by SCOTT C
It’s hard to believe that so many people’s knowledge and love of reggae music begins and ends with Robert Nesta Marley. So much attention has been given to the contributions of a small handful of major players that many important personalities involved with Jamaica’s rich musical history have remained in the shadows of the reggae world—at least outside their island.
Back in 1989, Canadian author Beth Lesser had been asked to write something about Waterhouse-legend King Jammy for a U.K. reggae publication called Small Axe. This series of articles bound for the magazine quickly grew into the beginnings of another book altogether. In that same year, a modest 1,000 copies of King Jammy’s were published, reaching mostly reggae music insiders, collectors and aficionados.Lesser, who had spent almost the entire 1980s travelling back and forth to Jamaica with her husband, Dave Kingston, had managed to capture an important period of evolution in Jamaican music—largely attributed to the rise and creative output of King Jammy’s Super Power sound. The book simply and honestly chronicled the daily movements of Lloyd “Jammy” James, engineer, producer and businessman, as well as the deejays, selectors and artists that he surrounded himself with on a regular basis, people like Half Pint, Junior Reid, Admiral Bailey, Sugar Minott, Lieutenant Stitchie, Nicodemus, Tenor Saw and many more.
That book made its way into the hands of Montrealer Erin MacLeod, who was keen to get ahold of the rare account for her boyfriend Micah Locilento, a DJ and record collector fascinated by the Jamaican sound-system tradition. Coincidentally, MacLeod was working in project development and acquisition at Montreal’s ECW Press when she realized that Lesser’s colourful accounts needed to reach a wider audience. “I got one of the original photocopied and stapled books to give to Micah,” she explains. “When I read it myself, I was convinced that it deserved to be reissued. Even though ’70s reggae gets almost all the attention from reggae critics and reissue labels, the ’80s—and King Jammy in particular—gave birth to so many riddims, production techniques and deejay styles—stuff that you hear in the music today. It’s a book that gives first-hand accounts of classic sound clashes, and the pictures are amazing. Beth’s enthusiasm for her subject is infectious.”
Soon after seeing the King Jammy’s reissue to completion, which, incidentally, was eventually edited by Micah Locilento, MacLeod left ECW in preparation for a move to Jamaica. I spoke with author Beth Lesser about the book from her home in Toronto, where she lives with her husband and children.
Mirror: So you and your husband used to publish Reggae Quarterly magazine out of Toronto?
Beth Lesser: Yep. The very first issue was like a photocopied fanzine, but every issue after that was the regular glossy format. I used to contribute a lot of articles and interviews to the magazine, as well as taking most of the photos.
M: I understand you took all of the photos included in the King Jammy’s book. Some wicked pics in there. You really get a feel for the time and the people.
BL: Well thank you. That’s only a handful of the pictures I took over the years.
M: I can imagine. What was your introduction to reggae music?
BL: We started listening to reggae back when the Skinheads, or what they used to call Suedeheads, were still around. These guys had nothing to do with neo-Nazi movements, but everybody was into reggae and ska and the whole two-tone thing, and we really got into it in the late ’70s. I was never really a big fan of Bob Marley, but I was attracted to groups like the Clash who were working reggae into their sound.
M: So how did you go from being just a reggae lover, to someone who was privy to the inner workings of an emerging subculture?
BL: (laughs) It was just accidental, you know what I mean. You just meet the right people at the right time and it clicks. The first person we connected with was Augustus Pablo. He had a friend who had a wife up here in Canada and that allowed us to become friends with Pablo and the group of musicians and artists that he worked with. We hung out at Pablo’s store, Rockers, on our first trip to Jamaica and started the first incarnation of Reggae Quarterly based on people who we met through him. That fanzine was called Live Good Today after a Prince Jazzbo song. Surround sound
M: It just sounds like all you had to do was show up, and all of this music business would just carry on around you.
BL: It was really amazing how welcoming people were. You’d get to know them, and pretty soon we were just like anybody else hanging out in the yard. It got to the point where in the course of one day, we would sit in on a recording session at Jammy’s, then go up to Studio One, and even Sugar Minott’s Youth Promotion all in one shot.
M: So there was no wave of hungry music journalists clamouring to Jamaica to tell the stories of the sounds coming out of Waterhouse?
BL: Not exactly. I mean, the U.K. and parts of Europe have always had a better appreciation for reggae music on the whole than North America, so there were other people around, but it was mostly record collectors and people like that who would make the trip. Lucky for us, the relationships that we formed allowed us a lot of freedom to explore what was really going on.
M: How many times did you make the trip to Jamaica over the course of the ’80’s?
BL: We used to go twice a year. We’d go every winter, and then again in spring/summer. These were trips that were absolutely necessary for the magazine, and allowed us to maintain connections with people like Jammy and Sugar Minott, and see first-hand what they were up to in the studio. Things changed towards the end of the ’80s in Kingston as crack-cocaine and guns made some of our regular stops a little more dangerous than they had been. I also gave birth to my daughter, and was very hesitant about bringing her on trips at that time.
M: Do you think most people respect the significance of dancehall under the bigger umbrella of reggae music?
BL: I was very happy to see the scope of what was considered popular reggae music finally extend and expand itself from simply Bob Marley and Peter Tosh. When we were spending time in Jamaica, there was a huge dancehall scene going on, but as soon as we set foot outside of Jamaica, people just assumed that everyone there was Rastafarian. At the time, there was a big Rasta movement going on that had made its way into the music, but there were definitely other things going on as well, exciting developments that we thought were just as important if not more so.
M: Tell me a little about why you thought that King Jammy was so important.
BL: King Jammy was a product of King Tubby, probably the most important name that was able to influence the whole of reggae music. I mean, Lee Perry was influential as well, but Tubby was able to reach into all parts of reggae. Jammy was able to take all of the things he had learned with Tubby and build a sound that dominated throughout the ’80s. The list of people that he was able to collaborate with during this period is simply amazing, and an important part in the evolution of dancehall.
M: When was the last time you were in Jamaica?
BL: 1989.
M: Do you keep in touch with a lot of the people you were able to befriend over those years?
BL: Not really, but a lot of the folks we met are the type where you could walk into their yard after being away for years, and it would be like you’d never been away.
M: With so many trips to Jamaica under your belt, there must be one story that sticks out in your mind as particularly memorable.
BL: (laughs) There are a lot of them. There were all kinds of dances that got busted up by the police, but I’d have to say that getting married at Sugar Minott’s Youth Promotion studios was quite memorable.
M: You got married at Sugar Minott’s?
BL: Yeah! His mother knew this little old man named Bishop Reed who married us right there in the yard. I think they played Michael Prophet’s “Here Comes the Bride,” and then the dance went on all night. That’s just one of the many wonderful experiences we had down there. :
King Jammy’s by Beth Lesser, ECW Press, pb, 152pp, $23.95.
Many of Lesser’s photographs are also on display at the Reggae Explosion museum in Ocho Rios, Jamaica.
Closer to home, catch Micah Locilento at his weekly Wednesday DJ night at Blizzarts (3956A St-Laurent).
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