Lloyd Knibb a flawlessly brilliant drummer

[Assasin]

Lloyd Knibb a flawlessly brilliant drummer

Friday, May 20, 2011

LEGENDARY Jamaican musician Carlos Malcolm has described his departed colleague Lloyd Knibb as a flawlessly brilliant drummer who utilised his dexterity to mask any error he made during performance.

Malcolm, founder/leader of the Afro-Jamaican Rhythm, which was one of the ace rivals of the Skatalites of which Knibb was a founding member, also remembered Knibb as a lover of Latin music that, Malcolm said, "was deeper than casual".
KNIBB… there was such plausible logic in his drumming technique



KNIBB… there was such plausible logic in his drumming technique


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Knibb died of liver cancer at his family home in Kingston on May 12. He was 80.
Here is an excerpt of the tribute by Malcom who now lives in the United States.
"Many a Friday evening at the Bournemouth Club, the Eric Dean Orchestra dance sessions would take on the appearance of a mini-concert. Fans would flock around the apron of the oval-shaped bandstand to cheer on their favourite soloists. It was at one of these mini-concerts that I had my first exposure to the versatility and almost flawless brilliance of Lloyd Knibb's drumming technique. I say almost flawless, because he was a clever drummer. He could justify every drumming "mistake" with an immediate repetition, which would convince the listener that the phrase was correct.
"There was such plausible logic in Lloyd's drumming technique that I found it difficult to draw the lines between error and justification. After I met Lloyd I realised that his love for Latin music was deeper than casual. We had many discussions on rhumba and mambo music. In one of his favourite embellishments, Lloyd mastered the sound of the Cuban 'timbales' by disengaging the snare sound on his drum. The Cuban timbales are a pair of drums, used in Cuban orchestras for embellishment and dynamics. The drums are open at the bottom and one is slightly larger in circumference than the other. Both are mounted, side-by-side, on a vertical metal stand, and played with a set of sticks.
"To duplicate the sound of the timbales, Lloyd would disengage the snares on his drum and snap off a rim shot with a brief roll on the snare. He would finish the drum roll with a sharp rap, in which the head of the drumstick would hit the skin and the arm of the stick strike the metal rim of the snare, producing a loud, hollow gun-shot sound, "R-r-r-ang!", exactly as produced by the Cuban timbale drum.
"These 'rim shots', or Latin 'habanicos', were Lloyd Knibb's signature sound. From the first time I heard him play, I became fascinated with the appropriateness of his timing during an arrangement, when he would choose to highlight the music with phrases which came like cracks of lightning just before the thunderous entry of the entire orchestra as they jumped into an ensemble passage, engaging the full complement of the band.
"Indeed, the introductory rim shots became endemic to reggae music. The 'Knibb-like' rim shot became so widely popular that they can be heard in recordings of Jamaican mento, ska, rock steady, reggae and dancehall music to this day. In 2000, during a reggae recording session I arranged and conducted in San Diego, I asked the drummer for a 'Knibb-like' introduction to the piece. The 20-year-old drummer had never met Lloyd Knibb, but he was aware of the distinctive 'Knibb-like' drumming technique and delivered the precise effect and phrasing I asked for as an introduction to the arrangement.
"After the Eric Deans Orchestra disbanded in Kingston, Lloyd went to work with a combo at the popular Jolly Roger Club in Montego Bay. On assignment as a photo journalist for the West Indian Review, I went to the Frome Sugar Estate in the far western parish of Westmoreland. On occasions I would visit with Lloyd and his buddy, Baba Brooks, who played second trumpet with the Eric Deans Orchestra. Both were now part of the Jolly Roger's resident band. I would stay until the late (2:00 am) show, which culminated with an exciting and popular female rumba dancer who was very popular for her "exotic gyrations", clad in the bare essentials in a dance which was not performed in the first show, for tourists. The highlight of the dance was a duet between the dancer and Lloyd Knibb.
"At a given point in the dance, the music would stop, and to the utmost delight of the crowd, Lloyd would accentuate the dancer's "frenzied gyrations" with the most inventive and comical drum beats, including rim shots and cowbell noises. It was on occasions such as this that one was able to assess and appreciate the full scope of Lloyd's drumming genius.
"Lloyd Knibb's authoritative no-nonsense approach on the bandstand qualified him as the 'unofficial bandleader' of the Studio One studio band. Tommy McCook eventually returned home from the Cat & Fiddle Club in The Bahamas, having completed an extended contract. As an independent contractor Tommy joined the studio orchestra and became leader.
"The music they created became so popular that it became clear that they could increase their income by acquiescing to a public clamouring to see the guys who were making such exciting music. The studio group had their first 'career' band meeting but the band had no name. In 1957, the Russians bragged to the world that they had launched Sputnik, the first man-made satellite into space.
"For years following, the word "satellite" was on everyone's lips. McCook eventually came up with the name for the group. Led by Tommy McCook, the independent contractors who had recorded together daily at Studio One had seamlessly honed themselves into the indomitable 'Skatalites'."




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[Reggaedoc]

The best of the best. RIP Lloydie

[Sir X]

His shoulders were among those on which today's musicians stand
KEEBLE MCFARLANE

Saturday, May 21, 2011

THE news of Lloyd Knibb's death last week took my mind back half a century to the days when the music scene in Kingston was in full ferment. Groups and soloists were springing up all over the place, throwing their contributions into the hopper to feed a recently exploded hunger for new sounds. There were several reasons for this - technological innovations, economic growth with the expansion of bauxite mining and the growth of the middle class, coupled with a widening of tastes and the advent of a new cultural institution.

The 1950s had ushered in the sound system — important technical developments had resulted in the availability of amplifiers, speakers and turntables providing sound of a much higher fidelity than before. The disc jockeys who operated these sound systems would set up shop every week in a favourite spot with a guaranteed crowd. In order to feed the demand for new musical fodder, these operators relied on the latest hits rolling off the presses in the US with a small contribution from Britain. They ran record stores to sell the hits and in a couple of cases sponsored regular programmes on RJR to expose their fare to a wider audience.



KNIBB... original Skatalites drummer

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A pioneering entrepreneur who loved photography and electronics had established a store in downtown Kingston which did a brisk trade in cameras, film, lenses as well as developing and printing the pictures the customers took. Stanley Motta also sold the latest in sound reproduction equipment and records from his store on Harbour Street. He also rented out equipment and provided sound for public events all over the island. His Motta's Recording Studio was the only independent recording facility around for quite a while. Motta's recorded most of the calypso and mento discs available at the time.
As the 1950s came to a close along came the Jamaica Broadcasting Corporation, which was mandated to expose Jamaicans to their own voices. And the station had just the right person to push that agenda. Sonny Bradshaw was a musician in his own right, taking his trumpet and his sidemen to whichever gig they could find in any corner of the island. But he had two pet projects in his producer's portfolio at the JBC - an afternoon show called Teen Age Dance Party as well as the Jamaican Hit Parade. Before the latter came along almost all the music we heard was American pop stuff with the occasional calypso offering or some rare mento or folk performances.
Very soon after its inception in mid-1959, JBC began keeping tabs of the sales of home-grown artistes and tabulated the results weekly. These artistes were played faithfully on TADP, as the show became known, along with the leading foreign hits.
A circular effect followed - as would-be singers and instrumentalists heard these home-grown efforts on the air, they pestered the few studio producers around - notably among them Coxsone Dodd with his Studio One - to record their efforts on tape. In short order we had a viable music scene.
There was, of course, Byron Lee and the Dragonaires, a fairly large band which, from the start, was a commercial success, distilling and blending calypso, mento, Latin and African rhythms and sound into their own unique style which has outlived the group's founder and survives to this day. Then there was the Afro-Jamaican Rhythms, led by its founder, a Jamaican-Panamanian called Carlos Malcolm. His father was a music lover and amateur musician who played the trombone. It became Carlos's instrument of choice, having been taught by his father, who recognised his son's talent and sent him to the United States for formal musical education.
Malcolm had been hired by the JBC as a musical arranger and the leader of the JBC studio band. In addition to arranging music with a decidedly Jamaican flavour for the band's public appearances and studio recordings, Malcolm also collaborated with Bradshaw on the hit parade. It was around this time that a new sound began appearing - the jazz-influenced style the practitioners called ska, from the refrain Ågah-ska-ah, ah-ska-ahÅh the players chanted in one early tune.
Malcolm was the first person to actually write down arrangements of the new music and not long afterwards started his own group, which based itself at the Sombrero Club, located at the intersection of Molynes and Waltham Park roads in Kingston. Along with many contemporaries, I whiled away many a pleasant and entertaining evening there, savouring the sounds of Carlos on trombone, Karl Bryan on saxophone and Winston Turner on trumpet supported by a solid ska beat.
Malcolm had earlier made friends with another trombone player, Don Drummond, who was well known for his eccentric ways. I can still picture the scene, late one evening, walking into the RJR building on Lyndhurst Road and hearing an unexpected sound. It was Drummond, nonchalantly walking along the side of the street, playing riffs on his trombone, oblivious to the world.
In the early 1960s a group of musicians - including Drummond - who had been playing together on and off for several years formed a group which has made a signal contribution to Jamaica's musical history. Most of them had been influenced by the startling and imaginative new sounds emerging from places like New York, Chicago and Los Angeles, where figures like Dizzy Gillespie and Charlie Parker were expanding the bounds of the distinctive American music known as jazz.
Prominent among them were Tommy McCook, who played the tenor sax and flute, Roland Alphonso, on alto sax, Don Drummond, trombone and Dizzy Moore on trumpet. Rounding out the group were Lloyd Brevett on bass (the old-fashioned kind resembling an overgrown violin that stands upright beside the player), Lloyd Knibb on drums with Jerome Haynes on guitar and Richard Ace on piano.
Although they made a surprising number of recordings for the short time they spent together - about 18 months - the Skatalites loved to perform live. A regular venue was the old Bournemouth Baths on the edge of Kingston Harbour. It had been the venue of choice for dance bands for many years. The Skatalites often played there and projected a sense of drama and excitement on each occasion. I recall once watching half the dancers vacate the dance-floor and flock to the stage as McCook, Alphonso or Drummond lit up the place with a dazzling solo.
Knibb was the most energetic player of the group - a session was like a vigorous workout in the gym. I remember once seeing him leave the stage at the end of one set with his shirt completely soaked in sweat. When he returned for the next set we realised he had changed during the break.
Like many of those early musicians, he was mostly self-taught but had an unerring sense of rhythm which he used to keep the others on track as they played around with riffs and very free improvisations of standards and their own compositions. Sadly, having lived abroad in the years after the group initially disbanded, I never had the opportunity to see him live again, although I was able to keep in touch through recordings. He lives on - electronically - and we are the better off for it.
keeble.mack@sympatico.ca



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