1932. This is a mistake, for whatever reason. He first lived at 26 Potters Row in Kingston, and his mother, Doris Munroe, was a domestic. You can read more about that in my book, Don Drummond: The Genius and Tragedy of the World’s Greatest Trombonist by going to skabook.com. I was even able to find classified ads for her domestic services and more information about her, but little on his father, Uriah Adolphus Drummond, though I did find his birth record, as well as Doris’s birth record, pictured below.

Uriah Adolphus Drummond’s birth record.

Doris Maud Munroe’s birth record.

To celebrate Don Drummond’s birthday, I would like to offer the foreword that Delfeayo Marsalis wrote for my book. Marsalis, as you may know, recently performed at one of the Grounation events last month at the Institute of Jamaica courtesy of the Jamaica Music Museum. Carter Van Pelt wrote an extraordinary summary and review of this performance for his blog that you most definitely need to read HERE. Delfeayo Marsalis is one of the top trombonists, composers, and producers in jazz today. He is a member of the distinguished Marsalis family, father Ellis and brothers Branford, Wynton and Jason who earned the nation’s highest jazz honor, a National Endowment for the Arts Jazz Masters Award, in 2011. He considers Don Drummond to be a masterful trombonist. The following is his foreword, for which I am very grateful and feel it is a perfect homage to the great Don Drummond on the day of his birth:

In 1985, I was returning to the Brooklyn residence of my eldest brothers Branford and Wynton from a sojourn in Manhattan late one evening. As fate would have it, the Jamaican taxi driver recognized my slide trombone and proclaimed, “You know about Don Drummond and the Ska-talites?” At that point it occurred to me that I had indeed seen in Branford’s collection several albums by this particular group, but—not being interested in Ska music at the time—had not checked them out. The driver continued to rave about Drummond being one of the greatest in history, which I basically accepted with a few grains of salt until he asserted, “J.J. Johnson went to Jamaica just to hear Drummond his legend was so strong!” The matter had suddenly become serious business with the utterance of such a proclamation. Johnson was not only my primary jazz influence, but he was also one of America’s great jazz masters, known for his precision and profound command on the trombone at all tempos and volumes. Would J.J. have traveled to Kingston, Jamaica solely to hear Don Drummond?

I immediately scoured the library and discovered three Ska-talites albums. I listened and was overcome by the pathos and immediacy of Drummond’s improvisations, his melodies expressing an adolescent innocence undergirded with the knowledge of an elder. Extroverted, eccentric and self-taught, Don Drummond’s trombone style has an earthiness and songlike quality that makes it immediately identifiable. His melodies are so simple, perfectly constructed and memorable that they are reminiscent of children’s songs; each note placed in exactly the right place at exactly the right time. He managed to consistently maintain certain qualities not steadfastly present in Johnson’s style.
My interest in Drummond led me to the Brooklyn storefront studio of Mr. Coxsone Dodd at some point in the mid 1990s and eventually to a few trips to Kingston, Jamaica. I found that many of the older people were aware of Drummond and his music. His celebrity was such that stories were shared with equal aplomb about his extraordinary musicianship as well as his peculiarities. He not only worked the women into frenzies with his aggressive rhythms, but he also would cause many to weep at the sorrow he expressed on ballads. During the 1950s-60s, Jamaica was a hotbed of musical talent featuring the likes of Roland Alfonso, Johnny Moore, Lenny Hibbert and Tommy McCook. Don Drummond, it turns out, was able to channel emotions from gentility to absolute rage through his music with as much authority as anyone to ever play trombone.

Trips to Jamaica were learning experiences on many levels; however, the greatest single lesson for me concerned understanding and accepting the traditions of the Jamaican people. Although they were respectful towards me and happy to assist in my efforts to learn about this musical giant, they still let me know in subtle ways that they were Jamaican and I was not. When they wanted to have private conversations, the language became unrecognizable. If there were even a hint of impatience from me, actions slowed down to a snail’s pace. These quirks gave me a sense of how strong nationalism and pride was in the Jamaican people. As a whole, the individuals I encountered had a way of thinking that was centered on honesty, integrity and good old common sense. While they would never admit to the reality as such, these unique qualities of a people, when codified properly, can form the backbone of their art.

Bob Marley gave a voice and hope to all Jamaicans during the 60s and 70s with his songs of political awareness and protest. The individual who influenced Marley the most with songs that celebrated Jamaica and its unique characteristics was Don Drummond. Marley spent a period of time performing with Drummond and clearly knew of his brilliance. Marley’s voice covers the same basic range of Drummond’s trombone and as further proof, his “Crazy Baldheads” is pretty much Drummond’s “Eastern Standard Time” in a minor key! Even without lyrics, the trombonist displayed his socio-political awareness with songs entitled “Man In the Street,” “President Kennedy,” “Lee Harvey Oswald” and “Reload.” Marley was able to take Drummond’s music to the ultimate level, internalizing its strongest characteristics and incorporating them in his own style to great advantage.

Whether by Drummond’s own design or that of producer Coxsone Dodd, the Skatalites performed all of their songs with the famous guitar-led ska (boom-chick, boom-chick) beat. Certainly, a studied and adventurous musician like Drummond was capable of creating less formulaic compositions, and his desire to do so is evidenced in at least one example, “Far East.” This song highlights an awareness of other cultures and musical contributions as it is a tribute to Eastern music in Jamaican terms. One captivating aspect of ska is the degree to which it is specifically localized (from the people) and universal (for all people) simultaneously. While Don Drummond’s distinctive sound was strengthened by consistent performance with the same Jamaican musicians, if he had been afforded the opportunity to share experiences with musicians from different cultures as is customary today, his music could have expanded to even greater heights.

Speculations aside, we celebrate all that Don Drummond accomplished as a great musician and representative for the Jamaican people. Thanks to his ingenuity, ska remains the only music in the world in which trombone plays the lead voice with trumpet and saxophone playing the secondary harmonies. Don Drummond was a soft-spoken introvert whose life was defined by the trombone and the great music he created with it. Trombone provided his voice in a way words could not. Don Drummond played music as though it was all he had; or perhaps as though he felt it was all he had. As listeners, we have benefited greatly from his immense talent and unique ability to touch human souls around the world.

This is the definitive documentation of a seminal figure in the history of Jamaican music which is long overdue!

Delfeayo Marsalis

Perhaps an even better way to celebrate is by listening to his music. Here are links to a few of my favorites. Roll on Sweet Don.

Don Cosmic

Confucius

Addis Ababa

Cleopatra

Chinatown

Occupation

It is well known that the Skatalites disbanded in 1965 despite their trying to stay together for a few months in the wake of Margarita’s murder at the hands of Don Drummond. They came back together briefly in 1975 to support bass player Lloyd Brevett in the studio for his African Roots album which was finally released in 1997 by Moon Ska Records and it is a fine body of work. But I was surprised to find that they not only came together this year to record, but they also performed live at a public event called the Peoples’ Ball along with the Cimarons. The event took place on New Year’s Eve, December 31, 1975 at the National Arena.

The article in the Daily Gleaner on January 3, 1976 reads: Swing Magazine’s ‘Peoples Ball’ Wednesday night drew a half hall of people, most of whom were enthusiastic to hear the sounds of a reorganized 1975 Skatalites band. The band featured Lester Sterling, Roland Alphonso, and Tommy McCook, leader, on saxophones, Lloyd Brevett on bass, Jah Jerry on rhythm guitar, and Roland’s son Junior on drums and Gladstone Anderson on keyboards. There were no trombones, probably owing to the inability of finding a replacement for the late, great Don Drummond. On trumpets was an unidentified member of local recording band, the Soul Syndicate. Lester, who is in the island with the Buccaneers band from New York was a surprise guest artist, as he was appearing with his group at the St. Andrew Club. The audience at the Arena went wild with the sound of the new Skatalites and the dancing of the well received Pam Pam and Partner, who performed to the music of ‘Far East.’ The Skatalites included in their repertoire hits like ‘Eastern Standard Time,’ ‘Ska Goes Latin,’ and ‘Lee Harvey Oswald,’ tunes that captured the interest of the audience but never matched the old Skatalites, probably because there was no trombonist on the show.” The article continues with discussion of the award ceremony at the event and other holiday performances.

The Skatalites went on to reform again for that now historic show in 1983 at Sunsplash. Journalist Richard Johnson writes in the June 15, 2012 issue of the Jamaica Gleaner about this reunion. “The group disbanded in 1965, some members have died, there is no direct contact for the living members and some of the surviving bandmates don’t even speak to each other. However, for Syngery director Ronnie Burke, it was the ultimate challenge, and he thought: ‘Why not?’ ‘For our fifth anniversary we wanted to do something really special for our patrons. So we arrived at the idea of presenting the old and new faces of Jamaican music,’ Burke tells Splash. For the new, Synergy brought in Musical Youth — the young band of second-generation Jamaicans based in Britain, who had hit the airwaves with Pass The Dutchie, their rework of the The Mighty Diamonds hit Pass the Kutchie, as well as their collaboration with disco diva Donna Summer on Unconditional Love. The ‘old face’ of the music would be represented by the disbanded Skatalites. So Burke and his team, with the help of music insider Herbie Miller, set about trying to locate the members of the band, one by one, to convince them to get together for the event. ‘I first made contact with the drummer Lloyd Knibbs [sic.]. He was very enthusiastic about the prospects of taking to the stage as the Skatalites once again,’ Burke remembers. ‘It was then on to meet with Jah Jerry and then Lloyd Brevett,’ he continues. Burke clearly remembers his meeting with bass player Brevett, who died on May 3 [2012]. ‘We got word that he was working as a mason on the construction of the Conference Centre in downtown Kingston. We found him covered in cement on the site, and he put paper on my car seat before he sat down for us to talk. We told him about the plans and immediately he was on board.’ Synergy would soon hit a bump in the road to having the Skatalites on the Sunsplash Stage. It was realised that one of the major problems with reuniting the Skatalites was the fact that Tommy McCook and Johnny Moore had not spoken to each other in nearly 20 years. Burke recalls: ‘I was familiar with Dizzy Johnny (Moore) and took him to meet McCook at his house in Harbour View. Both men just sat staring at each other for what seemed like hours before the ice was finally broken and all agreed that they were getting old and should just go ahead and stage the reunion for Sunsplash.’ The Skatalites were booked and took to the stage at the Bob Marley Performing Centre at Freeport in Montego Bay. If Burke and his team have any regrets it is that the band was scheduled to perform too late and the audience was already somewhat weary and looking forward to the headline acts. ‘They gave a fantastic performance. It was well worth the effort it took to put them back together. What is great is that based on the Sunsplash performance it brought the group back together and they are still touring. It was a landmark for us at Synergy and if anyone should ask what am I most proud of it would have to be bringing the Skatalites back together.'”

Doreen Shaffer told me of this reunion as well. She remembers, “I was still living in Jamaica and I think it was the Sunsplash organizers, they were the ones who got in touch with them (the members of The Skatalites) in some way and I was informed that they were going to come down for Sunsplash and they wanted me to be a part of it. But everybody was away. I hadn’t seen them for a good while. So that was quite exciting, meeting everybody again. But I didn’t get back with them until I got to the U.S. Sunsplash was in ’83, but they went on to London and I wasn’t a part of that.” Shaffer moved to the U.S. in 1992 after living in Jamaica her entire life. When Shaffer arrived in the U.S., word of her presence quickly spread to the members of The Skatalites and Coxsone’s wife facilitated the reunion. “Ms. Dodd took me down to Central Park. They were having some concert. They were part of this festival and she took me directly because she knew where to find them and she was the one who took me there. So I was happy, meetin’ and greetin’. So we decided, they said, ‘Well, you are here now, you’ve got to work with us,’” Shaffer says.

The Skatalites continue to tour together under the management and tireless dedication of Ken Stewart. And a new generation of Alpha Boys School alumni under the direction of Bandmaster Sparrow Martin continue to perform the Skatalites music under the name Ska Rebirth. See info on this group HERE .

On January 7th, I had the honor of interviewing one of Jamaican music’s biggest legends, Dandy Livingstone, perhaps known best for this classic song, “Rudy, A Message to You,” recorded in 1967 for the Ska Beat label, which was subsequently covered by The Specials during the 2Tone era. Livingstone has built a career of his own, recording for a number of labels including Ska Beat and Trojan, as well as producing countless other artists throughout the 1960s and 1970s including The Cimarons, The Marvels, Owen Gray, and Tony Tribe on his classic, “Red Red Wine.”

Robert Livingstone Thompson was born on December 14, 1943 and he lived in the Kencot neighborhood of Kingston, Jamaica. “I had a small family. I’m an only child. My mom was a seamstress, draperies and things like that. My father, he worked with the railway corporation. My mother migrated to London before me in 1958 and I joined her in ’59. I finished school in London,” he says. His love for music started as a child. “Music was always around me. My father used to play 78 records, mainly jazz and ballads. From then I’ve always been a rhythm and blues jazz man. My collection of jazz music is strong.” Livingston is also a first cousin to Ansel Collins, though the two weren’t close growing up. He explains, “My mom was a very independent woman. She wasn’t into too much mixing with relatives, not selfish or anything, just private, like myself. But I used to see other kids around the place and we didn’t think of music then and I didn’t know he [Ansel Collins] was a musician until 1969. I found out that he played keyboard.”

Livingstone says that it was when he was in school that he developed this love for music even further. “I was going to school in London, technical college. I learned engineering and toolmaking. While in school, all of these Jamaican songs were abundant. As a teenager, it was music. That was all I wanted to do.”

It was during these school years that Livingstone made a friend that would change the rest of his life—Lee Gopthal, founder of Trojan Records. Livingstone explains, “Lee Gopthal was an accountant by profession. He got involved in those days in mail order records. He had this mail order thing going. One day I went down to visit a friend of mine who was a professional musician. He had a group that was rehearsing and I was listening and at a certain point I said, ‘I could do that! (laughs)’ I went back a second time and met Lee Gopthal and we started talking and he asked me where I lived because he wanted to get his records all over London, not just in the shops but to guys who would buy these records, so I told him I’m interested in selling records for him on the weekends or whenever, so he trusted me. I remember the first batch of records I got there was 25. There was an assortment of 45s, four or five different songs—Laurel Aitken and Prince Buster and these people. Within two days, I sold them all. That weekend (laughs). I was selling to people, go knock on their doors, people I knew. I would play it for them and they’d say, ‘Yeah, I’ll take it.’ It saved them from going to the record shops because on a Friday or Saturday, the record shops were filled because records were selling then (laughs)! So I sold it all, went back and he gave me 50. I did well.”

Livingstone says that he had a passion for more than selling music—he wanted to sing! “Then one day I got a phone call from him [Lee Gopthal] because he knew that I was interested in singing as well. He told me of this record company, Carnival Records, Mr. Crawford owned it. Actually it was Cross-Bow Records was the mother company and Carnival was the subsidiary label. At that time he owned one of the early pirate radio stations, Radio Caroline. So he said I should get in touch with Mr. Crawford because he wants to get in touch with the Jamaican music scene, and that is where I did my first recording. That was in 1964.”

But Livingstone didn’t just go to sing the song solo. According to G. Cooksey in his encyclopedia entry on Dandy Livingstone, “Carnival, in search of West Indian acts, had expressed a desire to record a duo, which Livingstone accommodated easily by tracking over his own voice on tape, for a two-record deal. The tracks were released, and credited to an imaginary pair called Sugar and Dandy, their names chosen to capture the persona of Livingstone’s sweet voice and impeccable dress.” I asked Livingstone about this and he laughed, “You heard about that huh? That was the time they wanted a duo but back then I was a brave lad. I turned up alone and he said to me where is the guy to do the track? And I gave him an excuse or something because I double tracked my voice. And from there things started to roll.” As for the name Sugar and Dandy, Livingstone explains, “It was just a name. I tell you this, you know names stick on people, right? So I didn’t want to be called Sugar (laughs)! So I took the Dandy bit! We did three songs on that session. ‘One Man Went to Mow,’ was one and the other two were ‘Time and Tide’ and ‘What a Life.’ Sugar and Dandy was never really a duo as such. Roy Smith was a friend who used to hang around with me, I taught him the little I knew…yeah the first session for Carnival he didn’t show, that’s when I found out about double tracking one own’s voice. Roy Smith sang on three songs after that first session at Advision Studio Bond Street London 1964. Tito Simon had his own thing going ,but he sat in on one session with me, ‘Only Heaven Knows’ b/w ‘Let’s Ska.'”

After the success of “What a Life,” Livingston says that he focused on his schooling, but always kept one foot firmly planted in music. “From there on, things didn’t work with Carnival Records so I moved on to Rita King, Ska Beat label. By this time I’ve known Rita from her original shop in Stratford, London. Stratford Market was where I met Rita and Benny King. Their record shop was the prime shop for Jamaican music. I went there one afternoon and she asked me what I’m doing now. After ‘What a Life,’ she said she hadn’t heard anything. I said, ‘Well I’m concentrating on my schooling.’ And she said, ‘Come and see me, maybe we can do something.’ Another month or so after, I went back to see her and we arranged a recording session and did a few songs and compiled the album ‘Rock Steady with Dandy.’”

It was during this time that Livingstone recorded his iconic hit, “Rudy A Message to You.” He explains, “At that time the rude boy scene in Jamaica was very strong with the rudie records, everyone was singing rude boy songs, speaking of the rude boys and telling them to cool it. This idea came to me, ‘Rudy, A Message to You,’ and the idea came and the song was finished in about 10 minutes. It was very simple. I remember calling Rita [King of Ska Beat records] on the phone and saying, ‘Look, I have a song,’ and she said okay. She didn’t want to hear nothing, just gave me the studio and I went in and recorded it, just like that.” I asked Livingstone how the song was written and he replied, “It was just a couple of words—my brain was good then, young (laughs). It was just a few lines and we went and did it, did the song on Old Kent Road. Vic Keary was the engineer. He was the engineer who did my early recordings and I did this track and in those days we did two track recordings. I went in a week after and I remember calling up a few people, how could I find Rico Rodriguez? Everybody knows Rico where he hangs out and I was told he was hard to get on with. Now I’m a likkle youth so I was saying to myself, I wonder? So I got in touch with Rico. I was told he wouldn’t show, but he did, of course. He did, right? He did the recording and I was so glad. He said to me, ‘Wha yuh wan me play?’ And I’m just a likkle youth, nobody knows me and so I say, ‘Just play the melody line,’ and that was it! I told him to play the melody, (sings) ‘Stop your runnin’ around,’ and he plays the same melody. He says, ‘I’m going to play it in the intro and play it in the solo.’ And that was it. And you know what happened to that song after that (laughs)! It was like The Specials signature song and it is an anthem. That song is amazing over the years, people keep repeating it, in so many adverts and movies. It’s uncanny in the sense that it is just a special song (laughs) and it had a cult following. I was just telling people to cool it, cool it.”

After this recording session, Livingston says that a familiar face came knocking at his door. “It was a 360 thing because Lee [Gopthal] by this time acquired a building in East End, London to start Trojan Records. By 1968, four years after meeting Lee, this guy start his own company. As it works out, he calls on me, so it was a 360 thing, you know? I remember the morning when I went down to see Lee for him to show me this building, an old warehouse type place. Bunny Lee, Striker Lee was present and Lee [Gopthal] was there, he said he want a name for this company and he’s been juggling around and he said, ‘Guys, what about Trojan Records?’ and Bunny looked at me and I looked at Bunny and we said, ‘Yeah!’ Because all the early Jamaicans in London know of Trojan, Duke Reid, it’s a good idea, a good idea. He probably thought of it before he saw us but he came up with it this morning and that was it. I remember him calling Dave Betteridge and they were in some partnership as well, Dave Betteridge at Island Records and Chris Blackwell and obviously they said yes, and that is how Trojan was born.”

Livingstone went on to produce a number of artists over the years, including Tony Tribe with “Red Red Wine.” Livingstone says, and I can almost see the twinkle in his eye through the phone line, “Tony Tribe. God bless his soul.” But Livingstone says that it was his own version of “Suzanne Beware of the Devil” that was more successful than the one recorded by Nicky Thomas. “Nicky had his thing going before but ‘Suzanne Beware of the Devil,’ I recorded that song three times, twice in London, once in Jamaica. There was something about this song. It was simple and it was just bugging me. I put ‘Suzanne Beware of the Devil’ on tape and in those days you had B sides, right? Remember? So I had this song, I can’t remember the title, on the A side and this company wanted to rush this particular song and I didn’t have a B side and something came to me and I said, ‘Hey, I have this song called Suzanne Beware of the Devil, so let me put it on the B side,’ not thinking about anything, they just needed a B side, so it went as a B side. The record was released, distributed all of the place, and there was a disc jockey, I think his name was Emperor Roscoe, he started playing the B side in the clubs and the kids really went for it and he called Trojan and he said, ‘Hey, you guys have a hit recording,’ and they said, ‘Which one?’ He said, ‘Which one? Suzanne Beware of the Devil!’ and Lee said to him, ‘The B side?’ And he said, ‘Yeah, the B side, that’s what the kids want.’”

“Lee asked me how about Nicky Thomas doing it and Nicky had ‘Love of the Common People,’ right? And he had about two songs after that and nothing happened so they needed Nicky to have another hit record so Nicky did it, they put a lot of brass and thing over the track which didn’t work. The same disc jockey called him up one day and said to Lee, ‘You guys are a bunch of you know what! The kids want Dandy Livingstone! That raw ethnic version (laughs).’ Two or three weeks after that I was on Top of the Pops, just like that. Amazing isn’t it? What must be will be. That is how I got my first national hit because ‘Rudy’ was an underground hit at the time. ‘Suzanne’ was really the first national hit, and then ‘Big City’ of course was the follow up.”

He says that his songs have appeared on a number of albums over the years, though not through his direction. “There were some tracks the company just kept compiling. There wasn’t a set thing. I wasn’t too much in the everyday scene of music, so when I went around they put these tracks together and some of them I didn’t like, of course. Some of the compiling things, some tracks I didn’t like, as a musician. You just like that track and don’t like that one, but that’s how that went. They did their thing when I didn’t come forward,” he says.

And so after a time, Livingstone says that he decided to heed the call to head back home. “I started thinking about Jamaica when The Specials hit with ‘Rudy.’ My family and I always thought about going back to Jamaica and it was about 1979 I started thinking about going back home and that was it, we came home. I went back [to London] a couple of times, but it took me 20 years before I went back and not to live.”

Today, Livingston has what he calls “a small family again (laughs)! One daughter. Everybody is healthy. She is not in the music business.” His mother lived in New York for nearly 50 years, leaving London for the Big Apple in 1969. She has resided in Jamaica since 2013.

When asked if he still performs, Livingstone chuckles. “You’ve heard of the three-day music festival called Skamouth? Well I was there last March. It went down great. And I’m going back this April. I am one of the most peculiar recording artists. Production was my thing mainly. And when I did Skamouth last March, it was the first time in 42 years that I went on a stage. I just wasn’t interested in performing. When ‘Suzanne Beware of the Devil’ happened I did a few shows and in the 70s, but I did not have to live on music. I did just producing.” When I tell him that he has fans the world over who adore his music, including myself, this charming man on the other side of the phone humbly responds, “That’s what I realize!”

Enjoy a few of Dandy’s tunes below:

Rudy, A Message to You

Suzanne Beware of the Devil

Big City

Reggae In Your Jeggae

It is with sadness that we learn of that John Bradbury, drummer for The Specials, has died. Bradbury joined The Specials just after their first tour when they were still known as the Coventry Automatics and they supported The Clash. Bradbury replaced Silverton Hutchinson who left the band when he decided he didn’t want to play ska and instead wanted to play roots reggae. When Jerry Dammers asked Hutchinson to play differently, Hutchison, who was known to have a temper, packed up his drums and simply left. The rest of the band chose to replace Hutchison with John Bradbury, also known as Brad. Bradbury was a friend of those in the group as well as a housemate to Dammers in 1975.

Back in the 1990s, Neville Staple told me that John Bradbury and all of the members of the band were crucial to the sound of The Specials. He remembers the writing process during those days. “You might have a rough backing track or a rough idea and then you get the rest of the guys, the drummer, you might give him an idea of what the beat is or he’ll probably know anyway. You just click in on it,” he says. Many of the songs were written by various members of the band, but Staple says there was always one leader. “With a band you need somebody who’s like, there’s one. You can’t have four or five people making decisions. At the end of the day, it’s going to come down to one. So Jerry, he started the band and so he had a bit more say and he was doing most of the writing then anyways, but to say he was the leader, well it was his band when it started and then everybody started to get more of their influence in,” Staple says.

Of John Bradbury, Horace Panter wrote on his Facebook page, “It feels very strange to know that I will never work with my ‘other half’ of The Specials’ rhythm section again. Brad jokingly referred to me as ‘the glue’, the man who held it all together, but he was the backbone, the bedrock of the music, and he was responsible for its signature sound, that tightly stretched snare and highly original style that he called ‘attack drumming’. He drew on the drive of Northern Soul but had the jazz influences of ska and the sensuality of reggae. He always played like his life depended on it, always on the money, always in the pocket. To have been able to play music with him has been an absolute privilege and the fact that I’ll miss him is the height of understatement. Thanks Brad, you played great!”

After The Specials broke up, Bradbury was a member of The Special A.K.A. and he co-wrote the classic song “Racist Friend” with Jerry Dammers and Dick Cuthell. The song was released in August 1983. The song begins:

If you have a racist friend,
Now is the time, now is the time for your friendship to end.

Be it our sister
Be it your brother
Be it your cousin or your uncle or your lover.

If you have a racist friend,
Now is the time, now is the time for your friendship to end.

Be it your best friend
Or any other
Is it your husband or your father or your mother?

Tell them to change their views
Or change their friends.
Now is the time, now is the time for your friendship to end.

My personal favorite song by The Specials with John Bradbury on drums and Rico Rodriguez on trombone (he also died earlier this year) is Ghost Town. Below is my analysis of this crucial song in an excerpt from my book Ska: The Rhythm of Liberation:

Ghost Town
In early 1981, the Specials met in a small studio in Leamington to record a song that best captured the zeitgeist of the ska revival. “Ghost Town,” a song with an eerie, haunting, discordant sound whose words echoed the violence on the streets, was serendipitously and coincidentally released the same time as massive rioting took place in across the country. The song’s words, “Can’t go on no more, the people getting angry,” prophetically paralleled police randomly stopping and searching people in Operation Swamp, so named because of Thatcher’s comments about people being “afraid that this country might be rather swamped by people of a different culture.” Most of the 943 people that were searched in six days were black. As a result, rioting broke out in Brixton, Coventry, and literally dozens of other towns and neighborhoods. Hundreds of people were arrested and people were murdered in racist attacks. “Ghost Town” was ska music’s version of the Sex Pistols’ no future. It was more than a warning—it was a declaration. The song reached number one on the charts. “Music didn’t cause the riots, of course,” says TV Smith, vocalist for the Adverts in Thompson’s book. “But songs like ‘Ghost Town’ helped make people aware that there really was something wrong with the country, and when you realize something is wrong you want to do something about it.” Lynval Golding opined, “”It’s terrible when you have a song like that and you see that, gradually, it’s all coming true. . . . It’s a bit frightening when you predict something’s gonna happen, it’s always horrible when you actually see it’s coming true.”
In many ways, “Ghost Town” was the end of the ska revival because it threw in the towel. It was the last single the original lineup of the Specials would record together, as members split up to try their hand at other bands, projects, and genres, and the Specials were the seminal ska revival band. But “Ghost Town” also threw in the towel because the aim of the ska revival, the aim of Jerry Dammers, had succeeded, because the West Indian immigrants were no longer sitting down accepting “No dogs, No blacks.” Through the revolution and rioting they were standing up and demanding to be recognized as equal. They were no longer West Indian immigrants—they were British citizens.

A couple of weeks ago I posted the lost chapter of Ska: An Oral History and mentioned how I was unable to use an interview from Prince Buster in my book because negotiations with his manager proved unfruitful. I have decided that it is wrong to leave this important piece of history buried because of money. So I use this platform to post the interview since there is no money to be made here. There is no money to be made in publishing academic books either, which is why his manager did not want to grant me permission. So hey, it is almost two decades after I conducted this interview on a microcassette tape over the phone, and it is time it sees the light of day, for the good of Jamaican music history, because Prince Buster is a legend who deserves our respect and admiration for all he has contributed. I’ve included a few photos along the way for your visual pleasure.

Prince Buster Interview with Heather Augustyn, 7-14-1997

I was in a dance troupe and would sing solo. I used to have problems going to school in the day because I stayed up so late at night. I paid less attention to singing and was more into boxing and wanted to be in fights but really there was no money in boxing. You’d get punched up and then there was no money. So I leave that and go back to singing and started recording. From day one, I started for me. [See post on Prince Buster’s boxing days HERE]

Tom the Great Sebastian had a hardware store and he’d play music there all day long on Fridays and Saturdays. They used to play rhythm and blues at the time imported from America. I used to hear a lot of rhythm and blues. I used to play at Tom’s and Coxsone came around one day and asked if I would help him, because of my popularity and a lot of people followed me at the time and I helped Coxsone. Coxsone took off by himself but I was the one who used to help Coxsone to find who were the artists on the records that Duke Reid played at the dance. Duke Reid was his competitor. But in those days they would scratch the labels off the record so you could read nothing. But Tom didn’t do that, and when I was at Tom’s, I read the names on the label and I identified the players who played and tell to Coxsone the labels they were recording on in the United States and he’d buy these records and bring back and the agreement was that a certain portion would be for me. But every time he came back he had something to fix or something to do, I didn’t get my work. So knowing I was the one keeping up his sound system, I went off and did my own sound system and challenged Coxsone and Duke Reid and dethroned them and became king of sound system.

I had tried to get a visa to come to the United States to buy some rhythm and blues by going into the farm work program. I passed every test and the morning we were supposed to leave, one of the inspectors took me out of line. Very disappointed was I so I went back to my friends, everybody thought I was going to leave—I was telling everybody when I came back I was going to have these recordings because I knew the nae of the artists and what to look for. And that didn’t work, so I went to Drumbago who played a club and I asked him to come with me and play a march, similar to a procession. I would wander off in processions to the beat of the drum, and that is what I did. I get together with Drumbago. I put the march on the track and I asked him to put the accent on the one and the three and I had Jah Jerry come up with the strum of the guitar and I had Rico Rodriguez do the ‘pop pop pop’ on the tenor sax [sic. Rico was trombone–see photo below] and recorded the sound that took over Jamaica. And that was called ska.

Understand that rocksteady is a child of ska and reggae is a child of rocksteady. So that makes ska the grandfather of reggae. Because Bob Marley said it quite plain. He said ‘I feel it in the one drop.’ My thing from day one was the one drop. Everybody knows, that what Drumbago play, the one drop. And he and, ‘I feel it in the one drop,’ and to this day, his alto sax player who alone tells that Drumbago was where the ska jump come from.

I was called that [Prince Buster] from day one. I was born in a riot. There was a man who was fightin’ for the working class because in Jamaica, I was born in that day and they name me after him. He became the prime minister and they name me from him. Sir Alexander Bustamante, national hero of Jamaica. He is also cousins to the Manleys. I was born Cecil Campbell, but they call me Prince Buster. But to this day people call me Cecil “Prince Buster” Campbell.

There were all of these political divides in Jamaica and on a similar scale, you tend to forget what happened then because the divide is so huge now. We had some violence, but compared to now, it was nothing. The politicians will do nothing to stop it. That’s part of the thing, you know, we hire them and employ them to go and find a better solution for the country and they go there and cannot do nothing to stop the violence and then the violence affect the economy and the country now is in a drain because of the violence. It becomes a hostile environment and then people think twice before they put their money in. So I am still asking them to do something about it, to this day, to do something about it regardless of political affiliation and they don’t do it. I’m up and down there. I’m from the people. I was called The Voice of the People. I have championed the voice of the people. That put me with many clashes with governments in Jamaica.

The music was born from the people and Kingston is where the music came from, that is the area and ska was laughed at by Duke Reid, Coxsone, and the more well-to-do people up on the hill who at that time could profit from the American imports. Even the radio station gave us a hard time promoting ska because they had their thing going with the manufacturers of the American imports. People got licenses and started pressings in Jamaica, so most of the DJs had a good thing going with the manufacturers. We didn’t have much money to give them and we had a hard fight with the disc jockeys on the radio station to promote ska. Ska took over by the will of the people. People started writing to the station, they want to know why they’re not hearing this and that constant barrage converted them. And today I hear a lot of people praising that ska is good, but now they must remember we adapt ever since then. The people went through it and today even those hypocrites have done it.

A rude boy was like a disobedient child. There were criminals but a rude boy was a little disobedient, yah?

Derrick is my friend, you know? Derrick used to sing for a man named Hi Lite. Smithy was his name, but we call him Hi-Lite and at my shop he was about three or four miles away from me. I started making hit after hit after hit and Derrick came down to the shop because we had a lot of young singers we were bringing along. And he sang ‘Hey Fat Man’ and all that but we said we could do better with him than ‘Hey Fat Man,’ so he joined the group with us and we took him to the studio and we made records. Then at a later date he used one of my songs. He encouraged one of the members of my band to play with Beverley’s, a person who do recordings, so I called him a ‘Black Head Chinaman.’ He went back and said I’m a ‘Blazing Fire’ and then I said ‘Praise and No Raise’ and we keep on saying to each other. Our competitiveness is in support of the music. We will compete with each other. Derrick Morgan would come to the back of my shop. I counted him close to me. We had a war but we didn’t have a physical war. I don’t remember ever talk to Derrick that hard for a war, you know, more than for the music, to get things done, but still today we still compete with music. He said it too. We argue about some things but it was always a friendship because with me, he’s got a voice to speak and it’s a democratic kind of thing.

I came out in the society for the people, so I had government banning my songs from the radio. I had the other part of society fighting me as a rebel. And the rest of the singers didn’t have this—they just compete with sounds. But I guess that’s why the people of Jamaica respect me, because they knew, as young as I was, the spirituality was in me and the love of God could stand up against everybody–government, Duke Reid, Coxsone—I stood up to everybody. It’s the great love I have for God.

[About new ska bands] I love them. These are the younger people now and they’re putting new energy into the things. At their age, they’ve got the young appearances for the audience now. I greatly appreciate that.