Q: So, in essence, your father entered the growing music scene to be a part of the action - this was new and fresh, he had the right connections to make use of, etcetera.

A: He - honestly Peter, he entered it for the love of the music. Number one. And to bring the people from the ghetto, people from the hills and people from Western Kingston and from Eastern Kingston to a centerforward where they can be heard. Because he saw that they had talent, because he spent many weekends, many nights listening to all these musics. Because whenever he goes to the camps they would play and they would entertain, and this was just for the people in the camps, nobody in the rural area hears this music. But even with those music it was still not attracting the general public of Jamaica, because Jamaica at that time wanted to hear the European music. They wanted to hear artists like Doris Day or Patti Page or Elvis Presley, Frank Sinatra... y'know what I mean?

Q: Right.

A: Matt Monro, y'know? So, that was the upper class. But the lower class of people that couldn't afford to buy these music that came on RCA or came on Murphy or came on labels that I can't even remember. We had to provide the local population of people, that's how we come - in my time, this is the seventies - to call it 'ghetto music'.

Q: Right, 'sufferers music'.

A: Sufferers music! You understan' me. 'Cause when I used to even go and party, yunno, and I go into the ghettoes, you put on a dub plate or you give a man a 'special'...

Q: Yes, dubs, or even 'soft wax'.

A: Soft wax, you understan' me, or you buy two case a Guiness and you stan' up with your big spliff and you just rock! But then when you go uptown, it's disco! You understan' me, you're hearing Silver Convention or...

Q: Earth Wind & Fire, Gap Band.

A: Yeah! Earth Wind & Fire, some bullshit! With strobe lights and people, y'know, dancin' with bell-bottom pants and opened neck-shirt beads and... y'know?

Q: Mmm.

A: And man say "Raaastafar..." - whiiieee! Woh! Like, 'what's going down here?!' (chuckles).

Q: Then you have the talk about class differences, eh?

A: Ah! St. Andrew special! That time you have Byron Lee and you have another group called the Tomorrow's Children, y'know. And even with all the group deh whe name Inner Circles, yunno, the Lewis brothers, them bwoy deh was big, big time disco bwoy dem, yunno.

Q: (Laughter)

A: Big boot an' t'ing, it's just Jacob Miller a revolutionized them raas (laughs)! Oh! Yu nah tell me, man. Me lived that era, me see it. But the vibes was really in the ghetto, you understan' me? When you go amongst Family Man and Carly (Barrett) an' seh, Fam's seh, "Clive, a go dung so, yunno". A go Beeston Street an' check Fam's an' rey rey. Yeah man, go down deh is a different vibration, man. When all dem deh box a turn on an' vibration a link, man, an' yu put your Stout back up on top jus' fe mek sure seh it 'level'. Yeah man, different vibes.

Q: How about the link-up between your father and Lord Creator, which was, probably, the most successful collaboration on Randy's back then.

A: Creator originally came to Jamaica in the early sixties, and how he came there; he came there with a group of musicians and entertainers from Guyana.

Q: Like a package tour.

A: A package. But he didn't come there as an artist lookin' to be picked up by a label or picked up by a company. He came there and was doing entertainment and stuff, and my father saw him... I believe the first time my father saw Creator (was) when he did a show at... I dunno if it was Blinkin' Bee, I can't remember. But he saw him there, right, and there was a Calypsonian called Lord Rigby. Because I was with me dad at the time and how I remember Lord Rigby; Lord Rigby used to bend up himself like... y'know them guys who put them leg over them neck...? Like he was a very rubbery type of a person, like.

Q: That's what you'd call a 'prepsel-man'?

A: Prepsel-man! Yesss! You know, he was a dancer and an entertainer.

Q: Right, a variety show.

A: Yes! So, Rigby would come on and do the entertainment in the beginning and then Creator would come on with his calypso tunes them after. And me father saw him for the first time and liked his voice. 'Cause I remember, yunno, as a lad - and I think I was about eight or nine at the time, and he called them over to the bar and bought him a drink and said, y'know, Independence was coming up and my father wanted to do a song, to contribute to the festivity of Independence, and asked him if he would be interested in singin' this song that was co-written by a person called Raymond Sharpe. Raymond Sharpe was an editor at the sports- page at Gleaner Company, right, and Creator accepted. And so the following day we went to Federal, and it's the first time I'm going into Federal now, yunno, as a young lad, 1962. We're driving to Federal, and at Federal you had all these lickle sand on the ground, of the courtyard. Not grass, yunno - sand. But when you get out of the car and look at it, it wasn't sand, it was crushed vinyl - but in colours, different colours. You can imagine, Peter, seeing red, green, gold, blue, orange, pink, all different colours - is vinyl, yunno, but crushed. You know, broken up, and they didn't use them back into the manufacturing, they just throw them out into the yard. Because, those days you never used pressed vinyl - you destroy them. So I used to scrape them up and put in a bag, a paper bag to take home to put in my fish-tank. Yeah.

Q: (Chuckles) They came of use somewhere at least.

A: Yeah man. I would take them up. I said, "Daddy, can I take these t'ing up?" Him said, "Yes son, but don't make the security guard see you", yunno. And when I went into the studio it was one lickle room, right, I'd say about lickle bigger than a eight by ten, and then my father would have this band from... a military band actually. Joe Williams, he was the military conductor of the military band that did the recording of 'Independent Jamaica' - big brass band, and the song was called 'Independent Jamaica'.

Q: And it climbed pretty fast up the local charts.

A: It went number one, because that was like the flagship of... there was no real festival tune at that time, but it was a song that collaborated with the independence of Jamaica.

Q: And that one, I guess, spawned a lot of similar songs?

A: Right. Chris Blackwell licensed that song from my father in 1962 or '63 when Blackwell opened up his Island Records label in London.

Q: In London, right.

A: If you noticed the matrix of Island, it's 001, the very first released on Island Records. 'Independent Jamaica', and the B-side is 'Ma & Pa' - 'you must remember who used to wipe your nose for you, who used to change your diaper, don't forget, it's your mother and father...' (chuckles).

Q: But Blackwell did a few recordings before this on his own, in the late fifties.

A: Blackwell did quite a few recordings, yeah, with (the late) Laurel Aitkens as his first singer.

Q: With 'Little Sheila', 'Roll River Jordan'.

A: 'Bartender', 'One Scotch', before the Millie Small thing. Beca', you see, a lot of people don't understand that Blackwell got involved with his own thing, because he was one of those business entrepreneurs, he was one of these guys that saw things ahead of time, like. And because he travelled, he knew that there was Jamaicans migrating.

Q: And he saw a market there.

A: He saw a market there, and wisely enough it worked for him.

Q: Because he didn't have much competition.

A: He was early, he was the first, the first before even Pama and them other guys. But my father told me that when he came and asked him for the tune, he said, "OK, fine, he can have the tune". And me said, "Dad, did you write a contract?" And him said, "Clive, there was no contract in those days".

Q: Just a handshake.

A: Just a handshake (chuckles), y'know what I mean!

Q: Would hardly work today, eh (chuckles)?

A: Ohhh, c'mon, tell me about that!

Q: How was competition back then, your father's relationship to the Khouris, and so on?

A: His relationship to them? Just on a business-level. I mean, if he used Khouri's studio he would pay Khouri, and Blackwell, y'know, if he ask Blackwell to do him a favour by cutting masters or doing something for him, or scouting something out for him, Blackwell did it on his behalf, y'know.

Q: Blackwell, I get the feeling he did it for fun in those days, just a sideline, nothing very serious to whatever he was doing full-time, the family business. I doubt he would have continued for long, stubbornly, if he had not succeeded so fast, then it would have been something else, but you never know.

A: Blackwell was clever in business, I should say.

Q: Right, he's pretty shrewd to say the least.

A: But you need people like that in the business. You can't disregard him, because honestly, when I look at history, the way how I look on it now, if it wasn't for guys like Blackwell there would never be a Marley.

Q: Exactly.

A: And there would never be things that brought the whole Jamaican reggae, ska/rock steady, to the forefront. Because you have to realise that we as an island, or as a Third World country, people weren't focusing on us. They were focusing on tourism, they were focusing on the fact that, y'know, we had lovely beaches, lovely sceneries, whatever. But the music wasn't really hitting the shores of Europe. If it wasn't for Blackwell to see where he could, y'know, get involved in it to distribute it that way, it wouldn't really have happened unless there would be somebody else that picked it up. Honestly. Because in my head, in my knowledge of music, he was the first. Long even before guys like Jet Star/Pama (run by the Palmer brothers from the late sixties to the mid seventies, which then turned into Jet Star in 1977), or Count Shelly, or all these other lickle guys in London, y'know. Blackwell was the first. Blackwell was the one that brought Laurel Aitkens and Jackie Edwards and Jimmy Cliff and Millie Small over to England.

Q: But regarding him, there is always...

A: In the end they always say that, y'know, he ripped them off, but that's (chuckles)...

Q: He might've done his 'moves' that wasn't satisfactory for some, but on a whole he did Jamaican music a whole lot, and good too, there is no question about that.

A: Exactly.