The Skatalites - & Their Timeless Music

The Skatalites

One of the most interesting acts billed for this year’s Reggae Sunsplash happens to be the Skatalites.

Though our music was alive before its formation, some musicologists will argue that the shape and direction of our music started with this band of ultra talented musicians.

When they take the stage on the final night of Reggae Sunsplash, dubbed Reggae Classic, the Skatalites will take with them pages and pages of Jamaica’s popular music history.

Who are the Skatalites?

The Skatalites were formed at the dawn of truly Jamaican popular music. During the late 1950’s, many Jamaican artistes were playing versions of American R&B, New Orleans shuffles and jazz. There was also the calypso-oriented mento style. Musicians such as Tommy McCook, Roland Alphanso, Lloyd Brevett, Don Drummond, Rico Rodriquez and others cut their teeth on jazz, especially. The first recordings made in Jamaican studios, which opened just a few years prior to Jamaican independence in 1962, tended to be derivation R&B and mento. Big bands, such as Sonny Bradshaw’s band and Cluett Johnson’s Blues Blasters, were hugely popular.

New Beet

All of the future Skatalites were part of the scene-playing in big bands, recording as session men in the new studios and working on their jazz chops in jazz sessions. Out of these sessions, backing such artistes as Derrick Morgan, Stranger Cole, Higgs & Wilson, Laurel Aitken and others, a new beat began to emerge. While Tommy McCook credits Clu Johnson as the inventor of the Ska beat, many point to drummer Lloyd Brevett, who were involved in the drumming and chanting sessions of Count Ossie’s Rastafarian colony in the hills around Kingston, as the key innovators. They began shifting the emphasis to different beats of standard New Orkeans, shuffles: Jah Jerry’s off-beat guitar accents added to the new sound, which spawned a whole new way of dancing-dubbed ska which took the island by storm. It was new, purely Jamaican sound, which coincided with the heady rush of national pride stemming from the emergence of an independent nation.

By 1964, such future reggae stars as Bob Marley and The Wailers, Jimmy Cliff, Toots & The Maytals, Desmond Dekker and many more were making their first recordings. Most of those seminal hits featured the same pool of musicians: Lloyd Knibbs or Drumbago on drums, Lloyd Brevettt or Clu Johnson on bass, Jah Jerry or Ernest Ranglin on guitar, Jackie Mittoo on piano, Don Drummond or Rico Rodriquez on trombone, Tommy McCook and Roland Alphonso on alto saxophones, Lester Sterling on tenor saxophone, Johnny "Dizzy" Moore and Leonard Gillsan on trumpets.

Soon this core group began recording under their own name The Skatelites an amalgam of "Ska" and "satellites", the latter inspired by the excitement of the burgeoning space programmes of that time. Their sound combined the hard-kicking ska beat with intricate jazz-oriented solos; ska was overwhelming an instrumental dance music.

Signature Tunes

A string of hits followed for The Skatalites, mostly composed by Drummond, McCook or Roland Alphonso and released under their names as The Skatalites. Many of these hits became standards Jamaican music: "Man in the Street," "Phoenix City," "Guns of Navarone," "Eastern Standard Time," "Cornerstone" and others with signature melodies and great solos. Even though the music was largely instrumental, the song titles conveyed social and political themes: early Afrocentrism ("Addis Ababa," "African Beat," "Marcus, Jr."), pride in Jamaica ("Green Island," "Celebration Time), Third World issues.

("Roadblock," "Black Sunday). Don Drummond became internationally recognized as a trombonist and composer, winning a Downbeat poll in the early sixties.

The Skatalites were identified with the average man in the street, the ghetto dwellers, and the nascent Rasta groups. When ska made its first international breakthrough with Millie Small’s 1964 smash "My Boy Lollipop," the Jamaican contingent at the New York World’s Fair included a group of ska musicians.

When Byron Lee and the Dragonaires were chosen as representatives of ska instead of the very popular Skatalites this along with other frustrations, mainly stemming from the small amount of renumeration received for their work on literally thousands of recordings, the group split up in 1966, with two groups emerging from the ashes The Soul Vendors led by Roland Alphonso and Jackie Mittoo, recording mainly at Coxsone Dodd’s Studio One, and the Supersonincs, led by Tommy McCook, recording mainly at Treasure Isle (owned by Duke Reid).

As session bands, both groups created many of the seminal beats of the rock-steady and reggae eras-rhythms, basslines, and melodies which are still being recycled on current reggae dance hall hits 25 years later! Don Drummond, unfortunately, was in Bellevue Asylum after the murder of his girlfriend; he died in 1969. Other members of The Skatalites retired from the music business or emigrated to England or the United States.

There were a couple of attempts to reform the Skatalites, resulting in albums recorded in 1976 and 1984, but these albums were not well-distributed or promoted internationally. Meanwhile, the neo-ska movement had spread to the U.S. where a network of bands, clubs, and radio shows championed the ska sound and sub-culture.

Finally, with many of The Skatalites residing in the U.S. (Jackie Mittoo unfortunately died in 1988), Tommy McCook reformed the band and began touring the U.S. for the first time ever, to recapturous response from reggae fans and young ska enthusiasts. It is quite a sight to see teenagers bouncing up and down in front of The Skatalites stage, dancing to songs played by musicians a generation or two older. When the Skatalites play "Man in the Street" or"Phoenix City" the kids go wild; they know these classics. It just goes to show that The Skatalites music is timeless.