Jamaican 50th Independence Musical Countdown!

[albionism]

 

[klang]

^ great track albionism (the barbed wire one)! i had it down as a 70er but prolly got that wrong. yahyahyahyah

 

[klang]

what i like about the sound of 69 is that even the more 'rocksteady-ish' songs start to sound a lot more spikey and tidy. it's like a turning point in jamaican music, where musos and producers tidy old styles up a bit, and at the same time discover new styles.

 

[klang]

that pioneers one ^^ is absolutely beautiful. great vocalists!!!!

 

[klang]

horace andy's vocal style always did it for me. the whole album is great and worth checking out. very moving stuff. rootsy and soulful.

 

[ska invita]

in comes U-Roy

 

[klang]

in comes U-Roy

and - bang! - the music world has changed, once and for all

 

[klang]

i noticed that in 69 suddenly productions seem to sound very different to what they were in 67/68, especially the bass sounds. i'd be interested to know why this is - did they discover a new recording technique? or did they get a new supply of mics or amps? this seems to happen across the island....
does anybody know anything about the technical side of things?

 

[klang]

another transitional gem between rocksteady and roots. the brass are so very roots, hinting at what's gonna happen in the 70s. the vox however sound like a little leftover from 66/67:

 

[ska invita]

Is this the original? love the gregory issacs version also


*id guess as the record industry is making money (unlike most other industry in JA) peopl are investing new found cash (from home and international markets) into new kit, better desks, etc.

 

[klang]

Is this the original? love the gregory issacs version also


*id guess as the record industry is making money (unlike most other industry in JA) peopl are investing new found cash (from home and international markets) into new kit, better desks, etc.

do you know what gear was popular or used in ja then?
i know that in uk that was the time they switched from valve to transistor desks (see the beatles abbey road), but was that the case in jamaica?

 

[klang]

listening to that bob andy track - lovers rock really was nothing new, was it? (as much as i love it...)

 

[ska invita]

naturally different studios had different gear at different times - who had what when is anorak business and information often is based on hearsay and squinting at photos - there are discussions out there on the net about it...i think theres more info about 70s studios than there is about 60s

eta: gear was still very basic in the 60s thats for sure - studio one desk in 67 was 2 channel IIRC

 

[klang]

yeh makes sense, will have to look into it a bit more.


proper skinhead reggae:

 

[klang]

let's get them rude boys stomping!

 

[klang]

check out the bass on this 69 groover:

 

[klang]

what a year

 

[ska invita]

naturally different studios had different gear at different times - who had what when is anorak business and information often is based on hearsay and squinting at photos - there are discussions out there on the net about it...i think theres more info about 70s studios than there is about 60s

eta: gear was still very basic in the 60s thats for sure - studio one desk in 67 was 2 channel IIRC

Interview with studio one engineer sylvan morris

SYLVAN MORRIS
How did you start as an engineer?
I was working by a place named Comtec, a telecommunications place. I went to a technical high school to do electronics, radio and TV. I was quite young at the time, about 16. I was doing my apprenticeship on taxicab radios, police radios, aircraft radios. I was there about a year; they called me the professor. Straight from there I came by Duke Reid and I sojourned there for a short period, about nine months, around 1962. The Jamaican's "Ba Ba Boom time" I remember working on. I won the Jamaican Festival. When I left Duke Reid I came straight to Coxsone. I was here for a period of about eight years during which time we did a lot of good stuff. Because I was sort of happy.

Do you remember the house band around 1965?
Well we used three different bands. One by the name of Sound Dimension. Jackie Mittoo was the main arranger at that time. Leroy Sibbles played bass, Eric Frater guitar, Phil Callender drums. We also had Horsemouth. And Robbie Lyn. He came on roughly after Jackie Mittoo left.

What about when Jackie Mittoo left in 1968?
Well, Leroy Sibbles and myself were the mainstay at that time. He used to call me His operator. when we were recording I didn't sit down much as I was always dancing, so they used to call me the Dancing operator. And if they didn't see me dancing they would stop playing and say, What's wrong, Morris, and I'd say, I don't like the beats. we would come together and try something else until they find the groove and they'd see me dancing. And so that's how we worked for a while.

And these were two track recordings?
We would do the rhythm tracks first and after we'd do the over-dubs, some voices. And depending on the type of tune we'd probably do some horns. We'd actually run it from one tape to another tape, so you'd actually have three sessions of dubbing.

How did you help create the Studio One sound?
Well there were some innovations that I did that I think helped the situation a lot. I created a loop from the Ampex machine, which we used for the voices. We looped back the playback head into the recording so you had this delay. And it was a fixed delay but it sounded so right. And so when you added the voice it sounded fantastic. Also I remember creating a bass box. I noticed the back of the speaker had a heavier sound than the front so I created a bass box where I put an aperture at the back, and put a mic at the back, not the front. there was an electronic voice mic at the time, a ribbon mic, and it was broken and I used some silver tape from one of these tapes that we had and created the ribbon. I think this is one of the things that made the sound the way it was because we used a mic and pick-up and mixed them together.

How many mics were in the studio?
Well, I tell you, on occasions you only had about two mics. Sometimes one! So it had to be strategically placed in such a way to pick up everything.


I was talking about this with a friend the other day, how to achieve a warm, unified sound, and he was saying the endless bouncing process that had to happen on these recordings, to tape, in itself creates a lot of the cohesion... makes sense i think.

Considering that Studio One was the biggest at the time, hard to imagine people having much better gear than them! But I think 69 onwards upgrades would have been getting made...

 

[klang]

1969
The Abyssinians - Satta Massagana

The Abyssinians Rastafari anthem Satta Massagana captures this conflict – a landmark record that failed to be released in 1969.

The track was recorded at a noon session in March 1969 at Studio One but never saw a release and ended up shelved by Coxsone – though it was well received on sound systems that played it. The track had a life of its own though and couldnt be held down, being rerecorded in 1971 by Joe Gibbs as an instrumental called A So by the Destroyers (feat.Tommy McCook amongst others)


As radio picked up on it The Abbyssinians quickly put out their own re-release of it on the Clinch label (possibly having to pay Coxsone £90 to get the master tapes back), called 'Mabrak' and let people know it was their tune, the lyric stating: you tink a so, a no so, satta massagana - this is it, the original hit, thou shalt not steal.


Satta Massagana translates to “give thanks (continually)” from the Amharic - band members and brothers Donald and Linford Manning taking interest in the Ethiopian Orthodox Church as part of their Rasta journey. Incidentally Mabrak translates as Bless.



I'm failing to think of another JA tune up to this point that has the inescapable seriousness that Satta has – even without the lyrics. Roots train has arrived, even if the world (Coxsone included) wasn't quite ready...

ps: this one's from 69 too i believe:

 

[ska invita]

thanks for that seb. i think that came out on Clinch so wouldve likely been 71 also, but Tommys solo is dubbed over the original recording so it all counts as 69 i reckon

 

[klang]

Interview with studio one engineer sylvan morris

SYLVAN MORRIS
How did you start as an engineer?
I was working by a place named Comtec, a telecommunications place. I went to a technical high school to do electronics, radio and TV. I was quite young at the time, about 16. I was doing my apprenticeship on taxicab radios, police radios, aircraft radios. I was there about a year; they called me the professor. Straight from there I came by Duke Reid and I sojourned there for a short period, about nine months, around 1962. The Jamaican's "Ba Ba Boom time" I remember working on. I won the Jamaican Festival. When I left Duke Reid I came straight to Coxsone. I was here for a period of about eight years during which time we did a lot of good stuff. Because I was sort of happy.

Do you remember the house band around 1965?
Well we used three different bands. One by the name of Sound Dimension. Jackie Mittoo was the main arranger at that time. Leroy Sibbles played bass, Eric Frater guitar, Phil Callender drums. We also had Horsemouth. And Robbie Lyn. He came on roughly after Jackie Mittoo left.

What about when Jackie Mittoo left in 1968?
Well, Leroy Sibbles and myself were the mainstay at that time. He used to call me His operator. when we were recording I didn't sit down much as I was always dancing, so they used to call me the Dancing operator. And if they didn't see me dancing they would stop playing and say, What's wrong, Morris, and I'd say, I don't like the beats. we would come together and try something else until they find the groove and they'd see me dancing. And so that's how we worked for a while.

And these were two track recordings?
We would do the rhythm tracks first and after we'd do the over-dubs, some voices. And depending on the type of tune we'd probably do some horns. We'd actually run it from one tape to another tape, so you'd actually have three sessions of dubbing.

How did you help create the Studio One sound?
Well there were some innovations that I did that I think helped the situation a lot. I created a loop from the Ampex machine, which we used for the voices. We looped back the playback head into the recording so you had this delay. And it was a fixed delay but it sounded so right. And so when you added the voice it sounded fantastic. Also I remember creating a bass box. I noticed the back of the speaker had a heavier sound than the front so I created a bass box where I put an aperture at the back, and put a mic at the back, not the front. there was an electronic voice mic at the time, a ribbon mic, and it was broken and I used some silver tape from one of these tapes that we had and created the ribbon. I think this is one of the things that made the sound the way it was because we used a mic and pick-up and mixed them together.

How many mics were in the studio?
Well, I tell you, on occasions you only had about two mics. Sometimes one! So it had to be strategically placed in such a way to pick up everything.


I was talking about this with a friend the other day, how to achieve a warm, unified sound, and he was saying the endless bouncing process that had to happen on these recordings, to tape, in itself creates a lot of the cohesion... makes sense i think.

Considering that Studio One was the biggest at the time, hard to imagine people having much better gear than them! But I think 69 onwards upgrades would have been getting made...

ace ska! nice to read things like 'miceing the back of the bass amp'. i do that quite a lot, i always liked the fact that this way i get a) the rumble and b) the definition. must have done something right. i also have a tape machine rigged up that i use for single slap-delay purposes. it's great to get creative when there is little gear around and finally getting somewhere!

 

[klang]

thanks for that seb. i think that came out on Clinch so wouldve likely been 71 also, but Tommys solo is dubbed over the original recording so it all counts as 69 i reckon

yeah, sometimes i rely on what the internet says, which of course can be far from accurate. u roy toasted over quite a few 69ers in 71/72, i'm looking forward to tue/wed where we can start to draw some connections between the old and the new

 

[klang]

ken boothe recorded some real crackers in 69 too. here's one of them (there's so many rhythms and melody lines in there, it's a joy to discover new things every time i listen to it):



flip side is sound dimension's 'call 1143':

 

[klang]

the heptones shall be released:

 

[klang]

more 69 vocal pop:

 

[klang]

a bit more serious. check out those harmonies:

 

[klang]

can somebody please post a tune! i'm a bit bored with solo-setting...

 

[klang]

alright then, my turn again.

this 7inch is very close to my heart. in 69 delroy wilson still has this ska twang in his voice. i love him for that.

 

[klang]

it's also worth noting that jimmy cliff's self titled debut album was released in 1969.

the single 'wonderful world beautiful people' entered the uk charts at number 44 in october 69, peaking at number 6 four weeks later.



jimmy cliff's recording career started 51 years ago with 'i'm sorry' (1961). he's still going very strongly indeed.
i love jimmy cliff.

 

[klang]

btw - desmond dekker's israelites reached number 1 in the uk charts in april 69. overall it appeared in the top 50 15 times in that year.