Jamaican Reggae & Ska Artists who moved to Canada

[Tropicana]

Jerry Brown, Jackie Mittoo, Willi Williams, Noel Ellis, and Johnnie Osbourne. The only time I saw Jacki Mittoo in Toronto, he didn't talk like this. He spoke standard English. He played beautifully.

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Wait till you see Jackie Mittoo playing piano on here....fabulous:

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[Tropicana]

Re: Jamaican Reggae &amp; Ska Artists who moved to Canada

This is the song they were working on. Noel Ellis is the son of Alton Ellis. He was in one of the other videos part 2 I think when they invited him to do the DJ toasting on it. I guess it takes a special gift to toast like this and make it sound good.:

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[Tropicana]

Re: Jamaican Reggae &amp; Ska Artists who moved to Canada

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What is the original riddim on this Jahyout

[Tropicana]

Re: Jamaican Reggae &amp; Ska Artists who moved to Canada

I didn't realize King Jammy lived in Toronto for a while. He moved back to Jamaica just before he did Sleng Teng:

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king jammy's
THE SECOND COMING



<span style="font-weight: bold">By P. Vassell</span>


The world owes a great debt to the soundmen of reggae music. And without their innovations, the music world would be a lesser place, had it not been for the efforts of legendary individuals such as Coxsone Dodd, Duke Reid, King Tubby's and King Jammy's.



Known to the world as King Jammy's, Lloyd James was mentored by the great dub master, King Tubby's, before launching out on his own. Interestingly enough there's a strong Canadian connection to his story, a sound system and small studio in Malton, near the Airport.



Jammy's would eventually return to Jamaica in the late 70's, where the Prince became a King and rewrote the history of reggae music after an &quot;apprenticeship&quot; with King Tubby's. Jammy's produced what seemed like an unending string of hits in the 80s in his own home studio that continue to resonate today.



VP Records has asked him to open up his vaults for several releases including the latest, King Jammy's Selector Choice: Vol. 1-4. The package contains 8 CDs featuring some of the top names from the 80s. WORD caught up with King Jammy's to discuss his second coming:



<span style="font-weight: bold">Let me start by asking when did you live here in Toronto and why did you leave us?</span>


(Laughs) I use to live in Toronto from 1970 until 1976. Well, I wanted to come back to my roots because what I wanted to do - I couldn't do it in Toronto.



<span style="font-weight: bold">Why is that?</span>

There wasn't the amount of artists there that I wanted to record. You have to stay with the roots and to really be successful in the reggae thing.



<span style="font-weight: bold">What was life like in Toronto before you became a big reggae producer?</span>

Life was ordinary. I use to go to work and do things like that....



<span style="font-weight: bold">Were you in the sound system business?</span>

I use to have a sound system in Toronto; it was the number one sound system there.



<span style="font-weight: bold">What was it called then?</span>

The name was Jammy's Hi Fi. After I came back to Jamaica, I was the Prince for a while, then I became King.



<span style="font-weight: bold">Do you have any special memories of living here in Toronto?</span>

The memories that I have in Toronto is that I made good friends, I have a lot of friends there and the sound system was what kept me in the music because it was really going good. The sound system - whenever I played, wherever I played - we'd have big crowds there. So that was kept me going in Toronto, within the music fraternity.



<span style="font-weight: bold">And that gave you the encouragement to go back to Jamaica?</span>

Yes and with the interest of King Tubby's - he use to say &quot;Jammy's come home and do some production and work in the studio and be the engineer.&quot; So he use to encourage me to come back home.



So Toronto has lost you and you went on to become a really successful producer in the music business. Another loss that Toronto felt is Leroy Sibbles. And I guess it says something about how difficult it is to succeed in Toronto and Canada for that matter.



That's true. Very true. Because you see what happens is that we don't really the amount of musicians - reggae musicians that can play reggae the real way, you don't have the amount of artists there to work with - you know there is not much encouragement there for reggae music.



<span style="font-weight: bold">Once you went back, what was your first big success as a producer?</span>

Well the first big success I had was - I did the Black Uhuru album and I also <span style="font-weight: bold">recorded Johnny Osbourne who was in Toronto also. I felt that Toronto lost Johnny Osbourne.</span> We recorded &quot;Water Pumpin'&quot; That was the first big hit since I came back to Jamaica.

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http://www.wordmag.com/Music/Music_2007.02_King_Jammy's.htm

<span style="font-weight: bold">By the way, in Toronto Johnny Osbourne was known as Bumpy and he sang with Ishan People. After struggling for a bit in Toronto, he moved back to Jamaica and became a star with a number of hits.</span>

[Tropicana]

Re: Jamaican Reggae &amp; Ska Artists who moved to Canada

Reggae Pioneers in Canada
Canada's reception and acculturation of reggae followed the same pattern as that of the United Kingdom and the US, where Jamaicans also settled in the late 1950s and early 1960s. At first they imported music from Jamaica for entertainment and recreation, and then began to promote and record their own music in competition with - and eventually for the appreciation of - the established Jamaican culture. Pioneers in the 1960s included Toronto's first ska and rock steady groups, the Rivals, the Sheiks, the Cougars, and the Cavaliers, who took their place alongside Byron Lee and the Dragonaires and other visiting bands. Favoured venues at this time in Toronto, which became the centre of reggae in Canada and indeed one of its hotbeds in North America, included the WIF (West Indian Federation) Club, Club Jamaica, Tiger's Den, and the Blue Angel. The first artist to record reggae in Canada was Jackie Mittoo, followed by Stranger Cole, Tony Eden, Audley Williams, the Webber Sisters, Leroy Brown, and Joe Issacs.

In 1976, Toronto's Ishan People made the first of two albums for GRT. In the next 15 years, however, Messenjah, Sattalites, and Leroy Brown were the few reggae artists to record for a major Canadian label. Sibbles, who sang rock steady with the Heptones in Jamaica during the mid-1960s, moved to Toronto in 1973 and made albums for Micron, Boot, A &amp; M (the reggae-rock Evidence, with the participation of Bruce Cockburn, whose own 'Wondering Where the Lions Are' showed a reggae influence), and Attic. With the world-wide demand during the late 1970s for reggae, recording activity in Canada also increased; Nana McLean, One Love (featuring the guitarist Tony Campbell), Ital Groove, Winston Hewitt, and Earth, Roots and Water, were among the performers heard at this time.


Canadian Reggae Scene
During a period of intense political and social turbulence 1972-82 in Jamaica, a number of then-current and future stars took up self-imposed exile in Toronto and elsewhere in southern Ontario, bringing a measure of visibility and creative vitality to the domestic reggae scene. Among them: the singer and songwriter Ernie Smith (whose Roots Revival evolved by 1980 into the integrated group Bloodfire), Carlene Davis, Ken Boothe, Willie Williams, Fabienne Miranda, Joe Cooper, and the comedic singer Lovindeer (who wrote songs for Ishan People). The 'roots rocker' Johnny Osbourne sang for Ishan People under the name Bumpy Jones before returning to Jamaica in 1980, after the band's demise. The record producer Prince Jammy (Lloyd James), whose 'sleng teng' computerized 'riddim' launched the 'DJ-style' (or 'dancehall') reggae variant (toasting or 'talkover,' to sparse rhythm tracks) in 1985, lived in relative obscurity in Toronto during the 1970s.

From the 1980s, a number of prominent Canadian reggae artists have dominated the music scene in Vancouver (Mango Dub, Chester Miller, and Ras Lee), Montreal (Kali &amp; Dub) and Toronto (R. Zee Jackson, Lazo, Noel Ellis, Truth &amp; Rights, Mojah, Adrian Miller, 20th Century Rebels, Jimmy Reid, Nana McLean, Blessed, Sattalites, and Snow). Messenjah, an influential group recognized as one of Canada's leading roots-reggae bands, was formed in Kitchener, Ont, in 1981. Along with Nana McLean in the 1990s, Tanya Mullings was a pioneering female reggae artist based in Brampton, Ont, who won multiple Canadian Reggae Music awards 1991-7. Sonia Collymore, who began her career by providing background vocals for Nana McLean, also won Juno awards in 2003 and 2005 for best reggae recording of the year.

Jamaica's major artists toured to Vancouver, Calgary, Toronto, Ottawa, and Montreal; in Toronto a club circuit that has included the Soul Palace, Karib Tavern, Pirate's Cove, BamBoo, the Silver Dollar, and the Real Jerk Pit has served local reggae performers. Many of these artists were interviewed by Ottawa DJ Junior Smith, who won the Peter Tosh Memorial Award for his radio program &quot;Reggae in the Fields&quot; in 2002.


Style and Influence
One hallmark of Canadian reggae is the melodicism of its songs, and the relative absence of confrontation, a legacy of the country's conservatism and placid social ambience. Another is the rise of integrated bands, most prominently Chalawa (led 1977-82 by the producer John Forbes), Bloodfire 1980-4, the Sattalites (formed in 1981 by the flugelhorn player Jo Jo Bennett and the singer Fergus Hambleton), and Boncongonistas, One, Fujahtive, Revelation, and Sunforce.

Reflecting the continuing evolution of reggae internationally, several dub poets - poets inspired by the example of Britain's Linton Kwesi Johnson to read their verses to the rhythms of electronically altered, instrumental 'dub' tracks - emerged in the mid-1980s from the literati of Toronto's black community, including Lillian Allen, Clifton Joseph, and Devon Haughton. The dominant influence of hip hop (rap) on black music encouraged Carla Marshall, Devon Martin, Special Ice, and others in Toronto, to work in the 'raggamuffin' or 'ragga' style. Meanwhile, ska made a comeback in the early 1990s as played by such young, white groups as the Skatterbrains in Ottawa and Skaface and the eclectic King Apparatus in Toronto, whose efforts, however, evoked less the Jamaican original than the British revival ca 1980.

Two other musicians, the guitarist and record producer Carl Harvey and the singer Glen Ricketts (also known as Glen Ricks), members in the 1970s of the Toronto funk band Crack of Dawn, moved easily between reggae and rhythm and blues. Harvey toured with Jackie Mittoo and Toots Hibbert and produced recordings by Messenjah, the rhythm and blues singer Kim Richardson, and the Toronto pop trio Sway ('Hands Up,' a hit in 1988). Ricketts recorded soul and reggae albums in Jamaica, England, and Canada.

http://www.thecanadianencyclopedia.com/articles/emc/reggae

[Derek]

Re: Jamaican Reggae &amp; Ska Artists who moved to Canada

<div class="ubbcode-block"><div class="ubbcode-header">Originally Posted By: Tropicana</div><div class="ubbcode-body"> <object width="425" height="350"> <param name="movie" value="http://www.youtube.com/v/8OBafgG9SpQ"></param> <param name="wmode" value="transparent"></param> <embed src="http://www.youtube.com/v/8OBafgG9SpQ" type="application/x-shockwave-flash" wmode="transparent" width="425" height="350"> </embed></object>

What is the original riddim on this Jahyout </div></div>

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[Tropicana]

Re: Jamaican Reggae &amp; Ska Artists who moved to Canada

Thank you. Who is that on horns? He is fantastic. Is it Don Drummond, the guy who had psychiatric problems? That was a sad story and a great loss to the music industry. So talented too.

[Tropicana]

Re: Jamaican Reggae &amp; Ska Artists who moved to Canada

Thanks. This is the first I am hearing the original. This is the first version of the riddim I heard. I saw Papa Michigan and General Smiley perform it when they came to Toronto...of course they said &quot;we come to nice up Toronto&quot;.

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[Tropicana]

Re: Jamaican Reggae &amp; Ska Artists who moved to Canada

Remember Jackie Mittoo's version of this popular Johnny Clark hit:

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Johnnie Clarke's voice is in top form here and he did perform this in Toronto when he was on the same show as U-Roy :

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Man he could hold that first note long.

[Tropicana]

I have to go in a fix all the video links from the old site.

[Tuff Gong]

Lynn Taitt [Trinidadian] but move to Jamaica then Canada. One of the most important shapers of the beat, especially Rocksteady.

[Tropicana]

Johnny Osbourne aka Bumpy when he was with Ishan People in Toronto.