Tweet
Q: There is no question about Jamaica being a 'Treasure Island' musically speaking, the amount of music released is vast.
A: Well, this was of course catering for probably... a little bit of history that people don't know, Christopher Blackwell. Chris was involved through his mother's friendship with Ian Flemming, Chris Blackwell was involved in 'Dr No', the movie when it was shot in Jamaica. And when it finished and he went to England, y'know, because he made some money on the film and everything (chuckles)... and Chris went over there, and in the meantime of course Island Records was basically a Jamaican company, making Jamaican records for the Jamaican market. When he went to England he found all the Island records that he produced, and he was at that time probably the foremost producer, there was some production going on with Smith Hi-Lite, Duke Reid, Coxson, but it hadn't really developed. But Chris Blackwell found all his records being pirated for the Jamaican emigrates to England in the mid-sixties, which was vast. And so Chris, being Chris Blackwell, said: "This can't go on, I'm making records and they're making five-six-seven-ten times more money pirating my records in England". So this is why we opened up Island Records in the UK. And Leslie Kong and I were partners in Island Records, and our job was to send material to Chris Blackwell, so there's one way to stop the pirating of course and that is to release it legally and officially (chuckles). So that's how the massive surge of Jamaican music went to England.
Q: But your own background, you were born and grew up in Australia basically.
A: Yes, I'm from Australia. I started in broadcasting, AM radio, the only thing going in those days.
Q: You used to install radio antennas... or was that in Jamaica, not in Australia?
A: That was in Jamaica. (Chuckles) Well, the antennae was only a part of it. When I left Australia for England to study television...
Queen Elizabeth II visiting Australia, 1954.
(Photo: National Museum of Australia)Q: When was that?
A: That was 1954. I was involved and did all the outside broadcast for the Royal visit, the Queen's visit to Victoria where I lived, the state, and at the end of that... because I got a nice letter from Buckingham Palace thanking me for all my work. And of course we didn't know, we thought well, I would go to England and get a Knighthood (laughs)! We didn't know that, of course, they produced these letters in the thousands. But I went over to study in television basically and to support myself while I was there. So with my musical background in Australia - 'cause we did a lot of remote musical broadcasts,..... y'know, in those days it was in America and Canada and Australia....., it was a lot of 'live' music broadcasting from remote. So with my music background I fitted into that, and apart from the fact that it was a hard job and the senior engineers didn't want to do it, so they gave it over to we younger people. And so I went to the UK and while I was there I had to support myself. I started working for a Universal Program Corporation, IBC which was in Portland Place, London just around the corner from the BBC. We were doing broadcasts for Radio Luxembourg basically, the shows were 'Shilling a Second', 'Strike it Rich' and 'People are Funny', these live shows for which we toured all over the UK. Of course, in those days commercial radio engineers were non-existent in England, so I lucked out, I fell right into the slot. Here was a person with experience, young, willing, a very good worker so I worked on that. But of course IBC support themselves as well as recording studios, and they were probably the largest and only independent recording studio in London at that time. So I worked there recording people like Petula Clark I remember, but at the same time I found out that Rediffusion had radio stations all over the world, and I went and applied as an engineer with Radio Jamaica. In those days it was Jamaica Broadcasting Company which later became Radio Jamaica Limited which later became RJR. But at that particular time the chief engineer wanted the signal out at their remote spots in Jamaica, in Montego Bay, Port Maria, Mandeville. So it was developed that we would put an FM link carrying the signal which originated in Kingston from the studios, we would FM it over the island doublehopping to these areas and I was, like I said, I was the studio man, audio man, loved music but of course the British put me on to these transmitters (chuckles)... and the antennae for this FM link. Which in truth - in fact it became the first commercial FM service in the British Commonwealth. It's purpose was to get the signal over to the other side of the island, but of course then people started getting FM radios.
Q: What did you know about Jamaica and the Caribbean in general and its music at that point?
A: I knew nothing. And in fact when I went out there in those days, the only thing with the music of Jamaica was basically mento, and it developed into a tourist attraction. Because in those days the tourist industry was just really cranking up, and so they had these - although they were called 'calypso bands' - they were basically mento bands playing for the tourists on the North Coast of Jamaica and the nightclubs in Kingston. And funny enough, there's only one person who had - well, there were several local bands but they were developed to produce like Jamaican mento music. But about that time a young man came on the scene, a young boy (chuckles), fresh out of school who played a sort of adequate bassline, and it was Byron Lee. And they started playing after football games, or soccer games, and they developed into Byron Lee & The Dragonaries.
Byron Lee & The Dragonaires (1950s)Q: So they go back to as early as 1955 or something like that.
A: Yeah.
Q: When you arrived down there, how did you find the whole atmosphere, the culture, the people, and so on?
A: Well, in those days it was fascinating, and again... I mean, the people were great, inspiring, happy people, the living was easy as they say. I worked very, very hard. But there was a definite rift because we had these so called 'expatriate' or overseas engineers, and the local people. There was always a rift, 'why should they be getting more money?', 'why should they be paid more?', among the locals. And there's a little bit of undercurrent there, dissatisfaction by the local people. But however, because I was single and, again, a fun-loving sort of person, it's hard to say this... but I almost purposely went out of my way to become friendly to the people, to overcome this.
Q: It was a lot of that racial vibe in the air?
A: No. I think that's probably an international problem, what is happening these days. In those days it wasn't so much racial as class, to class divisions. And yeah, there were very, very wealthy black people who literally treated the working class rather abyssmally. You know, very wealthy Jamaicans of all colours and textures and racial origins. Because, remember, there were Lebanese, a Syrian influence, there were rich merchants, there's quite a bit of... a load of Jewish businessmen in later years who were very wealthy, and yet they were employing their gardeners for, in those days, probably thirty shillings which is, what, six dollars a week! These people were living in shacks in terrible circumstances. However, it never occurred to them to be violent about it, that was their lot and they were trying and endeavouring to lift themselves out of it. But I realised that my particular feeling was, the working class Jamaicans - because I was single and happy and fun-loving, I purposedly went out of my way to get a friendship with the Jamaican people as opposed to going to the upper people, as a lot of the expatriate engineers tended to do. You know, relished this class distinction.
Q: How did you crack the patois at the time?
A: Oh (laughs)! That was very easy. I realised that I was speaking - not only I had this Australian accent and never spoke any other language, a little bit of French, and I was at a party once and at that particular time I had several line-crews, stringing Rediffusion, which was a wired system 70 volts lines all around Kingston. Rediffusion put up a speaker-box with a volume control on it for which they charged like a dollar a month, which didn't seem much but when you (chuckles) figured you had like fifteen to twenty thousand of these things out there, it became quite a bit of money. But I had this crew and I couldn't get them to work for me so I saw one of my friends at a party, and he said, "It's because you don't speak like that, man". I said, "What do I do?" He said, "Oh, come back..." - this man was a Chinese-Jamaican, and he was a facilitator for import and export, and he said, "Come down the docks and I'll let you hear what you (chuckles) actually have to speak, get these people to listen to you when they work for you". So I went down the docks after I left Radio Jamaica at night, I got up early in the morning and went down the docks and listened to the wharf labourers, the long-shoreman if you like, how they spoke to one another, and I said, "Ahh, it's a different language altogether". And I picked it up very, very quickly and because of using, y'know, patois, like: "Listen, man, bring di ladder 'ere deh, man". That sort of thing.
Q: (Chuckles) A: And also they realised - because I adopted the patois, they said: "This guy is one of us". Whereas the expatriate engineers, y'know, they spoke with their British accents.
Q: Who was some of the personalities on the air at RJR at that time? I know about this guy who had a slogan like 'the cool fool with the live jive'.
A: Oh, Charlie Babcock.
Q: Ah, yes (laughs). He was at RJR?
A: Yeah, that was at RJR. They... oh, gee... um, there were several Jamaican... Again, the programming at that particular time tended to be influenced by what the British thought would be good programming. But round about - it must be 1955 they introduced a new program director, they brought him in from the... well, the managing director was Bill McClurg, who's Canadian, and he took the job on as managing director of Radio Jamaica and Rediffusion. But he realised that the programming was rather bland, y'know, and so he imported or employed this Canadian, Ron Morrier, who's a very charming man, and he came down and changed the programming format completely. And it was interesting that he was using the Canadian concept, which was Americanized but not fully American broadcasting, you understand what I mean? Not a hundred per cent, he had the Canadian influence. And the people loved it, because that was what Ron started brought in - he said, "Well, if I got to get this programming, then I've got to get dj's to influence", so he brought in Charlie Babcock - 'the cool fool with the live jive'. And Charlie brought this Americanized/Canadianized broadcasting format, and they started changing the music content, too.
Q: To...? More specifically?
A: To a more American type music, American pop music.
Q: Rock'n'roll, Pat Boone type stuff, and so on.
A: Yeah, the start of rock'n'roll.
Q: Was Dermott Hussey on the air even at that time? Well-known voice from Jamaican radio in any case.
A: He came in later, because then you developed a string of Jamaican dj's, like 'announcers' they used to call them, and they realised that the public accepted the American version more than - and remember, you could pick up a lot of American radio stations in Jamaica, any of these AM radio stations.
Q: Right, stations from New Orleans and so on. A: Right, and WINZ from Miami was a big one, that was a huge one. So these guys realised, well, we're going to establish a public following and I better (chuckles) emulate this to be successful, and that's what they did.
Q: OK. So you basically stayed at RJR for at least three years before you did anything in terms of recording the music, locally?
A: Well, I did three years initially which was my contract, and I went back to Australia and worked with television for six months, Channel 9 in Melbourne as senior audio.
Q: You're from Melbourne originally.
A: Yes, I was born in Melbourne. My first season I worked - I worked at two radio stations actually, 3UZee or 3UZed if you like first. And I was at the library pulling records, spinning records, wanted desperately to become an engineer, but you have to start at the bottom.
Q: Yep.
A: And funny enough, I was the operator for one of the first successful talk show people, a lady called Penelope who had a women's program in the morning. And then an engineering position came up with 3KZ, so I went there as junior engineer. But then, like I said, I started doing live music programs. But I went back to Australia in late '57. In '58 I worked with Channel 9 in Melbourne, but then Radio Jamaica called me back and said, "Look, we got to deal with these transmitters for JBC", Jamaican Broadcasting Corporation. And Radio Jamaica did a very smart move, they said: "OK, we build a transmitting station and you'll own them, but we will maintain them" (laughs). And we'll share towers, we'll diplex into one tower, so it was a win-win situation for everybody. But they needed people to come in and put in these new AM stations, so they called me back again. So I went out there to install these new - there were two 5 kW AM transmitters in each building, stand-by power, because power was abyssmal in Jamaica. We always had to have stand-by generators. And we'd diplex them into one antennae, we had them in Kingston, Montego Bay, Port Maria, Mandeville.
Ken Khouri
Ken KhouriQ: But what was initially your contact with the local music scene in those first three years? Did you check any of the sound systems at the time?
A: Of course I went into nightclubs. I think probably the main contact was - I became very friendly with Ken Khouri, Papa Khouri, to...
Q: Did he ever run a sound system back then?
A: No, Papa Khouri had a little furniture store, and he wanted to press records basically, press records in Jamaica. But of course, because of the local thing records were all imported, y'know, finished product was all imported, all they had was mento, which was the only thing going on. And Ken Khouri wanted to build a studio, and I remember he went and bought some equipment. He bought some equipment initially in the United States, he was waiting for his car to be delivered. He bought a disc cutter, a direct to disc in a pawn-shop (chuckles)...
Q: (Chuckles)
A: And I helped him to set that up. And in those days Stanley Motta was the only facility that actually made records. And they were ALL mento, everyone of them.
Q: How was the studio?
A: Oh, Mr Motta's studio, it was a direct to disc, one microphone hanging from the ceiling. And mind you, the one I built for Records Limited or Ken Khouri, it wasn't much better (chuckles), it was in a shack in the back of his furniture store... like that, y'know. Did a little bit of acoustics, not much, but then he went to the States and I told him, "Ken, you're never gonna get anywhere cutting direct to disc, it's not gonna work". So he bought a Magnecorder PT6 JAH tape recorder and a small mixer, and I set it up for him. And he started making records in the shack in the back, and this is probably round about 1957.
Q: Do you have any idea how records sold, the wax, 78's, at this point?
A: I think they were from what I remember about, probably, fifty cents a record.
Q: Affordable at least, not just for the upper class.
A: Yeah. Well, again, the locals didn't really wanna buy mento records to play at home. Remember, there wasn't much - because the poor people didn't have enough money to buy radios, they put in these wired systems... what they gonna play the records on? And so it was basically a tourist type thing. Then when I think back there was still the mento stuff going on, but probably about 1960 there was a ground swell, y'know, they wanted local music to develop.
Q: There wasn't much imported R&B records at this time?
A: Mainly the sound system operators imported those, and a few people had... I remember at home, I obviously had a record player and friends of mine had record players, and they used to buy a lot of American rock'n'roll, more rock'n'roll than R&B. Bill Haley & The Comets, that type of thing. And Elvis Presley of course, that type. Remember, these people all had radios, most of the time they'd listen to American radio stations at night.
Q: What about the sound system itself? It must've been quite an experience to witness, if you ever saw Coxsone Downbeat The Ruler against Duke Reid The Trojan or Tom The Great Sebastian or any of the happening sounds of the period.
A: Of course that came later on, my involvement with that came later on. That happened in '61 when I joined Federal Records permanently and built their first studio down at Foreshore Road.Q: I think Lloyd the Matador was your first experience recording down there, wasn't he?
A: It could be. Lloyd the Matador, could be. You know, it is so long ago I can't remember who the first ones were. But I remember I tried to develop a different style. You know, they wanted something a bit more than Federal had at that time. I revamped the mixer, added more inputs, I built an echo chamber. I tried to bring a little bit of shall we say - terrible phrase - 'state of the art', if you will, to the recording industry down there. And by this time Ken had also realised that time is always a factor in this business of music, and you had to have... there's a time concept. In those times - of course, there was a time when they cut it on a wax. They put it down on tape, basically. Stanley Motta of course would cut it on a acetate and he'd send the acetate away, usually to England and get it processed. But Ken actually put in an old Neumann AM131 fixed-pitch lathe, stamper plant, y'know, plating tank, so he could actually cut the records and manufacture them locally. Of course, he was the only one doing it, people would go there because time was the essence, and it was a lot cheaper of course. And if you got a demand on a record you didn't have to wait a terrible amount of time, x amount of weeks or months to get more product from out of England or America. So first the sound systems went - I've told this story several times: I could not understand why these people wanted the sound, so one night I took my wife out - by that time I was married to a Jamaican girl, a lovely girl, she's still there looking at me now as we speak - after forty-five years! But I said I had to go out and listen to these sound systems, what were they trying to achieve? And so I went out this night, I went with my wife and listened to the sound system on the spot. Then I realised, quite frankly, anybody can put something down on tape, you don't have to be (chuckles) a genius to put something on tape - it's how you reproduce it later on. You know, what is the process between the musicians and the studio, standing in front of microphones, putting it down on tape - that is the easy part. What you do from that process on to the people asking you to reproduce something, and that's when I realised these boys wanted the bass! They wanted the bass to drive hard, because what it will do is make people dance and what they do when they dance, they got hot and thirsty and bought more liquor.
Q: (Chuckles) A: (Laughs) And that's what it was all about, 'cause all these sound system operators were liquor distributors and they made the money on selling the liquor.
Q: Main income, almost.
A: Yeah. It was, shall we say, the essential - yeah, they charged admission but they didn't make the money on admission. Later on of course they started making money selling records, but initially it was to make people thirsty and spending more money. And it was amazing to me to hear this sound and of course, everything was in open air. You know, so you had the feeling and the humidity and the density of the air, it had such a tremendous effect on sound. I've had theories going for years and years that you could take a band and put it in ten different parts of the world and you get ten different responses to it because of the atmosphere when you listen, and of psychological reasons too. And all of these sound system dances were out in the open and so what carries in the open air, heavy bottom end (laughs). And these boys were using eighteen-inch Vitavox bass speakers, bass-drivers, and huge tube-amplifiers. It was my job to get them in the studio and translate it from in the studio to what it sounded like out in the open in this dance area, what was the process there, and I had to adjust it accordingly.
Q: So you found out from pretty early on that the Jamaican attitude to sound was, basically, 'in the red' so to speak, both sound systemwise and recording as well, to have the bass as deep as possible.
A: Yeah. There was an advantage of course, because these people hadn't been influenced by anywhere else. I was the king, y'know. If I told them I want to do it some way, there wasn't (chuckles) anybody there to argue with me! (Laughs) So it was my call, it was my shot.
Q: But this was basically 'against' your initial training, on a level where you don't have it 'in the red'.
A: Well, you gotta understand that being Australian there's a certain amount of rebellion in me anyway, most Australians are (chuckles) pioneers in the rebellion. When I was in England I was absolutely infuriated by the poor involvement of the recording studios, the poor involvement of broadcasting. You know, white coats and everything like that, that to me was an anathema, didn't make any sense (chuckles). And remember, y'know, I learned very early, early on, VERY early, early on, that you could not stay behind the glass window and put on this pretentious attitude to say 'I'm the recording engineer'. A recording engineer, a good recording engineer, is a part of the musical content, and he's gotta be. And when Tom Dowd years later, later on he told me that - I think I believed it all along - Tom Dowd, who is probably the greatest recording engineer of all time, I think personally, to me the greatness of a recording engineer is his achievement, what he's done, and Tom Dowd was the greatest. And Tom Dowd said that he always considered himself a musician and not an engineer. And you got a studio, you've got microphones, you've got monitors set up, it doesn't take you long - any band that walks in there, it takes you an amount of time to understand what they want, then get the hell out of the control room and go and sit down in the studio with them and become part of them. When you become part of them and not something separate distinct in a way, and that's the way I've always felt. And Federal Records, these boys were doing - everything was head work, y'know, there was no charts or anything, it was all done head. So they rehearsed the song and what did I have to do with it? You know, a fader could maybe be moved a couple of notches, a dB here, a dB there, it's not hard to do (chuckles). But get in the studio and try and find out what they're doing. And I remember several times I had a vocalist, Stranger Cole, Patsy, even Desmond Dekker, y'know, I had to teach them microphone techniques, you can't do that sitting in a control room. You gotta get in there and tell them exactly - one of the things I used to tell them, I remember Patsy, I said: "Well, remember that this thing is a microphone - you got a boyfriend, you got a man? Well, imagine he is in that microphone. You know, imagine him, just ignore the microphone, just imagine that that is your man in that microphone and sing to that man."And this simplistic stuff that they could understand, and that's the difference. And you noticed that in England in pop music, it only changed when the attitude to recording engineers changed. George Martin was the greatest. You never saw George Martin walk around with a white coat and screwdrivers in his pocket (laughs). He was right there, y'know, sitting down with the piano player playing a few chords with him.
Dennis Sindrey (The Caribs)
Dennis Sindrey (The Caribs)Q: If we go back to what we spoke about in the beginning, Island, how did you first bump into Chris Blackwell, was that at Federal?
A: No, no, no. I met him at a wedding reception, there was an Australian band there who you've probably heard of...
Q: The Caribs, yes.
A: Caribs, and Dennis Sindrey is my brother-in-law, and of course Australians tend to gather together living in a foreign country like that. So they were great friends of mine. Dennis, Lowell Morris, Peter Stoddart, Max Wildman, and myself.
The CaribsQ: When did The Caribs arrive in Jamaica, was that after you came there?
A: That was about 1958, Dennis now lives in Florida and we speak regularly, we're best friends. But they came out there, they were imported by I think it was Abe Issa who brought them in to play at a nightclub, The Glass Bucket in Kingston. Because he wanted to establish a nightclub, so they came out there to play as professional musicians as his band. But of course then Chris Blackwell started recording and everything... well, more than that actually, before this Lowell Morris met a very, very lovely Jamaican lady called Faith Houchen, I'm still in touch with her, she lives in Australia now, a very, very lovely lady and she worked with my wife and my wife's sister at British West Indian Airwaves, BWIA, and Lowell met her, fell in love with her and when they decided to get married, well, we all went to the wedding. But one of Faith's friends, close friends, was Chris Blackwell, and so he was at the wedding. And it's a rather tedious story but he was sort of trying to date the girl I actually married (chuckles), and I didn't like that and I went up to him and was rather drunk, and he says something to me like, "Well, why don't you stop messing around, there's music to be made". And he had this thing - Chris' thing was that his family always tried to get him to earn a 'legal' living (chuckles), a hard working living so to say, justifiable living, and he tried several things. He tried renting scuba gear, he tried renting motor scooters, and then a friend of his, John Elliott, he had the Wurlitzer juke box concession in Jamaica, and so Chris talked him into leasing I think half a dozen juke boxes which he placed around in clubs. Chris was getting upset that he had to import all these records for juke boxes, that was more R&B stuff, y'know, that was in the local bars. And so he decided to make records and he met the Caribs of course and he met me and realised that - as Chris only can realise, he's got a great attitude for that - and he said, "I hear you know something about recording. Stop messing around and make some records". So that is how it all happened, and in fact I was making records in Radio Jamaica studios after hours.
Q: How did you find Blackwell?
A: Chris is a very charming man.
Q: And shrewd.
A: Very, very shrewd... oh, and he's from a very, very wealthy family of course. I'm upset in that he later developed this attitude of getting people and discarding them after you've found 'em useful, y'know, the people, and just discarding them. But that developed later on. But in those particular times he was charming, fun, and had a great attitude to life and we were all very, very friendly. But I think later on when his - probably I think his attitude changed with 'My Boy Lollipop'. And I think that all of a sudden he realised he could be the Howard Hughes that he always wanted to be.
Chris Blackwell
Q: (Laughter) A: (Laughs)
Q: OK, that was simply the goal (chuckles).
A: Yeah. But that's not bad, I think that expressed it pretty well (laughs). And I've always said of Chris Blackwell that he'll be a Howard Hughes, he'll probably make ten fortunes and lose five (chuckles).
Q: He always take chances anyway, so...
A: He was a better gambler, yeah. Very much like that.
Q: That's obviously his strength, what he succeeded with.
A: And also he's got a very, very good ear for talent, and a very, very good eye for talent too.
Q: Yeah.
A: Don't take that away from him, I've always said that. And he could spot them a mile off. He was the one who spotted something in Millie Small that nobody else could see. And in fact, Leslie Kong and I had to get this sixteen-year old over to England, and of course 'My Boy Lollipop' was recorded in the UK, in Pye Studios.
Graeme Goodall
Graeme GoodallQ: Is that true about the Rod Stewart rumour that refuses to die, that he played harmonica on that session?
A: I'm not certain, I wasn't there. Probably Phil Chen who later on played for Rod Stewart. I guess you could find that out from him, I don't know. If Rod Stewart played on it, I guarantee that Chris Blackwell paid him little enough for it (laughs).
Q: (Laughs)
A: 'Cause he was gathering the musicians at that time. But I'm not certain, I wasn't there and I never really kind of... Chris let them later - 'cause his second attempt was a strange record, you might want to do some research on it, called 'You Don't Have To Be A Baby To Cry' by The Velvettes. There you are, there's a little anecdote for you (laughs).
Q: (Chuckles) Right. So back to the fifties again, he started a label called R&B or something like that, didn't he, Chris?
A: R&B was one, Island was the host company if you like, that's how he started everything. And R&B Records was the other one, and he was basically putting it in his juke boxes. But then that's how he market - no, he's hitting the middle class people in Jamaica. And this is music that could, with a lot of effort, a lot of push and a lot of force, could be heard on the radio stations eventually, y'know, they started to play it. The first person who started to play records - locally produced records on radio stations - was Duke Reid, he had 'Treasure Isle Time' on Saturday afternoon. And his theme song was 'My Mother's Eyes' which I later on covered in England, I made a record with that song.
Q: He bought like half an hour of airtime for this show.
A: Half an hour airtime on a Saturday afternoon.
Q: And Coxson started his some time after him?
A: Yeah, Coxson went on some time after him. He was buying his airplay, which incidentally was copied later on by pirate radio stations in England (laughs). You had to either buy the record or give Radio London... give them the B-side publishing.
Duke Reid (middle) with Fats Domino (lower right).Q: What was Blackwell's relationship to people like Coxson or Duke in the fifties, early sixties?
A: I don't think they took any notice of him frankly, and I don't think he took any notice of them. He was more interested in the Owen Grays, the Laurel Aitkens, I think it was so distinct. I mean, I don't think Chris ever went to sound system dances frankly, he didn't see it that way. Then later on when Jamaican music became established in England he became more, so to say, closely interested in the ska music.
Q: The grass roots scene, right.
A: Yeah. I think Chris was more interested in promoting the more well-produced type of thing.
Q: The polished, uptown stuff.
A: Yeah.
Q: So who was among the first artists you recorded at this time, was it Laurel Aitken or Owen Gray, those two?
A: I think Laurel Aitken was the first and then Keith & Enid. Laurel Aitken, Owen Gray, I think it was Laurel who was the first one in there. Wilfred Edwards...
Q: Jackie, yeah.
A: Yeah, well he hadn't changed his name then, Chris changed the name to Jackie when he went to England, because it was more of a 'pop' connotation than Wilfred.
Q: Where would they be found, at talent contests or something like that? Like 'Opportunity Hour'?
A: No... Yeah, Chris would go to Opportunity Hour and places like that, and Chris would bring them inside. And it's self-propagating, because once you got one of them in there and they had themselves a record then the other guys would come along and say 'Hey, I can sing, I can sing!', y'know. And so it became self-propagating, people would find Chris. I mean, he would determine if they are any good or not, and he was very good at it. His Keith & Enid, 'Worried Over You' was absolutely phenomenal in a small market, but I mean the percentage of sales, the interest in sales of a record was incredible.
Owen Gray
Laurel AitkenQ: So 'Boogie In My Bones' (Laurel Aitken) was basically the first release Blackwell put out?
A: I'm afraid I have to say my memory escapes me, it was such a long time ago (chuckles). It's a lot of records which went under the cutting needle.
Q: Of course. But this was basically R&B music we're talking, ska was not invented as yet.
A: Yeah, exactly.
Q: So how do you remember things taking shape musically, from the local R&B to a more distinct Jamaican music, genuinely JA? A lot of people credits the pianist, 'Easy Snappin'' for changing the beat to what it became.
A: Oh, Theo Beckford?
Q: Yeah.
A: He was part of it. If there's one common denominator in the whole thing, not as far as the musical content but as far as the whole process, that was Ken Khouri, Papa Khouri. Because he was the one who had the foresight to develop the industry, y'know, build the studio, build the pressing plant. He was a very successful Lebanese businessman, but I mean he was the lynchpin of the whole thing. As far as changing the music, again I would think that probably... there was one, Smith Hi-Lite, who was very influential. I think there was just a building up. Theo Beckford definitely had a feel to it, Jah Jerry (Haynes) with his Fender, the backbeat off his guitar, I think he was influential. Drumbago (Arkland Parks) on drums with his rimshot. But there again, the rimshots - Duke Reid was the one that pushed me in accenting the rimshots. But again, I don't think there was one common person, it was just a group of them, y'know. Theo Beckford was one, Jah Jerry, Charlie Organaire on harmonica, they all just come together and remember, the musicians played on everybody's session. They were a session group of musicians, even though they didn't know it at the time. I think that, again, not to sell anybody short, Coxson was very, very instrumental, and Duke Reid too. You know, they were competitors, and they all worked for something different. It was for me to try to come to terms with what they wanted from me and how to bring this into practice. And of course, if they wanted something then somebody else would say 'I want the same thing that you got on Duke's thing', y'know. And of course 'Yeah OK, fine!' and let's do something else as well, and so it just sort of grew like that.
Q: Mmm, scratched off the labels. 
Q: It was basically the same as a 'pre-release', what you would get officially later on. 
Q: What about Drumbago, Arkland Parks the drummer? People tend to overlook him. 
Q: That goes for most of the studios, the actual producer was the engineer together with the musicians and the artist. 
Q: I don't know the source for them, but a few years ago you had a bunch of vintage 45's that came out on such labels as Ska Beat, Island, R&B, and even Doctor Bird I think. Pirates. 
Q: Must have been a mild shock for you to see the amount used of it back then? 
Q: You haven't told me the story of how Doctor Bird was set up, you went over to London in about '66 I guess. It was like a subsidiary to WIRL at the time, or a link to some other company to begin with? 
Q: (Laughs) OK, inventive. So what was among the first releases on Doctor Bird, could that be 'Every Night' by Joe White for example? 
Paul Marin -19 is one thing, 20 is a whole other matter. It gets even worse if they win the UCL. *groan*. 
05/18/2011.MU fans naah cough, but all a unuh a vomit?-Lazie 1/11/2015
Comment