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From the book: "Reggae. The Rough Guide" (Steve Barrow & Peter Dalton)

Herman Chin Loy, Clive Chin and Augustus Pablo's Far East sound

New producers enter the arena
Chapter 3. Early reggae

Harry Johnson was just one of many new producers establishing individual styles and making their presence felt locally and among Jamaican communities abroad. Herman Chin Loy, a cousin of Leslie Kong, was specializing in quirky, innovative instrumentals on his Aquarius and Scorpio imprints, including "Reggae In the Fields", "Invasion" and "Inner Space".

Several of these left-field productions, usually involving the Hippy Boys session band, were released in the UK on Junior Lincoln's pro-gressive Ackee label, but not the record that was the most important of all, judged from any his-torical perspective. This was "Iggy Iggy", the 1969 debut of one Horace Swaby, who took on the house name that the producer used for many of his discs featuring a keyboards player Augustus Pablo.

The young Mr Swaby's follow-up was another instrumental, and it was to gain a far greater reputation than its initial sales suggested the first cut of "East Of the River Nile".

It was a masterpiece of understatement, with Pablo alternating rudimentary but spooky solos on melodica and organ over a jagged rhythm remi-niscent of the Temptations "Papa Was A Rolling Stone". The first example of what would soon come to be known as Pablo's "Far East sound", it was typified by the employment of minor chords which imparted a supposedly oriental feel to the music, and it soon spawned imitators such as Bobby Kalphat, Joe White, Glen Brown and the similarly named Pablo Black.

This Eastern feel was often further emphasized by the titles, as in the case of the first record by Pablo which really struck a chord with Jamaican record buyers - "Java", produced by another Chinese-Jamaican, Clive Chin, a friend since schooldays. Working at the family-owned Randy's studio, Chin not only produced further exceptional instrumentals from the frail-looking melodica/clavinet player, but also recorded a fine series of vocals with such as Dennis Brown, Junior Byles, Hubert Lee, Jimmy London, Carl Malcolm and the Lyrics, who included future roots hero Fred Locks in their line-up.

Rockers Time - Augustus Pablo

The producer as auteur
Chapter 4 . Roots reggae

Vivian Jackson has become a cult figure among non-Jamaicans with a retrospective interest in Jamaican roots music. Another hero to this new audience is the slight, somewhat frail-looking Rastaman known as Augustus Pablo. After his spell with Aquarius he made an amazing contribution to roots reggae, both as a melodica/keyboards player and as a producer with an immediately recognizable style.

His Hot Stuff and Rockers labels (the latter named after his brother Garth's sound system) were launched in 1972, and soon established him as a stupendous session musician. Releases under Pablo's own name also made clear his principal influence, as they were mostly fresh-sounding interpretations, on melodica or clavinet, of Studio One instrumentals from key-board virtuoso Jackie Mittoo and/or the Soul Vendors.

In several cases, this was made obvious by the new titles - "Skanking Easy" was an update of the rocksteady classic "Swing Easy", "Frozen Dub" of "Frozen Soul", "Rockers Rock" of what was to become the most versioned of Studio One instrumentals, "Real Rock". Precedents for his so-called "Far East" sound, with its heavy reliance on minor chords, could also be found in the moody ska records of key musicians like the trombonist Don Drummond, and the trumpeters Johnny "Dizzy" Moore and Baba Brooks.

In common with Vivian Jackson, Lee Perry, Bunny Lee, Glen Brown and several others, be employed King Tubby to mix the version sides of these singles, and this eventually led, in 1977, to the release of his "King Tubbys Meets Rockers Uptown", the album that both confirmed and spread both men's reputations.

Besides dub versions of Pablo's instrumental hits, this groundbreaking set also included Tubby's treatments of several of the recordings he had made earlier in the decade with other artists, including Paul Whiteman/Blackman's "Say So", legendary as the first vocal record that Pablo produced.

Three vocals from Jacob Miller were versioned on the King Tubby album, including "False Rasta" and "Who Say Jah No Dread", both featuring the type of dread lyrics that were to become increasingly popular. However, the singers with whom Pablo was to have the most fruitful associations were Junior Delgado (b. Oscar Hibbert, 1958, Kingston) and Hugh Mundell (b. 1962, Kingston; d. 1983).

A gritty, seemingly always pain-racked vocalist in the tradition of the great Ken Boothe, Junior Delgado had already recorded for Rupie Edwards, Scratch, Niney and Dennis Brown before cutting "Blackman's Heart Cries Out", a classic cut of Pablo s instrumental "Zion High", itself a version of the Paragons' Treasure Isle tune, "Riding On A Windy Day".

This was followed by "Away With You Fussing And Fighting", which if anything made an even greater impact on roots listeners when it appeared a Rockers 12" single with Hugh Mundell adopting the name Jah Levi to take care of the toasting pan. The mutually rewarding relation-ship between producer/musician and singer was renewed in the late 1980s, when Pablo adapted digital technology far his own rootsy needs, and was particularly successful with a series of hard-edged tunes from a revitalized Delgado.

Mundell was extremely young when he recorded his initial hit for Pablo, being barely in his teens when he became one of the first Jamaican vocalists to voice the soon to be popu-lar sentiment that "Africa Must Be Free By 1983". He went on to make other distinguished records far Pablo and maintained the association with his mentor on his own Muni Music label; then, as a new decade opened, he went on to record far the dancehall king Junjo Lawes and the partnership of Prince Jammy and the leading UK sound operator, Fat Man. But less than ten years after his recording debut he was dead shot in a dispute aver the ownership of a fridge.

Mundell had also produced "Speak the Truth", the debut single of Junior Reid (b. Delroy Reid, 1965, Kingston), released on Pab1o's Rockers International imprint in 1979. A spirited cultural lament inspired by his grandmother's store of proverbs and songs, the record did well enough as an import single in the UK to give Reid a name and alert roots fans to any further records from the youthman, despite the limitations of his unbroken voice. (As Reid recalled - "Augustus Pablo an' the man dem, they was sayin' that I sound flat. But at the time, I didn't know what flat mean, or nothin' at all".) Indeed, Reid was set to become one of the major vocalists of the 1980s and beyond.

Though Pablo's most consistent and creative period was over by the end of the 1970s, strong records have still continued to appear on Rockers and the newer Message label. The roughhouse spirit of the last two decades might not seem con-ducive to Pablo's laid-back approach, but he's issued good music by Junior Delgado, as well as Bunny Brissett, Yami Bolo, Spliffy Dan, Johnny Osbourne and the young cultural chatter, Blacka T. On his recent albums Pablo has not always been able to keep up the standard of his best singles, though there has been one classic instrumental set in "Blowing With the Wind", and an interesting enough dub excursion in "One Step Dub".

Because of the amount of interest in recent years in Pablo, largely from outside Jamaica, most of his back catalogue has been re-released. What remains to be made generally available are the numerous 45s for other producers, which helped finance his own labels. Contemporaneous with the first discs on his own labels were ses-sions with most of the more progressive produc-ers, including Keith Hudson, Clive Chin (with whom he had attended school), Joe Gibbs, Lee Perry, Bunny Lee and Derrick Harriott. Then there were occasional recording dates for the partnership of Leroy Hollett and Dudley Swaby (whose Ja Man imprint was one of the more dependable smaller operations of the time), Vivian Jackson, pioneer deejay Dennis Alcapone, Ken Boothe's brother Douglas Boothe, Roydale Anderson and Winston Riley.

As if this were not enough, the prolific Pablo was also closely involved with the work of the young Leonard Chin, who persuaded Pablo to record the first single on his Santic label, "Pablo In Dub", which was a major local hit. Pablo then played a significant part in the subsequent Santic sessions, including those that yielded striking records by Paul Whiteman, Horace Andy, Roman Stewart and Gregory Isaacs. Most of the Santic sessions are on CD, but anyone willing to endure the headache of negotiating with all the producers Pablo worked for could assemble one of the most important multi-CD sets in the history of Jamaican music.

Dub from the roots: Augustus Pablo and Yabby You

Dubwise shower
Chapter 5 . Dub

Singer/producer Vivian "Yabby You" Jackson, who was consistently making heavy-duty roots records, had been encouraged by Tubby from the beginning of his career in music.

Indeed it was Tubby who gave the singer/producer his nom de disque of Yabby You, after the chorus on one of his earli-est tunes. Jackson also had Tubby mix the ver-sion sides of his self-produced singles, as well as the "Prophecy Of Dub" album, originally released in the UK early in 1976, in a pressing of 500 copies and with a blank sleeve.

Yabby You's majestic rhythms were ideal for Tubby's mixing style; over the deep basslines of such as "Family Man" Barrett and Robbie Shakespeare, Tubby created mixes saturated in delay and reverb effects, which gave the impression of sounds - snatches of vocal, guitar chords, organ stabs, etc - coming across vast distances.

In addition, Tubby was responsible for the half-dozen dubs on the vocal/version set variously titled "Chant Down Babylon Kingdom", "Walls Of Jerusalem" and "King Tubby Meets Vivian Jackson". The producer used Tubby's studio until 1981, when a crippling arthritic condition forced him to stop recording. In the 1990s, his health improved, be began recording again (be collaborated with UK-based dub master Mad Professor for a couple of sets) as well as re-pressing his vintage material.