Q: Easier to be creative when you don't have to watch the clock, naturally it becomes quite stressful if you have to. Then you hear about Bunny Lee cutting tunes left, right and center: 'next, next!' Efficient.

A: (Chuckles) Mmm, never want to listen to it until the end?

Q: Right.

A: (Laughs) You heard about that, right?

Q: Yep.

A: "Next, next tune, bebebbewwhh, next tune!"

Q: With the bass-line out of tune and all, sometimes.

A: No, Bunny always waited until the end at his recording sessions to listen back to his tracks, yunno. And it's amazing because, really and truly, I admire him because if it wasn't for the talented musicians, he should've gotten some real shitty riddim.

Q: Let's talk about 'Java' now, the rhythm, was it adopted from a foreign tune which you transformed, or what's the origin?

A: 'Java'? No man, no, no, no! 'Java' wasn't adopted from no foreign tune, it was just a song, one a dem lickle love songs that a friend decided to do something for me, and it just didn't work. And because he couldn't sing it, I just decide to use the riddim.

Q: That was Dennis Wright?

A: Yeah, Dennis Wright, that's correct.

Q: And that was a friend from school. But you did something with Douglas Boothe too, was that at the same time?

A: Douglas Boothe I did... what did I do with him? I did a song with him, a Chuck Jackson tune, 'If I Didn't Love You' - you remember that one?

Q: I think I've heard that one, yes.

A: (Hums the melody) But you see the thing with Boothe, he tries to pitch his voice to a height and he couldn't handle it. I don't know why he did that. But actually I still have the tape with it, it didn't come out.

Q: Was anything you did with him released, even if that one didn't?

A: No. He went on and did stuff for, I guess, for himself and some others.

Q: Yes, for Manzie, Ripton Hylton, Lloyd Campbell, and so on. And 'Java' was voted Top Instrumental when it came out.

A: Yes, by Swing magazine (published by the Golding brothers at the time). Swing magazine voted it number one and it was at the top charts as well. Swing, then you had Rupie Edwards' 'Record Retailer' too.

Q: Right. Producers, it's always a case of opportunists versus the imaginative, the so called 'innovative circle of people' trying something distinctively new or fresh, something to take the music forward. While you often fall into the latter category, would you agree that it was a lot of the former category in those days? Or a lot of them has been misjudged historically, judging from what you saw at Randy's?

A: Well, for me, I'm talkin' for me, I didn't think that was given to me, whether it was my family or whether artists coming to me with it, I take it in my own self to be creative producer. I just didn't do a song, because it had to be done that way. I liked the song, I had to create it with my own vision. It's just like re-recording over a tune, as I mentioned to you 'Too Late To Turn Back' (Alton Ellis' remake). Or when I do over 'Woman of the Ghetto' (by Marlena Shaw) or if I had to do over 'For The Love of You'. I wanted something different, not to be the same, like Harry J do over 'Shaft' note for note, or Phil Pratt do over 'Black Magic Woman' note for note. Beca', to me, what's the sense of copying a song and doing it over same way? Do it different, do it more exciting, do it (with) more creativity. But in order for you to identify a song, try to do it with a little bit more intensity, excitement. And then you don't type it the same way, you type it differently. That is the purpose of covering the tune. I never covered a song note for note, never in my life.

Q: Right, the original is already out there, so give it a fresh feel. Make them recognise it was you who did it.

A: Yeh, just like how I was listening to 'Kid Ralph', and I listened to it and I said 'Hey, but that's 'Norwegian Wood'!' But guess what, we call it 'Kid Ralph' (chuckles). For a man that doesn't know it's Beatles... "Oh, brilliant tune!" Listen to 'Watermelon Man', Herbie Hancock. You know (laughs)?

Q: Was there someone in those days you badly wanted to produce, approached, but never got the chance to work with?

A: Oh, I wanted to work so badly with Monty Alexander.

Q: The pianist.

A: Yeah.

Q: But he had left for foreign, he wasn't in Jamaica in the seventies I think, he lived in either the US or England at the time.

A: No, he had already left, he left in the sixties. Him I would have loved to work with, my father said he worked with him. As a matter of fact he said he took him out of school to record him at Federal. Also Ranglin, I never personally worked with Ranglin, although I've seen him work, y'know. And who else do I think of? I think I've worked with just about the best of all the musicians in that time.

Q: What was the feedback among musicians for a tune like 'Java' at the time? This is what was labelled 'the Rebel Rock sound', music with a harder edge to it.

A: Just that it was the changing of the times, it was like the changing of the Gods. It was the beginning of the seventies, it's a different era. And we were changing out from rock steady to reggae. The '69 reggae was a very fast, uptempo, we wanted to slow it down a bit. Wanted to make it a bit more...

Q: 'Steady'.

A: Steadier. Yeah. But if you listen intensively to '69 recordings up to, say, about '70/71 recordings, it's a vast difference in terms of tempo.

Q: It's more 'drive' in the bass, more groove in a track like 'Java' for instance.

A: It's a change in the instrumentation rather than just be a full instrumentation of a cut, y'know, we played around the riddim. That's why our drum and bass was so raw opposed to King Tubby's mixes, all those effects that Tubbys gives it. I mean, nuff respect to Tubbys, I looove Tubbys, but we were the first innovation of dub.

Q: There is the talk if 'Aquarius Dub' preceded 'Java Java Dub', or vice versa?

A: No man, 'Java Java Dub' was the first, man. I keep telling people all the while, I don't know where... you know, it's like a sensous thing. You're not the only person, but every time it come up 'Is 'Aquarius Dub' the first?' Do you wanna know who pressed the first dub album? I can give you the date, not the time - the date and the year, the month and the year that we got our first bill from Federal, the first 'Java Java Dub' album carried to press. Was pressed before 'Aquarius' and it was pressed before 'Cloak & Dagger'.

Q: Perry.

A: Mmm.

Q: 'Java' was a limited pressing.

A: Very small, beca' you know why? We were just testing the waters, it wasn't a commercial dub album, it was done for the purpose of givin' it to or sellin' it to guys like Faith, guys like Tubbys, guys like Arrows at the time. Just a handful of the sound system people. Is just like when the first disco twelve-inch was cut in Jamaica, is just one side that disco was cut at. The very first Jamaican twelve-inch that was cut in Jamaica, did you know that it was only one side that was cut, the other side was blank? You didn't know that?

Q: Nope.

A: (Chuckles) Put it down - history. It was called 'Rhythm In Rhapsody' on the Wildfire (a Federal/Wildflower subsidiary) label, produced by Lloyd Charmers. Twelve-inch discomix, 'Rhythm In Rhapsody'.

Q: The whole idea about an extended single stems from the disco scene in New York and Miami at the time, I believe the Miami people came up with it first.

A: Yea, exactly. And rather than putting another tune on the back of it... they didn't put anything on the back of it. And a countryman brought it back to Miss Pat and say, "Miss Pat, them back of the record scratch!" And Miss Pat say, "The back na scratch, back no have no music". Ca' the man put it on and go whoooophh! The needle run right off the flip of the record, ca' there was no grooves.

Q: Randy's formed a center for artists in that time, what was popularly called 'Idler's Rest', round the corner.

A: Chancery Lane was the place, that's called Idlers Rest. It came about when the studio went popular in the early seventies. All the artists and musicians start to gather there because the fact that a man could get an artist or a musician without giving a phonecall. You could just go downstairs and say, "Send for Bongo Herman deh", or "Send for Bobby Ellis deh", or "Send for Chinna or Santa or Bagga" (chuckles).

Q: You have any special anecdotes about that?

A: A heap a memories, man, whole heap a memories. Honestly Peter, if I really had the money I would make a movie on this, yunno, I would make a documentary on it. Because, it's like gettin' up in the morning and the first thing when you open the eyes and see, is a bag of musicians (giggles) ready to go upstairs to record, eager to record. When I say musicians, yunno, I mean musicians from all walks of life. Them would lean up against the wall up a Salvation Army building deh.

Q: Dave Robinson said they had written their names on the wall there, a graffiti of the who's who of Jamaican music in those days.

A: Yeah. Yeah man, it's true.

Q: Is it still visible there?

A: I dunno, I haven't been down there in a while.

Q: You and Errol, the interaction between you both, would you describe those days more in detail how you worked together.

A: That was wonderful, it worked wonderful. And because of me and Errol being young and we had a lot of what you'd call now things in our mind that we wanted to express as youths, the talent. And we didn't have the facilities, especially like sound effects, we had to make our own. We had to create our own, rewinding up the tape, fast-forwarding it, slow-forwarding it, taking the microphone into the toilet and make a flush. Breaking bottles in the studio, went out into the market-place recording the higglers, you understan' me? All that is creativity.

Q: Those type of effects was something Errol carried on with at Joe Gibbs, but the start was at Randy's, that shaped his skills and imagination in many ways.

A: It started at Randy's - all at Randy's, it didn't start at Joe Gibbs. And Errol can tell you, but Errol don't wanna talk. Errol is a very... I dunno, for some reason he doesn't talk to people. But I can tell you from my experience as a young lad, all that was available to us. That was it.

And Errol T, as is commonly known now, passed away suddenly later that year in Jamaica after a return to producing again for the Joe Gibbs stable, something he was mainly responsible for back in the seventies as well, recording and mixing the music at Retirement Crescent. But it all started at Randy's, the place that more or less ruled Kingston in the early seventies. Randy's had a very organic sound, rough and rugged, and it is a sound I often return to for enjoyable listening when, today, soundwise its way too polished to these ears. Technology nowadays peels off the dirty layers which made the music so powerful back in the sixties and seventies. In some cases it destroys the listening experience. Much is centered in how you mould and shape the sound. It is not just the song itself, obviously, it is how you shape it. Back then they had less facilities to polish the sound, but history has proven in some way that, somehow, 'less is more' - and for the better. They did a lot with limited resources and Randy's sound on a whole is a good example of that. Pick up any of the '17 North Parade' (Pressure Sounds), 'Impact' (Soul Jazz), 'Out On A Funky Trip' (Motion) and 'Forward The Bass' (Blood & Fire) compilations and get soaked into the Randy's vibe and Chin's vision. Reggae music at its peak? Maybe. It doesn't get much better than Studio One, I know, but, arguably, Randy's is coming a close second. And Channel One was something entirely different, crisp and sharp, not what I'd term 'organic'. Clive has also dipped his fingers in bringing reggae music into the academic world by doing several lectures. He got his start by sitting in at the panel of the 'Island Revolution' exhibit in Seattle some years back, and lately he's been alongside UK scribe Vivien Goldman (of 'Soul Rebel, Natural Mystic' and 'The Black Chord' fame), giving an overview of the history of Jamaican popular music and in demonstrating the basics of being involved in the production of reggae in its heyday, even showing his students how to move to the ska beat, to much amusement I should add... Stay tuned, more Randy's to come.

7" single information courtesy Roots Knotty Roots.