November 29, 2011
The New York Times
By ROB KENNER
Barry Llewellyn, a founding member of the popular Jamaican harmony trio the
Heptones, died on Nov. 23 in St. Andrew, Jamaica. He was 63 and lived in
Brooklyn.
The cause was pneumonia, said his wife, Monica.
Founded by Mr. Llewellyn and his schoolmate Earl Morgan, the Heptones rose from
singing on the streets of Trenchtown to take their place alongside the Wailers
and the Maytals as one of the island’s most important vocal groups. As Jamaican
popular music shifted from the hard-driving ska beat to a dreamier sound known
as rock steady, the Heptones were among the most consistent hit makers in
reggae, with romantic records like “Sweet Talking” and “Party Time.”
Barrington Llewellyn was born in Kingston, Jamaica, on Dec. 24, 1947, began
singing around the age of 14, and formed the Heptones with Mr. Morgan shortly
afterward. Inspired by American R&B groups like the Drifters and the
Impressions, the Heptones progressed from lighthearted love songs to weightier
themes on records like “Equal Rights” and “Sufferers Time.” During a prolific
five-year run with Clement S. Dodd’s Studio One label, they created a deep
catalog of hits that has been re-recorded over and over by successive
generations of musicians.
They went on to work with the visionary producer Lee (Scratch) Perry at the
height of his powers, and released the classic album “Night Food” on Chris
Blackwell’s Island Records label in 1976.
Although Leroy Sibbles wrote and sang lead on most of the group’s songs, he
credited Mr. Llewellyn — also known to friends and fans as Barry Heptones — for
his creative influence. “He was more than a member of the group,” Mr. Sibbles
said in a telephone interview on Sunday. “Barry had more talent than the other
guys who were singing with us. He was more musical. He added more inspiration.”
Usually responsible for singing harmonies, Mr. Llewellyn took the lead on songs
like “Nine Pounds of Steel” and “Take Me Darling” as well as the Heptones’
biggest international hit, “Book of Rules,” which he adapted from “Bag of
Tools,” a poem by R. L. Sharpe. The song was included in two movie soundtracks.
Mr. Llewellyn was not prone to boast about the song’s success. “He was a very
humble person,” Ms. Llewellyn said. “He would just do what he had to do to make
others happy.”
Though he lived in Brooklyn, he was in Jamaica working to establish a learning
center to help young people in his native Kingston. “The youth need that father
figure,” Ms. Llewellyn said. “That’s what he was really focusing on.” He also
recently recorded an album of his own music titled “On the Road Again,” which
has yet to be released.
When Mr. Sibbles left the group to pursue a solo career in 1978, Mr. Llewellyn
and Mr. Morgan recruited another lead singer, Naggo Morris, and continued to
record, but with diminished success. The original Heptones lineup reunited in
1995. Mr. Sibbles said that he and Mr. Llewellyn toured Europe together for the
past five years. “We actually did a tour about three months before his passing,”
he said. “The last date was in Germany, and he was still singing as strong as
ever. We never foresaw a problem with him.”
In addition to his wife, he is survived by several children and grandchildren,
as well as four brothers and four sisters.
Punk may have got all the headlines,
but reggae proved vital in ending the rift
between black and white teenagers
and introducing cross-pollination to the charts
Neil Spencer
The Observer
Sunday 30 January 2011
This article appeared on p30 of the The New Review section of the Observer on
Sunday 30 January 2011.
It was published on guardian.co.uk at 00.05 GMT on Sunday 30 January 2011.
It was last modified at 00.05 GMT on Sunday 30 January 2011.
It was punk's "summer of hate", 1977, and the required pose was a sneer, a
leather jacket and something hacked about – a spiky haircut, a ripped T-shirt, a
sawn-off school tie. And, of course, no flares, the despised flag of hippiedom.
But at the cold, concrete roots of Britain a very different aesthetic was also
in the ascendant, one calling for an oversized tam, dreadlocks and a display of
"the red, gold and green", the colours of Rastafari. Flares? Fine!
The two looks represented the different worlds inhabited by young white and
black Britain, worlds which a year previously had been remote from each other
but which by the summer of 1977 were unexpectedly and often uncomfortably
rubbing shoulders. At Hackney town hall, under portraits of whiskery Victorian
aldermen, I watched the Cimarons chant down Babylon while Generation X snarled
their way through "Wild Youth". In Brixton, I gaped as the Slits, the acme of
unruliness, shared a stage with Birmingham's Steel Pulse, the most militant of
Britain's proliferating reggae bands.
More than just the "Punky Reggae Party" Bob Marley had playfully celebrated on
disc that summer, these were gigs that signalled the birth of a new Britain, one
in which the neofascist National Front was consigned to the margins and musical
cross-pollination became the norm. Rock-reggae bands such as the Police, ska
revivalists such as the Specials and home-grown reggae acts such as Janet Kay
would soon occupy the charts. Further down the line would come UB40, Culture
Club, Soul II Soul and then the current era in which, to quote Soul II Soul
singer Caron Wheeler: "You can't distinguish between colour any more – it's just
people."
These days, punk is to be found in the cultural academy, in lecture halls, art
galleries and fashion history books. By contrast, British reggae remains
half-forgotten and little praised, represented mainly by the Specials' "Ghost
Town" as the default tune for any retrospective on the bleak, Thatcherite early
80s.
By way of correcting the imbalance comes Reggae Britannia, a BBC4 documentary in
the vein of the channel's Soul Britannia and Folk Britannia, which follows
Britain's romance with Jamaican music from "My Boy Lollipop", Millie Small's
1964 hit, through to the late 80s. Its broadcast is preceded by a Barbican
concert featuring a selection of Jamaican and UK acts – Big Youth, Ali Campbell,
Carroll Thompson and Ken Boothe among others.
Those 1977 shows, organised by a nascent Rock Against Racism, meant it had taken
29 years since the arrival of the Empire Windrush for black and white Britain to
share the same stage. Preposterous though it now seems, it hadn't happened too
often before. Jazz had long provided a cross-racial haven (black bandleaders
such as Ken "Snakehips" Johnson were active as far back as the 1930s), but most
often the only place to find the two communities mixing was in a soul club or at
an Al Green or Stevie Wonder concert. As late as 1978, Joe Strummer would sing
of being the only "(White Man) in Hammersmith Palais" at a reggae extravaganza
(Joe exaggerated; there were at least six).
In reggae terms, it had taken the emergence of Bob Marley to effect the uneasy
coalition of rock fans, black youth, lofty Rastas and proto-punks that
confronted each other at his celebrated 1975 Lyceum shows. After Marley, reggae
was taken seriously as music of substance and innovation, where previously it
had been treated at best as a novelty or simply ridiculed.
The series of reggae hits that had made the UK's pop charts in the late 60s and
early 70s seemed only to harden prejudice; Tony Blackburn, in his pomp as Radio
1's premier DJ, declared them "rubbish", despite the British public regularly
sending the likes of Desmond Dekker's "Israelites" and "It Mek" into the Top 10.
Catchy numbers such as the Upsetters' "Return of Django" and Dave and Ansel
Collins's "Monkey Spanner" reflected reggae's popularity among skinheads (odd
given the skins' racist tendencies), while other hits – Bob and Marcia's "Young,
Gifted and Black" (originally a solemn Nina Simone song), Nicky Thomas's "Love
of the Common People" – had jaunty orchestral arrangements added to the Jamaican
originals ("stringsed up" was the saying) to sweeten them for export.
Though hits such as Bobby Bloom's "Montego Bay" were unashamed gimmicks, others,
like Dekker's "Israelites", reflected the Jamaican ghetto experience. A
surprising number became part of the fabric of British life, popular as run-out
theme tunes for football clubs (notably Harry J's "The Liquidator") and
advertising jingles.
Yet British reggae acts remained thin on the ground. Bands such as the Cimarons
existed principally to supply backing for visiting Jamaican stars or were
expected to provide a medley of soul hits rather than reggae. "You had to be
more of a showband," recalls Dennis Bovell, who established Matumbi early in the
70s and who would become a groundbreaking figure in British reggae. "We'd play
some rocksteady but mostly Otis Redding, James Brown and the like – soul music
was considered the music of emancipation."
Matumbi found work at a variety of venues – American air force bases,
chicken-in-a-basket supper clubs in places such as Huddersfield and Cannock –
though black Britain, like Jamaica, preferred to keep up to speed with the
latest releases via the "sound system" (disco) and the "blues dance" (a house
party with pay bar). "A blues was the only place you could get a girl," says
Bovell. "Reggae dancing was full embrace, and if you were young and living at
home, that was your only chance to spend a night in someone's arms."
Sound systems had long played a pivotal role in Jamaican life, providing escape
and a showcase for hot tunes, usually with added commentary from talk-over DJs
such as Dennis Alcapone and Big Youth. "Sound systems were our BBC or CNN, a way
to communicate with people on the street," says Big Youth in Reggae Britannia.
In Britain, sound systems were almost the only conduit for reggae. "There was
nothing on the radio," points out Bovell, who alternated his role in Matumbi
with running London's Jah Sufferer system.
British sound systems, which drew cachet from having the latest Jamaican
releases, were snooty about home-grown product. Bovell, exasperated at the
exclusion of his music, eventually bought a "dinking" machine to knock out the
centre of his records so he could pass them off as Jamaican imports.
For the sons and daughters of the Windrush generation, reggae became an
underground code of defiance, part of the quest for selfhood. "We rejected the
caution and restraint our parents had in a hostile racial environment," says
poet Linton Kwesi Johnson. "We were the rebel generation – reggae afforded us
our own identity."
Singer Brinsley Forde, who helped found Aswad in 1975, echoes the sentiment.
"What we sang about was our experience in London. People were copying Jamaica
but weren't telling their own story."
A key element of that story was police use of the hated "sus" laws, which
allowed people to be picked up on "suspicion" of committing a crime, while
hostility to the police was stoked by the deployment of phalanxes of cops to
protect National Front marches through black areas.
A simmering atmosphere of distrust was brought to boiling point at the end of
1976's long hot summer, when the Notting Hill carnival turned into a battle
between black youth and police. The confrontation would be played out in more
extreme form in 1980 and 1981, as Brixton, Southall, Liverpool, Birmingham,
Bristol and Leeds all experienced incendiary riots, one result of which was the
repeal of the sus laws.
The summer of 1976 brought another pivotal event, Eric Clapton's drunken rant on
stage at Birmingham, in which he acclaimed Enoch Powell as the politician who
would "stop Britain from becoming a black colony… the black wogs and coons and
fucking Jamaicans don't belong here". From a man which had topped the US charts
with a cover of Marley's "I Shot the Sheriff", this was shocking stuff and
inspired the formation of Rock Against Racism (RAR).
British reggae swiftly acquired a new militancy and ubiquity. Steel Pulse sang
"Ku Klux Klan" with the Klan's white hoods on their heads. Linton Kwesi Johnson
proclaimed it was "Dread Inna Inglan" and warned "get ready for war". The
growing roster of home-grown acts – Misty in Roots, Reggae Regular, Black Slate
– found exposure on RAR stages and, after John Peel's conversion from prog rock,
on his Radio 1 show and its live sessions.
Aside from its social commentary, reggae became chic due to its sonic
radicalism, with its dub, rap and special disco mixes picked up by rock and
soul. "Reggae taught us about space, leaving gaps. It was such a relief after
the strictness and minimalism of punk," says Viv Albertine, guitarist with the
Slits, whose 1979 album, Cut, was produced by Dennis Bovell.
In the post-punk era, the Clash, the Members and the Ruts were other rock bands
incorporating reggae into their sound, along with the Police, who deftly
integrated reggae on hits 'Message in a Bottle" and "Walking on the Moon". "We
plundered reggae mercilessly," acknowledges drummer Stewart Copeland on Reggae
Britannia.
By the close of the decade, another strand of Brit reggae was in play; the 2
Tone ska revivalism of Coventry's Specials. Their nostalgia for the ska of the
mod and skinhead era quickly blossomed into a ska-punk fusion. As Specials
founder Jerry Dammers remarks: "We were the beginning of the imitation
generation. We didn't know how to play Jamaican ska so we ended up creating
something that never happened in the first place."
Together with the Selecter, the Beat, Madness and more, the 2 Tone bands
straddled the fault lines of British racism, their multiracial line-ups
attracting an audience that included sieg heiling skinheads intent on trashing
their shows. It was a crazy, unsustainable scenario that helped capsize the
Specials, though their swan song, "Ghost Town", became the defining hit of 1981.
The angst and confrontation of British reggae ebbed during the 80s – "The fun
had gone out of the music," says Bovell – though by then it had melded into
mainstream pop. Janet Kay's "Silly Games" reached No 2, a representative of
sweet, home-grown lovers rock that found an echo in the catchy output of Culture
Club with what singer Boy George describes as "reggae that wouldn't frighten
white people". Some said the same of Birmingham's UB40 – "They cashed in on our
hard work with a weaker, pastel version," opines Steel Pulse's Mykaell Riley –
though the Brum troupe would prove world conquerors, popular even in Jamaica.
A few years later, the arrival of Soul II Soul and Massive Attack, collectives
weaned on sound systems and punky reggae, rendered the old categories obsolete.
Was their music reggae, funk, hip-hop, pop or something else? It was all and
none of those things, but mostly it was just British.
The Reggae Britannia concert is at the Barbican, London on 5 February. Members
of the Guardian and Observer's Extra scheme can save £5 off top-price stall
seats. www.guardian.co.uk/extra.
Reggae Britannia, the documentary, will be broadcast on BBC4 at 9pm on 11
February, followed by film of the Barbican concert
Alton
Ellis, the smooth Jamaican singer and songwriter known as the Godfather of Rock
Steady, died early Saturday morning (local time) in London. He was 70 and had
lived in Middlesex, England, for nearly two decades.
The cause was multiple myeloma, a form of bone cancer, said his business
manager, Trish De Rosa.
Starting in the 1950s, Mr. Ellis helped lay the foundations of the Jamaican
recording industry, singing songs that would profoundly influence global pop
music.
“Alton was a bigger artist in Jamaica than Bob Marley,” said Dennis Alcapone,
another Jamaican recording artist working in Britain who often performed with
Mr. Ellis. “Everybody, even Bob, would love if he could sing like Alton Ellis.
All of them would sit back and listen to Alton because Alton was the king.”
Alton Ellis was born and raised in Trenchtown, the same underprivileged Kingston
neighborhood that was home to stars like Marley. Mr. Ellis and his younger
sister Hortense got their start as schoolchildren competing on Kingston talent
shows like “Vere John’s Opportunity Hour.” In 1959, as half of the duo Alton &
Eddie, he recorded the R&B-style scorcher “Muriel,” which became one of the
first hit records for the pioneering local producer Clement Dodd, known as
Coxsone.
Bouncing between Mr. Dodd’s Studio One label and the Treasure Isle label of a
rival producer, Arthur Reid, known as Duke, Mr. Ellis blazed a trail with a
series of classic love songs like “Girl I’ve Got A Date,” “I’m Just a Guy” and
his signature, “Get Ready Rock Steady,” a 1966 dance-craze record that inspired
a new era in Jamaican music. (Much later he established his own label,
All-Tone.)
Rock steady was a sweeter, slower sound that formed the bridge between the
hard-driving brass of ska and the rebel reggae that Marley later spread
throughout the world. Rock steady’s easy pace and spare arrangements were the
perfect showcase for Mr. Ellis’s soulful tenor, an elegant instrument that fell
somewhere between the roughness of Otis Redding and the silkiness of Sam Cooke.
“Alton ruled the rock steady era,” Mr. Alcapone said. But Mr. Ellis’s influence
did not stop there.
“Get Ready Rock Steady” was used in 1969 on “Wake the Town,” featuring a
Rastafarian D.J. named U-Roy; the track would be described by some as the
world’s earliest rap recording. The instrumental track to Mr. Ellis’s
composition “Mad Mad” became one of the most covered recordings in reggae
history, influencing generations of dancehall and hip-hop artists. And his 1967
composition “I’m Still in Love With You” was covered several times, most
recently by the dancehall artists Sean Paul and Sasha, reaching No. 3 on
Billboard’s Hot Singles chart in 2004.
Mr. Ellis was awarded Jamaica’s Order of Distinction in 1994 and was inducted
into the International Reggae and World Music Hall of Fame in 2006.
Ms. De Rosa said his body would lie in state in the National Arena in Jamaica to
accommodate the crowds expected to pay their respects to Mr. Ellis, who never
stopped working until he collapsed after a London performance in August. He had
juggled demands to perform and record even as he underwent chemotherapy, making
a final trip to Jamaica in June.
“My dad did a lot for music, but he didn’t really boast about it like he could
have,” said his 23-year-old son Christopher, who often performed with his father
and was one of his more than 20 children. “He’s got a lot of respect, and his
name is really big, but financially he’s been robbed over the years. He told me,
‘Son, do not let them rob you like they robbed me.’ ”
After a long battle for royalties, Mr. Ellis received a check for “I’m Still in
Love With You” a few weeks before he died, Ms. De Rosa said.
Desmond Dekker, the Jamaican singer whose 1969
hit, "The Israelites," opened up a worldwide audience for reggae, died on
Wednesday. He was 64.
He died after collapsing from a heart attack at his home in Surrey, England, his
manager, Delroy Williams, told Reuters.
"The Israelites" was the peak of Mr. Dekker's extensive career, selling more
than a million copies worldwide. He was already a major star in Jamaica and well
known in Britain. The song was his only United States hit, but it was a turning
point for Jamaican music among international listeners.
The Jamaican rhythm of ska had already generated hits in the United States,
notably Millie Small's 1964 hit, "My Boy Lollipop." But that song was treated as
a novelty. "The Israelites," with its biblical imagery of suffering and
redemption, showed the world reggae's combination of danceable rhythm and
serious, sometimes spiritual intentions.
Mr. Dekker was named Desmond Adolphus Dacres when he was born in Kingston,
Jamaica, in 1941. As a teenager he worked in a welding shop alongside Bob Marley
and auditioned unsuccessfully for various producers until Mr. Marley encouraged
him to try out for his own first producer, Leslie Kong.
Mr. Kong produced Mr. Dekker's first single, "Honour Thy Father and Mother," in
1963, and it reached No. 1 in Jamaica. Like many of Mr. Dekker's songs, it
carried a message. A string of Jamaican hits followed, including "It Pays,"
"Sinners Come Home" and "Labour for Learning." Mr. Dekker had a total of 20 No.
1 hits in Jamaica.
A series of songs including "Rude Boy Train" and "Rudie Got Soul" made Mr.
Dekker a hero of Jamaica's rough urban "rude boy" culture.
His 1960's songs used the upbeat ska rhythm, a precursor to reggae also known as
bluebeat. By the end of the decade, Mr. Dekker had won the Golden Trophy award,
presented annually to Jamaica's top singer, five times and was known as the King
of Bluebeat. He won the Jamaican Song Festival in 1968 with "Intensified."
"Honour Thy Father and Mother" was released in Britain in 1964 on Chris
Blackwell's Island label, which would later release Bob Marley's albums. Three
years later, Mr. Dekker had his first British Top 20 hit with "007 (Shanty
Town)," a tale of rude-boy ghetto violence — "Dem a loot, dem a shoot, dem a
wail" — sung in a thick patois, which Americans would hear later as part of the
soundtrack to the film "The Harder They Come" in 1972. Paul McCartney slipped
Mr. Dekker's first name into the lyrics to the Beatles' ska song, "Ob-La-Di,
Ob-La-Da," on "The Beatles" (also known as the White Album) in 1968, the year
Mr. Dekker moved to England.
With "The Israelites," released in Jamaica in December 1968, Mr. Dekker had an
international impact. "I was telling people not to give up as things will get
better," he said in a interview last year for the Set the Tone 67 Web site.
"The Israelites" reached No. 1 in Britain and No. 9 in the United States in
1969. The song would return to the British charts in 1975 and was reissued as a
single after being used in a commercial for Maxell recording tape in 1990.
Although Mr. Dekker had no further hits in the United States, he continued to
have hits in England with "It Mek" in 1969 and the first recording of Jimmy
Cliff's "You Can Get It if You Really Want" in 1970. But while Mr. Dekker kept
up a busy performing career, the death of Mr. Kong in 1971 ended his streak of
hits. He returned to the British charts with "Sing a Little Song" in 1975.
The punk era of the late 1970's brought with it an English revival of ska by
groups like Madness and the Specials. Mr. Dekker's songs were rediscovered, and
he was signed by Madness's label, Stiff Records. His 1980 album, "Black and
Dekker," featured members of a venerable Jamaican band, the Pioneers, and Graham
Parker's band, the Rumour. The British hitmaker Robert Palmer produced Mr.
Dekker's next album, "Compass Point," in 1981. But in 1984 Mr. Dekker declared
bankruptcy, blaming his former manager.
In 1993, the Specials reunited and backed up Mr. Dekker on the album "King of
Kings," with remakes of ska hits. In 2000 he released the album "Halfway to
Paradise." He continued to tour regularly; his final concert was on May 11 at
Leeds University.
Mr. Dekker was divorced and is survived by a son and daughter.
The death of Bob Marley, aged 36, from cancer
yesterday robs Jamaican music of its first ambassador, and popular music in
general of one of its most eloquent powerful and conscientious voices.
Over the past 10 years Marley has been almost
single-handedly responsible for introducing reggae music to an international
audience, and with it, the first popular knowledge of the Rastafarian faith
which he followed and always espoused in his music.
Marley became a figure of incalculable influence and inspiration to the young.
The beautifully melodic quality which surfaced in Marley's work, allied to the
irresistible reggae rhythm and the potent conviction of his lyrical messages
which was to make Marley the first reggae artist to achieve recognition in the
popular market, beginning with the album Catch a Fire in 1972.
When other rock performers recorded his work - such as Eric Clapton, who
recorded Marley's song "I Shot the Sheriff" - the singer's reputation was
enhanced still further.
Marley achieved the rare feat of being a popular figure, feted and lionised by
the chic and the powerful, while remaining aloof to it all and without
compromising his credibility as a spokesman for millions of young blacks.
He was obliged to leave Jamaica in 1979 after he was shot in the chest following
appearances at public rallies in support of the then Prime Minister, Michael
Manley.
Eighteen months after the attempt on his life, Marley returned to Jamaica and
gave a concert at Kingston. In a new spirit of reconciliation, Manley and the
Opposition leader Edward Seaga appeared on stage with him, alongside notorious
gunmen from the two political parties.
