Ska, Ska, Ska
During the 1950's Jamaican youth was turning away from the American pop foisted on them by Radio Jamaica Rediffusion (RJR) and the Jamaican Broadcasting Corporation (JBC). Weather conditions permitting they listened instead to the sinewy music being played on New Orleans stations or Miami's powerful WINZ, whose playlists included records by Amos Milburn, Rosco Gordon and Louis Jordan. Significant New Orleans artists of the time included Fats Domino, Jelly Roll Morton, Champion Jack Dupree and Professor Longhair.
During this period, Jamaican bands began covering U.S. R&B hits, but the more adventurous took the nuts and bolts of the sound and melded them with energetic jazz conceits - particularly in the ever-present horn section - and emerged around 1956 with a hybrid concoction christened ska. Ernest Ranglin, the stellar jazz-rooted Jamaican guitarist who backed up the Wailers on such Ska classics as "Love and Affection" and "Cry to Me," says that the word was coined by musicians "to talk about the skat! skat! skat! scratchin' guitar strum that goes behind."
The Ska craze spread to London in the late 1950's and early 1960's and in the United Kingdom Ska soon came to be labelled bluebeat. This music would probably have remained a mere curiosity were it not for the efforts of a white Anglo-Jamaican of aristocratic lineage named Chris Blackwell. As a hobby-like business venture he had set up a small scale distribution network for ethnic records but he had a vision about the potential appeal of Jamaica's oscillating answer to the blues. In 1962 Blackwell took his tiny Blue Mountain/Island label to England, purchased master tapes produced in Kingston and released them in Britain on Black Swan, Jump Up, Sue and the parent label Island. Initial artists included Jimmy Cliff, the Skatalites and Bob Marley.
In England Blackwell struck up a synergism with the fashion conscious mod and skinhead teenage movements through his seminal Jamaican rock records. His big breakthrough came in 1964 when Millie Small, one of the artists he managed, had a huge U.S. hit with "My Boy Lollipop."
Essential listening
Below please find some personal recommendations for anyone who is new to the subject and interested in authentic Ska music.
Feel free to leave a comment or make personal suggestios for albums you would regard as an esential introduction to the wonderful world of Ska.
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