Secret History of Rock. The Most Influential Bands You've Never Heard (29 page)

The mixes on all of King Tubby’s albums are serene and bizarre – the product of a brilliant, twisted mind. Tubby was able to make delays, flanges, and other cheesy effects sound organic. I didn’t so much learn to play bass by listening to King Tubby as I learned to conceive of bass, and truly appreciate its role as a powerful undercurrent, bubbling beneath the rest of the music. And in terms of mixing, Tubby’s work illustrates how an instrument can sometimes best be appreciated by yanking it out of the mix for several measures, something that the average rock and roll ego is hard pressed to comprehend.

The man who became known as King Tubby was born Osborne Ruddock in Jamaica, in 1941. As a young man, he worked as an electronics engineer in Kingston, where he became involved with the world of sound systems. The Jamaican sound systems that arose in the late ‘50s featured mobile deejay setups that brought music and entertainment to neighborhoods and towns at a time when few homes had radios or record players. Ruddock built equipment for sound systems, and by the late ‘60s he was operating his own, the Home Town Hi-Fi sound system.

As competition grew between Kingston systems, Ruddock – who by then had adopted the nickname King Tubby – developed his own echo and reverb effects to make Home Town’s sound distinctive and exotic. Other systems, though, were acquiring exclusive tracks from local studios, which gave them an advantage. Tubby wanted to offer something even more special.

In addition to running Home Town, Tubby worked at Kingston’s Treasure Isle Studios as the engineer in charge of cutting the master copies of recordings onto acetate discs. It had become common practice in Jamaica for new singles to feature on the B side a “version,” which was a test recording of the same song but mixed without vocals in order to set the instrument levels. While cutting a version one day, instead of dropping the vocals entirely Tubby began alternating between the vocals and instruments (on the primitive two-track recordings), sliding vocals in and out of the mix at opportune times. The effect was thrilling; the absence of voice, or the sudden disappearance of the music, added a dynamic tension to the song that didn’t exist before. Tubby took these acetates to play on his sound system, and dub music was born.

Soon Tubby began experimenting more with the possibilities of the version. In the studio he added homemade effects like echo, delay, reverb, and flange, while accentuating the bass and drums in the song to make it more appealing to dancers. Meanwhile, Home Town’s star deejay
U-Roy
began filling up the space that the dropped vocals left behind with his own rhythmic chanting, and developed the style known as “talkover” or “toasting.” Accompanied by Tubby’s reworked acetates (known as dub plates),
U-Roy
became what’s recognized as the first rapper.

Wyclet Jean, the Fugees:

Our whole production style, myself and my cousin Jerry, since we’ve been little has been drum and bass dub-style, and the vibe King Tubby gives me is the dub-style, scientifically. King Tubby was to dub what Thelonious Monk was to jazz.

As
U-Roy
began recording his toasts onto Tubby’s dubs, both talkover and dub records appeared for sale commercially and the new styles emerged as popular genres. By the early ‘70s, entire albums of dub such as Carl Patterson’s Tubby-produced
Psalm of Dub
emerged. In a stroke of self-promoting genius, in 1970 Tubby used his knowledge of electronics and radio transmissions to jam the national Jamaican Broadcasting Company and replace their programming with hours of his own dub music.

By the time Tubby moved into his own four-track Dynamic Studio in 1974, he had created an entire industry around his production techniques. Reworking the music of artists such as Augustus Pablo and Yabby U, as well as recordings made by his house band the Aggrovators (which featured the legendary reggae rhythm section of drummer Sly Dunbar and bassist Robbie Shakespeare), Tubby churned out hundreds of dub tracks over the years. As other producers got into dub, Tubby stayed ahead of the competition with new innovations. Reggae producer
Lee “Scratch” Perry
became Tubby’s rival, but they were also collaborators and friends.

Through the late ‘70s and into the ‘80s, as Tubby focused on the overall administration of his studio, other dub producers whom Tubby personally trained became his successors. By 1985, when Tubby opened a new, modern studio, his assistant Prince Jammy (Lloyd James) had become dub reggae’s leading producer. Four years later, King Tubby was gunned down by a robber outside his Kingston home, ending a brilliant career of studio advances that had stretched around the world and changed the shape of popular music.

DISCOGRAPHY

(WIDELY AVAILABLE RECORDINGS)

Roots & Society
(Lagoon Reggae, 1993)
.

If DeeJay Was your Trade: The Dreads at King Tubby’s 1974-1977
(Blood and Fire, 1994)
; features I. Roy, Tappa Zuckie, and other toasters.

(Augustus Pablo)
King Tubby’s Meets Rockers Uptown
(1976; Shanachie, 1994)
.

Dub Gone Crazy: King Tubby and Friends
(Blood and Fire, 1994)
; features Tubby and his protégés, Scientist and Prince Jammy.

King Tubby Special 1973-1976
(Trojan, 1994)
; features Niney, Dennis Brown, and others.

Shining Dub
(Lagoon Reggae, 1994)
.

(Yabby U)
King Tubby’s Prophesy of Dub
(1976; Blood and Fire, 1995)
.

Roots Dub
(Lagoon Reggae, 1995)
.

Dancehall Style Dub
(Abraham, 1995)
.

(w/ the Aggrovators)
Creation Dub
(Lagoon Reggae, 1995)
.

(w/ Soul Syndicate)
Freedom Sounds in Dub
(Blood & Fire, 1996)
.

(w/ Prince Jammy)
Dub Gone 2 Crazy
(Blood & Fire, 1996)
.

Dangerous Dub
(Greensleeves, 1996)
.

King Tubby’s Meets Scientist at Dub Station
(Burning Sounds, 1996)
.

King Tubby’s Meets Scientist in a World of Dub
(Burning Sounds, 1996)
.

(w/ Glen Brown)
Termination Dub (1973-1979)
(Blood and Fire, 1996)
; features Bunny Lee’s rhythms played by the Aggrovators.

Morwell Unlimited Meet King Tubby’s: Dub Me
(Blood and Fire, 1997)
.

Dub Gone Crazy: The Evolution of Dub at King Tubby’s 1975-1979
(Blood and Fire, 1997)
.

(w/
Lee Perry
)
Megawatt Dub
(Shanachie, 1997)
.

Rod of Correction
(Musicrama, 1998)
.

Upset the Upsetters
(Musicrama, 1998)
.

TRIBUTE:
Sly & Robbie, A Tribute to King Tubby
(Rohit, 1990)
.

LEE “SCRATCH” PERRY

Michael Franti, Spearhead:

Lee Perry is one of the geniuses of contemporary sound. His fearlessness in the face of technology is remarkable when you think he came from an agrarian society. This guy was taking tape machines, space echoes, and reverbs, fashioning them into what he wanted them to be, and using them to create a whole new sound. Using the studio as an instrument was revolutionary. A lot of times I’m trying to create an ambience and space for the lyrics to fit in. He’d create a mood or a tension, not by adding to the track but by taking things away.

Lee “Scratch” Perry’s career, which has spanned five decades of Jamaican music, has touched on R&B, ska, rock steady, reggae, dub, dancehall, and beyond. He’s done it all: sound system operator, talent scout, songwriter, singer, producer, record executive, and studio owner. Though he’d probably be a music legend based only on his eccentricities and his long list of nicknames – Scratch, Upsetter, Super Ape, Pipecock Jackson, to name a few – Perry’s most important contributions to modern music came through his production work. He set Bob Marley & the Wailers on their reggae path, added some low-end to blue-eyed funkster Robert Palmer, and helped the Clash create rude-boy punk. More significantly, Perry’s own dub creations in the ‘70s forever expanded the language of sound and defined the art of the mixing board. As a mad scientist of the studio, Perry inspires knob-twiddlers in all genres to create a mix that adds up to more than the sum of its parts.

Tjinder Singh, Cornershop:

... The madness and weirdness of his production techniques. We try to keep things pretty raw and simple (like he did).

Rainford Hugh Perry was born in 1936, the son of laborers in the Jamaican countryside town of Kendal. Perry quit school at 15 and drifted through a variety of occupations – including dominoes champ and dancer – before hearing a voice in his head that called him to the capital city, Kingston. Arriving in the late ‘50s, Perry sought out the R&B music he loved as a dancer, and was hired as errand runner for Clement “Coxsone” Dodd, owner of the popular Downbeat Sound System. Soon he was in charge of running the system.

By the early ‘60s, as Dodd’s Studio One label began producing ska records by indigenous artists, “Little” Lee served as talent scout (discovering, among others, Toots & the Maytals), songwriter (for early stars like Delroy Wilson), and producer. In 1965 he scored a ska hit of his own with
Chicken Scratch
, the song which gave Perry his most enduring nickname. With other, sexually suggestive songs like
Doctor Dick
and
Puss in Bag
, Perry set a precedent for “slack” reggae lyricists such as Shabba Ranks decades later.

Feeling unappreciated by Dodd, Perry left Studio One in 1967 to join producer Joe Gibbs’ Amalgamated label, where he had another hit (and earned another nickname) with a song attacking Dodd,
The Upsetter
. He quickly became dissatisfied with Gibbs as well and in 1968 started his own label, Upsetter Records. With his new backing band, the Upsetters, Perry scored a hit with
People Funny Boy
, a song aimed at Gibbs. Slower in rhythm than most ska and rock steady of the time, the song is recognized as one of the earliest tracks in the evolution of reggae.

As the Upsetters got rolling, they achieved great success with novelty songs like
Return of Django
that mixed reggae rhythms with western soundtrack music. In 1969 Perry began working with the Wailers, a vocal trio led by Bob Marley. Under Perry’s production and direction, the Wailers developed into a full reggae band. Though they left Perry in 1971, after their second album – and Perry threatened to kill Marley for stealing the Upsetters’ rhythm section – the two patched things up and even collaborated in the late ‘70s on the reggae-punk solidarity anthem
Punky Reggae Party
.

Through the early ‘70s, Perry continued recording with the Upsetters, collaborating with dub pioneer
King Tubby
, and producing artists such as early toasters
U-Roy
and I-Roy. Stretching the possibilities of the studio, Perry spliced sections of other songs into new ones (an early, manual form of sampling) and took
Tubby
’s dub advances to new levels of sophistication. In 1973, Perry built his own studio in the Kingston suburbs. Black Ark, as he called it, soon earned a reputation as Perry’s mystical sanctuary, where anything was possible. As the self-mythologizing Perry would say, “It was only four tracks written on the machine, but I was picking up 20 from the extraterrestrial squad. I am the dub shepherd.”

David Byrne:

Lee Perry blew my mind. He took dub to a whole new level, where it really became textural and musical, and it wasn’t just throwing reverb on a rhythm track. He saw how he could create a whole new piece of music out of somebody else’s track, and sometimes what he did was better than the original. You don’t hear it [in my music] in a way that sounds like what he does – but when you think in terms of what he’s doing structurally, emotionally, texturally, you learn from that.

During the mid- and late ‘70s, Black Ark produced hundreds of tracks, including politically conscious reggae hits such as Max Romeo’s
War ina Babylon
and Junior Murvin’s
Police and Thieves
(later covered by the Clash). Even more notable, though, was the dub made by Perry and the Upsetters on records like
Super Ape
. Employing early drum machines, phase shifters, and all manner of psychedelic wizardry, Perry took the Upsetters’ music and infinitely reimagined it as some of the most mind-warping dub sounds ever created.

By 1979, Perry’s life was unraveling. With his marriage falling apart and record sales steadily declining as his music became more esoteric, Perry was drinking heavily and smoking huge amounts of marijuana. When local gangsters started extorting protection money from him, Perry cracked. Visitors recall seeing him walk backwards, eat money, and pray to bananas. Then, after covering the walls of Black Ark in small graffiti, Perry burned the studio to the ground.

After that legendary episode, Perry adopted an eccentric, lunatic lifestyle (perhaps an act, perhaps the result of a real mental breakdown), spouting half-mystical, half-nonsensical statements and dressing in junkyard costumes. He left Jamaica, and spent the ‘80s working in the U.S., then England, where he produced acts such as Simply Red and Terence Trent D’Arby, and updated his own sound through collaborations with more electronically oriented dub producers such as Mad Professor and
Adrian Sherwood
.