This might just be the most significant 2 minutes 27 seconds of music that has been posted on ABON so far. Because…
Back in the late ’60′s Jamaican DJ’s fronting the enormous, and enormously loud, Sound Systems that toured the island started ‘toasting’. Which involved ad-libbing over the rhythm and in between the singing on the 7″ hit singles they were playing. U-Roy was one of these DJs.
At some point around 1968 he met the then unknown King Tubby who was a disc cutter and engineer at Duke Reid’s studio. Duke Reid ran the Treasure Isle label which was producing many of the hit singles U-Roy would have been playing at Sound System parties. King Tubby of course had access to the rhythm tracks that sat behind the vocals on these singles. And he started experimenting with these tracks – producing what would turn out to be the forerunners of Dub. He also started to give these tracks to DJs like U-Roy to toast over live.
In 1969 John Holt, then one of the very successful singers who featured on many of the Treasure Isle singles, heard U-Roy toasting over one of his own singles - ‘Wear You To The Ball’ - live at a Sound System party. He was so impressed that he introduced U-Roy to Duke Reid. Who then took U-Roy into the studio to record him toasting over the original rhythm track minus the original verse but with John Holt’s original chorus retained. The result was a massive hit in Jamaica and a stream of singles with U-Roy toasting over rhythm tracks already made famous from Treasure Isle hits followed. Over 20 in 1970 alone.
‘Tom Drunk’ was one of those 1970 singles but was produced in a slightly different way to ‘Wear You To The Ball’. It’s based on the rhythm track to Stranger Cole’s ‘These Eyes (AKA Crying Every Night)’ but unlike in ‘Wear You To The Ball’, in U-Roy’s ‘Tom Drunk’ all of the original vocals were removed including the chorus. Instead (I think) U-Roy got in-house backing singer Hopeton Lewis to record completely new lyrics to accompany his toasting over the original instrumental-only rhythm track.
In 1970 while singles like ‘Tom Drunk’ were big hits in Jamaica, it wasn’t immediately apparent that toasting would go on to completely revolutionise music. In fact it took another 10 years or so before the sparks produced in Jamaica at the end of the ’60′s caught fire in the Rap and Hip Hop music of the USA. But in hindsight the whole post modern world of music that we now take for granted wasn’t created by musical scientists like Brian Eno or Arthur Baker in sophisticated studios in London or New York, it can all be traced back to the early experiments of DJs like U-Roy and engineers like King Tubby in ramshackle recording studios in Jamaica in the late ’60′s and early ’70′s.
To demonstrate how the process worked I’ll also post the original single that ‘Tom Drunk’ was derived from later today. Theoretically the two singles should sound similar - and in some ways they do. But that doesn’t tell half the story.
The reason toasting was such a phenomenal success in Jamaica – and then went on to change the World – was that the technique didn’t just produce alternative versions. In the hands of people like U-Roy and his team it was capable of creating completely new works of art that clearly shared some of the same DNA but which contained infinitely more life, energy, verve and, often, creativity than the originals.
Recorded 1970.
Available on many U-Roy compilations. The most comprehensive readily available U-Roy DJ collection is ’30 Massive Shots From Treasure Isle’: Amazon
Great track – hadn’t heard it before. I remember Dread In A Babylon well. Chalice in the Palace. The pleasure in words, long words, biblical words, alliteration and rhymes. Then those mad James Brown-like squeals. One of the great album covers too – whatever happened to them? Before hip hop, I always thought this might have influenced a track like ‘Midnight Train To Georgia’. With the Pips responding a bit like toasters, not just repeating what Gladys sings, but embellishing it and playing around with it, sometimes almost speaking lines in character. Less anarchic sure, but a cousin of this perhaps.
I have to confess I hadn’t listened to this for nigh on thirty years, and hadn’t immediately made the connection between Hopeton Lewis and the Stranger Cole tune, which I think I first heard only a couple of years back. There’s a lot of mythology and misinformation about how the first deejay/dub records came about, and quite a few of the pioneers (not The Pioneers, though) have a tendency to be a little “generous” about their own parts in the events.
U-Roy had deejayed Coxsone’s Number Two set behind King Stitt, but neither were recorded to any extent at Studio One. Two flop singles for Lee Perry, “Earth’s Rightful Ruler” with Peter Tosh on the Reggae Boys’ “Selassie” rhythm, and “OK Corral”, plus one great but unsuccessful single for Keith Hudson “Dynamic Fashion way” was all he had to show for himself when he started voicing versions of Duke Reid rocksteady hits as remixed by Tubby. Of course, in common with the other foundation stars like Count Machuki, Sir Lord Comic and King Stitt, he began in the era before twin decks, when the deejay had to keep the patter going as he flipped the discs. He was probably the first to move on from just shouting encouragement to the dancers; most of his contemporaries struggled in the recording studio.
This post is pretty enlightening. Everyone loves how you will compose them.