Posts in Category: Reggae/Ska
Our Other Music
Mahalia Jackson
Acoustic Guitar Masters
- John Fahey: On the Sunny Side of the Ocean
- Bert Jansch: Reynardine/Angie
- Leo Kottke: Vaseline Machine Gun/Last Steam Engine
Historical
- “The Original” Bessie Brown: Song from a Cotton Field/St. Louis Blues
- George M. Cohan: Over There
- Georgia Field Hands: Mary Don’t You Weep
- Madrigals: Fine Knacks for Ladies/Madrigal de Nîmes
- Music of the Civil War
- Randy Newman: Louisiana 1927
- Paul Robeson: Vi Azoy Lebt der Kayser?/Ol’ Man River
- Jay Ungar: Ashokan Farewell
Science
- Alpine Kat: Large Hadron Rap
- Richard Feynman Talks About Light
Pop
- Herb Alpert: Spanish Flea
- Burt Bacharach/Dionne Warwick Medley
- Norah Jones: Don’t Know Why
- Tom Jones: Sex Bomb/What’s New Pussycat?
- Lianne La Havas: Age/Is Your Love Big Enough?
- Eleni Mandell: Magic Summertime
- Willie Nelson: Blue Skies
- Santigold: Disparate Youth
- Matt Siffert: Daybreak in Alabama and Riverside Drive
1950s
- LaVern Baker: Jim Dandy Got Married/Playing the Game of Love
- Fontella Bass: Rescue Me/Don’t Mess Up a Good Thing
- The Cadillacs: Speedoo
- Lee Dorsey: Working in the Coal Line/Ya Ya
- Little Eva: Let’s Turkey Trot
- Phil Phillips: Sea of Love
Gospel/Spiritual
- The Blind Boys of Alabama: Run On
- Al Green: Jesus is Waiting
- Happy Passover/Happy Easter
- Mahailia Jackson: Didn’t It Rain/Joshua Fit the Battle of Jericho
- Alison Krauss: Down to the River to Pray
- Odetta: This Little Light of Mine/Glory, Hallelujah
- Sister Rosetta Tharpe: Up Above My Head
- Albertina Walker: I Can Go to God in Prayer/This is the Way to Sing Praises
Rap/Hip-Hop
- Blockhead: None Shall Pass
- Estelle: American Boy/Wonderful Life
- House of Pain: Jump Around
- Run-DMC: King of Rock/Christmas in Hollis
- Jimmy McMillan: The Rent is Too Damn High Anthem
Comedy
- Victor Borge: Hungarian Rhapsody No. 2
- Tom Lehrer: We Will All Go Together When We Go/The Elements
- The Leningrad Cowboys and The Red Army Choir: Sweet Home Alabama
- Allan Sherman: Shake Hands with Your Uncle Max
Reggae
- Burning Spear: Slavery Days/Old Marcus Garvey
- Bob Marley and the Wailers: Stir It Up
- Polemic: Svetlá Mesta/You Can Get it if You Really Want
- The Skatalites: Phoenix City/The Guns of Navarone
- Toots & The Maytals: Funky Kingston/Fine & Dandy
- Peter Tosh: Johnny B. Goode
Folk
- Harry Chapin: Sniper
- Leonard Cohen: Everybody Knows
- Stompin’ Tom Connors: The Hockey Song/Bud the Spud
- Elizabeth Cotten: Freight Train
- John Fahey: On the Sunny Side of the Ocean
- Steve Goodman: City of New Orleans/Talk Backwards
- Woody Guthrie: Hard Travelin’
- Burl Ives: Medley with Johnny Cash, Scene from Cat on a Hot Tin Roof
- Gordon Lightfoot: TheWreck of the Edmund Fitzgerald
- Kate and Anna McGarrigle: Love Over and Over/Going Back to Harlan
- Ann Rabson: One Meatball/Hopin’ It Will Be All Right
- The Rooftop Singers: Walk Right In/Mama Don’t Allow
- Pete Seeger, Bruce Springsteen: This Land is Your Land
- Bruce Springsteen: John Henry
Zydeco
- Clifton Chenier: Bon Ton Roulet/Calinda!
- Rockin Sidney Simien: Don’t Mess with My Toot Toot
- Buckwheat Zydeco: Hey Ma Petit Fille I’m Going Now/Creole Country
TV/Movies/Shows
- Howard DaSilva, Tom Bosley: Little Tin Box
- Anton Karas: The Third Man Theme
- Dennis Potter: Pennies from Heaven (Anything Goes)/The Singing Detective (Dry Bones)
- Mohammad Rafi: Jaan Pehchan
- James Brown: Night Train
- The Capitols: Cool Jerk (featuring Bob Babbitt)
- Gladys Knight & the Pips: Midnight Train to Georgia/I Heard It Through the Grapevine
- The Neville Brothers: Fire on the Bayou/Big Chief
- Laura Nyro: Save the Country
- The O’Jays: Love Train/For the Love of Money
- Parliament Funkadelic: Bring on the Funk
- Professor Longhair: Big Chief/Tipitina
- Robert Randolph and the Family Band: Ain’t Nothing Wrong with That/I Need More Love
- Marlena Shaw: California Soul
- Staple Singers: Respect Yourself/Why Am I Treated So Bad?
- Edwin Starr: War/25 Miles
- The Supremes: You Just Keep Me Hanging On
- Trombone Shorty: One Night Only/Hurricane Season
- War: Low Rider/Cisco Kid
by 
Toots & the Maytals: Funky Kingston and Sweet and Dandy
The visuals in both of these videos — Funky Kingston (above) and Sweet and Dandy (below) are fabulous, as is the music. The Sweet and Dandy clip is from The Harder They Come, one of the greatest musicals ever. The Funky Kingston video simply shows streets scenes of Kingston, presumably in the early 1970s when the song was released.
Depending on the mood of the viewer, the clips show either crushing poverty or capture the fantasy of having nothing and living among a group of people who have nothing as well. Upon thinking it through, living in that way isn’t attractive, of course. But, still…
Here is part of Toots & the Maytals’ Wikipedia profile is very interesting:
Frederick “Toots” Hibbert, the frontman of the group, was born in May Pen, Clarendon, Jamaica in 1942, the youngest of seven children. He grew up singing gospel music in a church choir, and moved to Kingston in the early 1960s.
In Kingston, Hibbert met Henry “Raleigh” Gordon and Nathaniel “Jerry” Mathias, forming in 1961[2] a group whose early recordings were incorrectly attributed to “The Flames” and “The Vikings” in the UK by Island Records. The Maytals first had chart success recording for producer Clement “Coxsone” Dodd at Studio One. With musical backing from Dodd’s house band, The Skatalites, the Maytals’ close-harmony gospel singing ensured success, overshadowing Dodd’s other up-and-coming vocal group, The Wailers. After staying at Studio One for about two years, the group moved on to do sessions for Prince Buster before recording with Byron Lee in 1966.[1] With Lee, the Maytals won the first-ever Jamaican Independence Festival Popular Song Competition with their original song “Bam Bam” (later covered in a Dancehall style by Sister Nancy, and also by Yellowman in 1982).[1][3] However, the group’s musical career was interrupted in late 1966 when Hibbert was arrested and imprisoned for 18 months.[1] He stated that he was not arrested for ganja, but while bailing a friend.[4] He also stated that he made up the number 54-46 when writing “54-46 That’s My Number” about his time in jail.[5] (Continue Reading…)
Here is a link to The Harder They Come, which stars Jimmy Cliff. The band’s website has tour news and plenty of other information.
by
Polemic: Ska and Reggae from Slovakia
I cross post The Daily Music Break at Daily Kos, a political/cultural site. In December, I did a post on the influential ska/reggae band The Skatalites. A comment there pointed to a Slovkian band called Polemic. The usual sources of information — Wikipedia and AllMusic — have next to nothing. I finally found a MyPage listing and the band’s website. Neither of those were fonts of enlightenment.
In any case, they do a terrific version of Jimmy Cliff’s You Can Get it if You Really Want, below. But if you only have time to check out one video, please choose the one above, entitled Svetlá Mesta. My universal knowledge of language — actually, Google Translate — reveals that it indeed is Slovak and means “city lights.” It’s a great song — though I don’t understand a word of it. Please check it out. The video (and presumably the words) actually tells the story of an old man being picked up by a couple of beautiful young girls.
The band identifies themselves as in the reggae/ska category. Svetlá Mesta has a Latin feel to it. I almost felt like I was listening to something from The Buena Vista Social Club, especially after the first minute or so.
by
Burning Spear: Slavery Days and Old Marcus Garvey
Burning Spear, as the Wikipedia entry below makes clear, is a man named Winston Rodney:
Rodney was born in Saint Ann’s Bay, Saint Ann, Jamaica, as were reggae singer Bob Marley and political activist Marcus Garvey who both had a great influence on Rodney’s life: Garvey in his philosophy, which Burning Spear greatly took to, and Marley in directly helping Burning Spear get started in the music industry (by some accounts) by introducing him to Clement Dodd.[3] Rodney met Marley at the latter’s farm in 1969, and having told him that he wanted to get into the music business, Marley advised him to start at Dodd’s Studio One label.[3][4] Reggae singer Larry Marshall claimed that it was he, while visiting St. Ann’s Bay with Jackie Mittoo, who was approached by Rodney, and gave him this advice, and arranged the introduction.[5] Continue Reading…
Here are the lyrics to Slavery Days (above) and Old Marcus Garvey (below).
by
The Skatalites: Phoenix City and The Guns of Navarone
The Skatalites, a long-standing Jamaican band play ska, which is a precursor to reggae. Wikipedia, believe it or not, has a lot to say on the topic:
Ska ( /ˈskɑː/, Jamaican [skjæ]) is a music genre that originated in Jamaica in the late 1930s, and was the precursor to rocksteady and reggae.[1] Ska combined elements of Caribbean mento and calypso with American jazz and rhythm and blues. It is characterized by a walking bass line accented with rhythms on the upbeat. In the early 1960s, ska was the dominant music genre of Jamaica and was popular with British mods. Later it became popular with many skinheads.[2][3][4][5] Continue Reading…
The band goes back to 1964. Here is the beginning of the bio from its site, which has some great autoplay music:
The Skatalites brought together the top musicians and styles of the time—fusing boogie-woogie blues, R&B, jazz, mento, calypso, and African rhythms—to create the first truly Jamaican music: ska. Throughout the mid-20th century, experience in big bands solidified the prowess of most Jamaican musicians; yet, the genesis for many of the great Skatalites goes back to a boys’ school established for the wayward. Continue Reading…
Above is Phoenix City. The Skatalites enjoy reinterpreting movie music. They do The James Bond Movie Theme (from Dr. No) and others. Below is The Guns of Navarone.
by
Peter Tosh: Johnny B. Goode
Tomorrow is the twenty-fifth anniversary of the murder of Winston Hubert McIntosh, who was known as Peter Tosh. He was 42 years old when he died.
This is from a very nice bio at the musician’s website:
Tosh was the backbone and heartbeat of the Wailers as well the group’s most accomplished musician – and a constant in the band throughout the arrivals and departures of his musical brethren. His tireless guitar, keyboards, percussion and other instrumentation formed the foundation of the Wailers’ sound and essentially set the course of reggae music. He was also a prolific and powerful songwriter, his militant perspective offering a bracing contrast to Marley’s more reassuring tone. In a sense he played Lennon to his bandmate’s McCartney.
In July, 2011, Baz Dreisinger posted a very interesting piece at NPR that described a less than completely harmonious relationship between Marley and Tosh, or at least the two Wailers’ role in the marketing of the band:
Tosh left the Wailers in 1973, as the group was gaining international fame. He’s said to have griped about the starring role given to the lighter-skinned Marley by the group’s manager, Island Records chief Chris Blackwell. Steffens says that when Tosh recorded his first solo album in 1976, he sought an alternative source of funding in the U.S.
The tension seems to lead credence — perhaps in an unintended way — to the Lennon/McCartney comparison.
Besides showcasing Tosh’s talents, his version of Johnny B. Goode shows how a great song can be reimagined. Here are Equal Rigbts & Downpressor Man and African.
by
Bob Marley and the Wailers: Stir It Up
Here is Bob Marley’s official site, his Facebook page and a Reuters story about Marley, the recently released movie directed by Kevin MacDonald.
Among the great Wailers songs are Them Belly Full, Get Up Stand Up, Jamming and Buffalo Soldier.
Toots and the Maytals is another great reggae band. Here is Pressure Drop, one of the hits from The Harder They Come, the landmark film that introduced reggae to the rest of the world. Jimmy Cliff sings the title track. Another song from the movie–it’s one of the great soundtracks ever–is By the Rivers of Babylon. This version was done much later by Cliff.
Peter Tosh, who had been a Wailer, had a hit with Don’t Look Back.
by