Every Little Thing Gonna Be Alright

by Hank Bordowitz

  Lastly, while it was Bob Marley who inspired the world with his remarkable music and socio-cultural vision, it was Island Records that worked tirelessly during Marley’s lifetime to make this outreach possible, and the label’s dignified stewardship of the Marley catalog demonstrates the durability of that commitment. From the start, Blackwell’s involvement in Jamaican popular music has plainly been a labor of love.

  TIM WHITE: Describe what the West Indian record business was like in the U.K. and The States before Island Records.

  CHRIS BLACKWELL: I don’t know much about The States. I think there was little or no record business in The States other than people importing—wholesalers in Brooklyn or such that would import in the early ’60s. Calypso from Trinidad, which was mostly represented on a label called Cook—used to sell much more than music from Jamaica. The biggest record Cook had, I think, was the first by the Antigua Steel Band.

  Now in England, before Island started, there was a label called Esquire Records, which was a jazz label, and they had a sub-label called Starlite on which they put Jamaican music. And the other Jamaican music label in England was called Melodisc. Melodisc was also a jazz label, and then it started a label called BlueBeat—and BlueBeat put out Prince Busters’ records, and also they put out the very earliest Jamaican records. The first one was probably “O Carolina”—I always consider “O Carolina” to be the first Jamaican record.

  So what happened was that from Jamaica, I licensed my records to Starlite in England; and Esquire, I don’t think, had any other Jamaican product except from me. Melodisc, however, dealt with lots of different people. When I started Island in England in 1962, I found myself in the same situation, I guess, as someone starting to sell vacuum cleaners and they were up against Hoover, where it became virtually a generic, because in England it was called bluebeat music!

  That’s why I really pushed the name ska, to try and get across the fact that this music is not bluebeat music—it’s Jamaican music, it’s ska music. We really pushed that name. The first record I made was a big hit, “Little Sheila,” by Laurel Aitken. The other side was called “Boogie In My Bones.” So we recorded those at a JBC radio station. At the session we had the mixture of a couple of musicians who were Australian, who were living in Jamaica, and the rest were Jamaican. Then I just put it out in Jamaica, took it down to Federal Records, which was owned by Ken Khourie, and then manufactured them there and I had a tiny office on Orange Street. Coxsone’s shop was there, Leslie Kong, Prince Buster were there—all the producers.

  WHITE: Orange Street was like Kingston’s Music Row?

  BLACKWELL: Yeah, and when you drive up there you’d get sound systems blasting out all the time. But you see, the root of the business in Jamaica was the sound systems. That’s how it all started—because the radio would never play the music. Even today you don’t hear a lot of reggae in Jamaica.

  The people who had money in Jamaica would consider this “trash” music; they wouldn’t be interested. And when I left Jamaica in 1962, the biggest record that had ever been in Jamaican was the soundtrack of “The Student Prince.” That gives you some idea of where it was at!

  I decided that I would start out with records in England because it had become very competitive in Jamaica and I was starting to sell or license a lot of records in England. So I went to see all of my Jamaican competitors which were Duke Reid, Leslie Kong, Coxsone Dodd, Prince Buster. And with all of them—with the exception of Buster—I made a deal that when I went to England, they’d give me their records. So I came to England and I told these people at Starlite I was going to start my own label. They were kinda upset about it.

  I bought from them, for about 50 pounds, a list of all the stores in England who they dealt with. Stores in London, Nottingham, Birmingham, Coventry, Bristol, Liverpool. I manufactured my first Island single and I went around to these stores and I sold it to them.

  WHITE: Where’d you manufacture it?

  BLACKWELL: At a little company called British Homophone, which is a pressing plant [in Dagenham, Essex]. “Darling Patricia” by Owen Grey, with “Twist Baby” on the flip side, was the first record we put out. “Independent Jamaica” was the second one, by Kentrick “Lord Creator” Patrick.

  When I started Island, I raised some money in Jamaica; I put up what money I had at the time, which was money I made off working on the first James Bond picture, “Doctor No.” I had scouted location, I picked hotels for them, I got the transportation, that kind of thing. They looked after me very well. They offered me a piece of the film, you know 1% of the film. And I said, no, I prefer the thousand pounds! So that money I put into Island in England, and the other investors were basically Leslie Kong and his family—they were the other share holders, so that I would get product from them. Because he was good, Leslie; great records used to come out of his place. So that’s really how we got Bob Marley’s records—because Bob, through Jimmy Cliff’s introduction to Leslie, recorded with Leslie.

  WHITE: Do you have any vivid memories of listening to those early Bob singles like “Judge Not”?

  BLACKWELL: No, I wish I could tell you I did. When we first got it I even spelled his name wrong on the label! It was just another record that came from Leslie and we put it out.

  WHITE: Did you have a role model for the kind of record person you wanted to be—a certain record label, leader, producer?

  BLACKWELL: Yes, my favorite labels—there were two: Blue Note Records because that was a jazz label, and I love jazz, and Atlantic Records. Before I started producing records, I used to come up to New York. They used to have a tremendous amount of second-hand record stores on Sixth Ave. here. I used to buy 78s, mainly R & B records. I’d bring them back to Jamaica, having crossed off the labels to frustrate my competitors. What they were for were to sell to the sound systems. Because, you see, the sound system was the engine room of the whole thing, like traveling discotheques. And they were all owned by people who sold liquor. The sound system guy would promote his own event. And at that gig you would sell all the food and all the liquor, etc., etc. So there was tremendous competition to have the hottest sound system, not only by having the most tweaked-up amps and speakers, but also by the records. So I would go up and buy these records for 63 cents each, cross out the labels so nobody knew what it was, and I’d take them there and sell them for 20 pounds each.

  How ska emerged, was through the Jamaican attempt to play the grooves of New Orleans R & B, like Fats Domino or Smiley Lewis. King Records, Imperial Records and Atlantic Records—those were the three labels that were really popular in Jamaica. So the Jamaicans were trying to play these records, and their rhythm kinda turned around a little bit; it became more exaggerated and ska really emerged from that. But there was no deliberate attempt to change the beat—it just kinda happened.

  One of the records from Coxsone Dodd—it must have been pretty early because it was the fifth record we put out in England—was a record called “We’ll Meet” by Roy and Millie. Roy Shirley sang the first verse and chorus. And then when Millie Small came in, she sounded so quirky and so funny that people would say, “Yeah, give me the record.”

  I went down to Jamaica and met her and she had a great personality— vivacious, bubbly. She lived in the country, in Clarendon, which is a sort of semi-desert part of Jamaica. And I don’t know how she found her way into Kingston—I think she had a boyfriend who was a policeman and he gave her 10 shillings to go into Kingston. Anyhow, I’d decided to bring her over to England.

  On one of the records that I had imported long ago and scratched off the label of was a song called “My Boy Lollipop,” which I had Millie re-record. I changed it into a ska beat—a “pop” ska. When it was finished I felt so sure that this was a hit that I didn’t put it on Island— I decided to license it to a label which I felt could really handle a pop hit—Fontana, a big label in the U.K. This record became huge, and suddenly I was in the pop business, the mainstream record business.

  I still kept my ha
nd in Jamaica—because I used to go back lots. In fact, on one of the trips back there, coming out of one of the Orange Street sound systems, I heard this incredible record, a record called “Mockingbird” by Inez and Charlie Foxx. I went to New York to see the person who owned the record so I could make a deal—and that was a person named Juggy Murray from Sue Records. That’s how Sue Records started in England!

  Then there was a whole period from about 1966 onward when I had very peripheral knowledge of what was going on in Jamaica—I wasn’t directly involved at all. I got pulled back in around 1969 with Jimmy Cliff, because we sent him in 1968 to Brazil to a Brazilian song festival and he won it. After Brazil he came back to Jamaica, and with Leslie Kong he produced this song called “Wonderful World, Beautiful People.” So it was at that time that I became involved in reggae again, but only with Jimmy Cliff. Then it was around 1972 that the Wailers walked in off the street in England and asked me to sign them!

  WHITE: Had you been following the Wailers’ rocksteady and early reggae recordings back in Jamaica?

  BLACKWELL: A little bit. “Put It On” was one of my favorite songs. At that time we had a pretty amazing array of artists—King Crimson, Traffic, Emerson Lake & Palmer—a huge amount of acts. The fact that I made a deal with Bob Marley in England, and I gave him this money—everybody said it was a dumb thing to do: “Why give him the money? These guys are bad guys, everybody knows they’re bad guys, nobody wants to deal with them.” I said to Bob: “O.K., I’m going to trust you. Here it is—go ahead and do it.”

  The deal was for 4,000 pounds but the guy who introduced us and effected that meeting took 25%, so that took it down to 3,000 pounds that I gave them to make their first album for me. After a month or so I sent a message to the Wailers that I was coming to Kingston and that I was staying at such and such a hotel—so they came to pick me up, to take me to Harry J’s studio to hear it. I was thrilled about it—because they at least had recorded something; so already all the nay-saying motherfuckers were wrong, you know. So I went in the studio and they played me all the tracks and I was just totally blown away by the musical quality of “Slave Driver” and “Concrete Jungle.” You know, “Concrete Jungle” was just so far ahead of anything that had ever been made in Jamaica before—that one particular track, the structure of it, the whole thing. It was just unbelievable. This LP, Catch A Fire, was the first reggae record conceived as an album. Leslie Kong had previously put out that so-called “Best Of The Wailers,” which was drawn from a series of late rock steady sessions that took place in a concentrated period of time. But Catch A Fire was conceived by the group as a cohesive project, and they went ahead and executed it.

  It was unprecedented in reggae—and also, you have to remember that around 1967 was the first time that even rock records or “pop” records were being conceived as albums. Albums would be collections of various attempts at singles and B sides.

  So, when I heard Catch A Fire, it was a justification for putting the faith in them and also a justification of how to establish a relationship with somebody who is a natural rebel, a natural revolutionary. I felt the only way to do it was to say, “It’s up to you—go ahead and do it.”

  Reggae at that time didn’t have any respect for musicians. It was music that there would be big hits with, but they were novelty hits— there was no artist behind them. When I heard the Wailers’ music and I heard the complicated musicianship in it, I knew I had to try to work them as a reggae band.

  When we first worked together, it was Bob Marley & The Wailers; that’s how some of the records came out before I signed them. And that was, like, a ’50s name. So I changed it to The Wailers. It’s also true that I changed it back to Bob Marley & The Wailers later.

  And I wish I could tell you that Catch A Fire was a huge hit, that the record came out and was a success, but it wasn’t. After the first year that it had been out, I think it only sold 14,000—24,000, something like that. But the fancy cigarette lighter packaging and the music itself sparked a big word-of-mouth campaign, which Burnin’” and “Natty Dread” increased, and radio people in San Francisco and Boston were supportive. Commercially, the Rastaman Vibration album in 1976 was the big breakthrough.

  WHITE: Describe Bob’s approach with that record.

  BLACKWELL: Well, I guess that record was more R & B-ish; I think that was more Bob being influenced by the R & B side. He was really keen to try to sell records to black America. With the Live! record, he had really cracked Europe and become very hot there, but black America became the next goal. Rastaman Vibration was a conscious attempt to break into that market. So at this time we started to go back and try to establish the cultural roots in the mass audience’s mind. After that came the period when Bob was shot [on Dec. 3, 1976] in Jamaica. He left the country after that, and he went to England, where he recorded Exodus and much of Kaya. Both of those albums represented where this person’s head was at that time. They were unique records musically, but they were also personal milestones, diaries about his thinking spiritually, as well as his role leading this band of reggae messengers, if you will.

  WHITE: Those records pulled people deeper into Rasta and into the future of that faith. Exodus is an album about Rasta’s destiny.

  BLACKWELL: That’s right. Exodus was designed to be a much more conscious record than any previous one, much more prophetic. It’s a great record, Exodus, but the one that gets missed a lot and is not considered great is still my favorite record, which is Kaya. Everyone said, “Well, Kaya, it’s soft.” The irony is that Kaya was composed largely in support of the Jamaican peace movement amongst the rival political gangs, thus being Bob’s riskiest record image-wise. He was a Tuff Gong who was now showing his tender side in order to help establish this ghetto truce.

  WHITE: “Is This Love” was meant as a sign of strength, not weakness.

  BLACKWELL: Exactly. That’s what I felt, and that’s why I always defended that record. But often when people list all of Bob’s records, they mistakenly diss that one, but I love it. What’s also interesting is the evolution of a rock sound in Bob’s albums. I consider the first record, Catch A Fire, to be the least reggae-like, because it had overdubs from a rock guitarist I was working with named Wayne Perkins, and I edited the backing tracks in order to double the length of the songs and create space for solos, which reggae never had much of. These ideas were unique for reggae, yet these techniques later influenced Bob and the band’s thinking when they recorded Rastaman Vibration and Exodus, and you can also hear the rock-inclined performances on the Babylon By Bus live collection. Bob combined R & B and rock and reggae in a way never done before.

  However, once Bob had experimented with these things, he turned inward again and concentrated on developing new avenues for reggae—with “One Drop” on “Survival” for instance. So that the last normal studio effort, Uprising, was the least rock-influenced of his albums. He’d come full circle, but was an innovator every step of the way.

  WHITE: There’s always been Bob Marley’s music, and then there’s been reggae. The former proved so original, it became a genre apart from the latter music, influencing it while continuing to pioneer on its own terms. Where is reggae now? What comes after dancehall and modern conscious reggae?

  BLACKWELL: You know, there’s two acts I’ve got in Jamaica now that I can’t get to square one with, yet I think they’re both fantastic because of their soulfulness. One is a guy called Donovan, and the other is a group called Foundation. Theirs is a country, rural sound, and if I had to predict a worthwhile trend in reggae, I would call it rural soul. These guys have great harmonies, soulful songs, and simple lyrics that are a kind of naive art. This stuff is the best thing I’ve heard since the early Wailers. But all anyone wants to know about in reggae now is dancehall. There’s a great excitement to dancehall, it’s like the Wild West, but I don’t know that it’s very lasting or very rich musically. This rural soul stuff is rich. Dancehall music tends to eat its young; it feeds on itself to a negati
ve extent.

  That’s one of the problems, you see. When ska and reggae started, people in Jamaica would be listening to Miami and Jamaica radio stations which were playing American R & B, and all these outside influences would come in considerably more than today and have their nurturing effect. Now, since Bob died, people are trying to copy Bob or recycle some old rhythms and lyrics in attempts to emulate or imitate the past in a different way. As you say, the whole Jamaica scene has fed on itself. When there’s a hit, everybody wonders what it was that made it a hit and copies it exactly or samples it.

  WHITE: Dancehall is stimulating but not creatively important.

  BLACKWELL: But you have to remember that Jamaica has a population of only two and a quarter million people, and it’s almost astounding how the music from there has expanded to reach the world. These days, there’s almost more reggae being played live now in clubs than rock. I was in Miami recently and every single band along the oceanside club strip was playing reggae! Island is planning this autumn to put out a boxed set of Bob’s best singles over the decades, including those never released in America, like “Screw Face,” “Craven Choke Puppy,” and Bob’s version of “Guava Jelly.”

  WHITE: Artistically and philosophically, what do you hope to cement in peoples’ minds through the new boxed set?

  BLACKWELL: The idea with that is to put together a really good document of the different recordings to reflect what was going on with Bob at each personal stage, and back it up with a kind of storyline of what was going on in Jamaica during each period. Bob worked with a lot of people in Jamaica; he worked with Leslie Kong, with Coxsone, with Lee Perry, and all these different people also had an influence on him. I think it’s time to show how his music and his reputation were formed. In this boxed set we want to get across what caused all this to emerge, and all of Bob’s travels, including the thing of him going to America to live [in Delaware] and then coming back—all those different elements played a part.