Q: Did that happen a lot at Federal, that you first had a session booked with Coxson and then directly after this you had something with Duke? A: Oh yeah, the next day (laughs)! Q: What was the vibes like when they bumped into each other at the studio, if that happened? A: Um, controlled animosity (laughs). Q: Well behaved. A: In the studio, yeah. They try 'cause, y'know, they never really - they always had someone, Duke Reid had Cuttings... Q: Right, Stranger Cole's brother. A: Yeah. And Coxson had Alan, Bim-Bim, and you know (chuckles)... they had to come down first to make sure that the coast was clear (laughs)! It was a gamble to have two persons in at the same time, but if they did buck up against one another, there was never... it was more (laughs) this same, not the same but caution.

Stranger Cole's brother, Cuttings.

Q: I can imagine the tension there, yes. A: They just stayed away from one another. I mean, I had trouble with musicians at the studio too, I remember... have you ever heard the story about 'Mr Goody's iron pipe'? Q: Nope. A: I had one - Ken brought me a Neumann microphone, U47, and that was my pride and joy, and it (chuckles) made a difference to the sound 'cause it's such a great microphone. And I think it was Buster, Prince Buster's time, and some musicians got into it. Both came wheeling out there, they broke a beer bottle, and this is the little tiny Federal studio. And I saw my microphone in the middle of it and I said 'I gotta get in here', and I was the skinny little white boy around all this. I grabbed everything (chuckles) I could find, a piece of half-inch electrical conduit, y'know, heavy pipe, we had been doing some (chuckles)... but I just grabbed that, it was the nearest thing, and I went rushing into the studio and stood under my microphone and started whistling around, and then in my best patois said, "If anybody comes near this microphone I lick yu in de head wid di pipe!", and just whistled around (laughs). And all of a sudden the studio went quiet, absolutely deadly quiet. I was standing out there, this skinny white boy, whistling this pipe around. And I forget who it was but somebody says, "Mr Goody got his pipe!" And they all cracked up laughing and the whole studio just fell apart in hysterics. (Chuckles) And it's me and in particular this microphone! And the next day I found out that they got this pipe and they got a bicycle hand-grip - you know the rubber hand-grip? And they put that on the end of the pipe and they taped it up and they painted this pipe, and presented it to me as 'Mr Goody's pipe'. And from that time on at Federal Records I never made a record without this pipe in there. I mean, they had this incredibly stupid white guy with a piece of pipe (laughs) who's gonna take on the lot of them, and they thought it was the most hilarious thing they had ever seen or heard. Q: What do you miss the most from those the earliest of days in production? I mean, there's this innocense in the air doing the first local music... all of that era was a transition period going from imitating American music to originating JA music, basically. A: I think that's what I miss the most of all, they were so prepared to take chances, to change things. I mean, the blank record label, who came up with that? I would like to find out, first thing: a 45 with no label on it! Q: (Chuckles) A: And then charging an extraordinary amount of money for it. A limited edition, this is the 'limited edition' of 45 records, how did that happen? (Chuckles) It was magnificent. Q: Yeah. A: You know (laughs)? Well, you know this all came about really when they used to bring 45's in to Jamaica, 'cause remember, they were not only just playing Jamaican records at dances, they were still playing American records too.

Q: Mmm, scratched off the labels. A: They scratched off the labels, and someone came up with the bright idea (chuckles) why not go with this whole thing by scraping off a label, it's just incredible - why have a label anyway (laughs)? And that's what they did. Q: Strange, but it had its function. A: Yeah, I think... But I think what is missing from those days up to the seventies, is the cameradery that you had in the studio with everybody; I mean the producers, the singers, the musicians, the engineers - whatever, y'know, the cameradery. I mean, even the guys who was working with printing, the pressers, the record pressers were part of this whole thing! You know, they'd go to a sound system dance and they'd come in for free, 'cause they was pressing the records. They didn't have any creative effect in the process, y'know, they weren't creative at all, they would just be literally standin' there schlepping. Hard work! I mean, the heat! These hot presses, they were pressing these 45's but they were part of it, let's not forget them. And Federal Records, they had a guy - I don't know (chuckles) what his real name was, he was called 'Printer'. He was Printer, a nice charming man and he printed all the labels. (Chuckles) You know? And he was Printer, but he was part of the whole scene too, and respected. But I guess that's what I miss; the cameradery, the whole culture thing. Incredible, y'know, from musicians, singers, down to the guy who actually printed the record, he was so much a part of it. Q: I can imagine when such a thing as the initial music scene in Jamaica was so small and when people found out that hey, you can make a name here and you can gain fame or recognition or even a substantial amount of money, whatever you were looking for, people would flock to you if you had anything set up to deal with all this. A: Oh yes. Q: But Coxson and Duke had their slice 'intact' so to speak, of the local record business, it didn't allow for too many to enter this area, at least in its initial years? Except for people like Matador, perhaps. A: Yeah, but again, Matador, he was part of the scene early 'cause he built the amplifiers. He was very, very good, excellent. And remember now, those sound system operators, they were distributors of different parts of the island and they tended to affiliate themselves with a producer, like Duke Reid or Coxson or Buster, someone like that. So Duke Reid would press the record, but he wouldn't want it to go to, y'know, somebody in Coxson's camp. Like (Harry) Mudie, who was in Spanish Town, he was like Coxson's man, and so Coxson would allow him to buy the record or such (chuckles) and not Duke Reid's associates in Spanish Town, or Duke's affiliates if you like, almost like franchise. But I used to record Monday through Thursday, and then Friday was dub-cutting day, when we used to cut them on soft wax. It was actually cut on acetate. And that was my day, when I used to cut records all day long. Q: But these dub-cutting 'sessions' were not as it is known today, doing exclusive mixes on the spot for the acetate. A: You know, I could put four songs on a ten-inch acetate...

Q: It was basically the same as a 'pre-release', what you would get officially later on. A: Yeah, we called it blank. Q: It was until the seventies when they started to do a different mix to the same song. A: Yeah, yeah. Well, that was because we could get it on multi-track, with multi-track you could change it. But not what we started out on, which was mono. It could only be done at the biggest studio, Federal, 'cause Federal - well, actually that was a lie, that was the studio with two tracks. But the first stereo record was 'Joyride' in stereo, and I did that at Federal's small studio. With the most amazing pool of material; I had one Ampex, 3-24 recorder, stereo recorder, which I found later on was invented by... but that's all right, we found that out later. But Byron Lee wanted to do 'Joyride' and I said "well, let's do it in stereo", and they couldn't believe it. So I did it in stereo and I did a mono mix at the same time, so the album was 'Joyride' in and the jacket had 'hi-fi' printed on it, but the stereo record had an over-sticker printed exactly the same and 'stereo', so you had either 'Joyride in hi-fi' or 'Joyride in stereo', same jacket with an overlabel on it. But in fact I got (chuckles) together with some people I knew in radio and we bought air time , we played 'Joyride' in stereo, we played with a stereo pick-up cartridge in Radio Jamaica, and we fed the left channel down to JBC by landline and they played the left channel and Radio Jamaica played the right channel (laughs)! Q: OK (chuckles). A: And I mean (chuckles) everybody talked about it, you know what it's like to be... a thing called 'Empty Chair' with Keith Lynn, Byron Lee, it was an enormous success and somebody said at the airport, I was meeting somebody, I think it was my wife, and while there one of the cab drivers said: "Mr Goody, you made 'Empty Chair'?" I said yeah, and all the cab drivers just all of a sudden came and grabbed me and lifted me up on their shoulders and took me around the airport, told them that this was the man who made 'Empty Chair'! And you gotta imagine what that feeling was like! Q: Kingly vibe about it. A: It was incredible that this rank of cab drivers, y'know, somebody found out that here's a guy who did this thing that they loved. Q: A kind of spontaneous appreciation you get in Jamaica... A: Yeah. Q: At least at that time. A: Or you did, yes.

Owen Gray, Graeme Goodall, Coxson

Q: How did you get on with Duke and Coxson personally? A: Loved them both. Q: Yeah? A: Yep. Both were great people. Q: No trouble. A: No, they became very, very good friends of mine, both of them. I was perhaps the common denominator . And of course not to mention Prince Buster. He is still a very dear friend, we had a nickname for one another... the story is that Prince Buster was kicked out of the studio. Ken Khouri just could not take it any longer. Q: Because of...? A: Oh! Not paying, and trying - as they call it in Jamaica, a 'samfie man' technique, like conman, and Ken Khouri wanted to kick him out of the studio. There is something that I liked about Prince Buster, he had talent, y'know, it's just something, and you knew he was a king in the making. And I went up and begged for his life to Ken Khouri, and Ken Khouri told me, Papa Khou said, "All right, so be it. He's yours, he's yours! Anything he do wrong you make up for it, you pay for it!" You know (chuckles)? "You're responsible!" So I got him back into the studio and we had a nickname we used to call one another, and when we did this thing up in Toronto a couple of years ago, I was in the elevator coming out of the fifth floor, sixth floor, something like that, and the elevator stopped like at the fourth floor, in comes this well-dressed black man with his New York Angels Yankees baseball cap on and behind shades, he walked in and as he turns around he says, "Good morning, good morning". And I was at the back of the elevator, and just said "Hey...", and just called him the nickname, y'know. I said "Hey, what yu doing 'ere?" And his knees buckled, we hadn't seen one another for thirty years! Q: Ah! A: And we still talk sometime. But there was not one of them I could ever say that I had feelings of animosity or worried that there threats. Mind you, I wasn't stupid (chuckles), the only way I had was to get that stuff down on tape. Q: Both had their reputations, Duke and Coxson, but I guess that's just one side of it, and in some way they had to be on the rough side too. I guess you never saw anything of that? A: Never! Never, never, never, never. They didn't have to be with me. Neither was Papa Khouri for that matter, nor was Papa Khou. I mean, they were all friends of Papa Khouri too. So they kept their territory war if you like, their territorial wars, to themselves. Q: How did you experience the less than pleasant parts of being in the business, the early days of the rude boys and all that stuff? A: Well that came in later on, y'know. There was only one time I ever saw anything happen at the time. One of the guys who worked at the Dynamic Sounds factory was stealing records, and Byron Lee got so upset about it (chuckles) that he roughed that guy up pretty badly! Just get the message out: 'don't steal from Byron Lee!' (laughs). But you know, I never got involved with anything. When I went to the sound system dances I was so protected as it were. Q: You went to a lot of those dances? A: No, no. I went mainly to hear if there's a particular sound that I want to listen to, y'know, that I changed something, but very rarely. I could tell if they came in and said the sound was good, then that's good enough for me.

Roland Alphonso.

Q: Of all the musicians you worked with at that time, I am pretty sure you have some fond and cherished memories and anecdotes of several key players who seldom gets the recognition or true credit they deserve. A: I think probably that (Byron) Lee was, apart from 'Snappin', but Roland Alphonso was my favorite. Q: Because of...? A: He was such a great musician. I met him from very, very early on in 1954 at Radio Jamaica, he was just a kid. And he was playing tenor saxophone on Colgate Palmolive Talent Parade on Radio Jamaica, which I literally helped them do. 'Cause they never had any idea of live music broadcasting, that was my idea, y'know. And I met Roland Alphonso there... Q: I suppose you had Eric Deans Orchestra playing there a few times? A: Yeah, I think so. But Roland is one of my favorites. I love Theo Beckford, Easy Snappin'. He was good but I mean, he was not a musician in the sense of Roland Alphonso. Rico Rodriguez on trombone. Lloyd Knibb on drums, great player. A very, very great player, but they're all friends. But I think probably as far as musicianship and such a nice guy, that's Roland Alphonso and probably my favorite.

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Article: Peter I (Please do not reproduce without permission)