Q: What about Don Drummond? That's an obvious question but did you find him particularly difficult or is this pretty exaggerated that he was problem almost right through? A pretty moody character in any case. A: (Chuckles) Short answer: yes! Q: You never knew what to expect. A: (Laughs) Very talented musician but... oh, terrible, terrible, terrible to deal with. Q: In what way? A: Oh, a good example: One time he was supposed to take a solo and, y'know, I couldn't get him to work to the microphone well and all I had to do was go and tell him 'play here, play there, do this, do that'. When I started pressing the 'record' button and it was time for the solo, he just went right over to the other side of the studio and started playing just to show me that he'd do what he wanted, and the whole session was messed up because of this. He was an incredible musician but very, very disturbed. Q: Like arrogant, quiet, just introverted? A: He was quiet but just 'not do this, not doing that'. Q: That kinda attitude. A: Yeah. It wasn't as much attitude as mental condition. Q: Yeah. Well, we all know what happened later on, sad as it was. A: Yeah. Q: Maybe you weren't that surprised that it happened (Drummond stabbed his girlfriend to death in the mid sixties and was sent to a mental institution, Bellevue Hospital in Kingston, where he died a few years later, 1969)? A: I was never surprised with anything Don Drummond did. Never. We saw how it could turn out, and it did. Q: I think I recall a story from somewhere, not sure if it was you who told it, that it was something about Coxson taking Drummond's trombone and told him, "That's mine, give it to me! Give it back!" A: Yeah. He wouldn't behave himself, y'know, so Coxson said 'it's mine'. You know, that often happened, the producers would own the instruments and (chuckles) if you didn't play he took the instrument back. But that's true, Coxson did cease the trombone from the man, he said: "Get out of here!", y'know, when he didn't listen to what I said. But when I was in England with Doctor Bird, I was talking about baritone saxes, and Coxson said: "How much for one of them?" I got one in England and brought it back to him, he introduced baritone saxophones to the recording scene then (yelling 'stop that!' to the dog in the background).

Q: What about Drumbago, Arkland Parks the drummer? People tend to overlook him. A: He was a great guy, Drumbago was great. Great old man, and very easy to work with, was very easy in that regard. But I wasn't as close to him for some odd reason as I got to a lot of the other musicians. One that was very difficult and very, very hard to get on with but later on came through and, y'know, I met him recently and he changed first was himself, Lester Sterling. Q: Skatalites, yes. A: Lester Sterling was not easy in the early days. Q: Because of...? A: He just didn't have the... hadn't developed his talent. Q: OK. A: I gotta say this, too, later on when I built Federal's Studio 2 I got a guy I used to work with at Radio Jamaica, I brought him in, Byron Smith. Q: The engineer at Treasure Isle. A: Later he went and worked with Duke Reid. And I have to say this: Byron was my student and I'm glad to say that he was better in a lot of senses than I was. I think he got an incredible sound on all that Treasure Isle stuff, just incredible. Q: What became of him? A: I think he went to Canada, I'm not certain. I think Keith Scott (one of Khouri's associates at Federal in the sixties) is trying to find him, we're all trying to find him. But I mean, he did some great stuff and he came from nowhere. I mean, I worked with him and he won the job and I needed the guy and I thought well, why not, he had a good work ethic, and he became very, very good. Q: There is your association with Beverley's that we should get into. A: You know, if ever a man had a massive impact on the industry, it was Leslie.

Bunny Rae & Leslie Kong.

Q: There's so little known about the man, unfortunately. Partly because that catalog is locked down now. A: He's my son's godfather. Q: Yeah? A: Yeah (chuckles). In fact, I was his best man at his wedding in London when he married, I introduced him to his wife. She's living in Canada. Q: OK. Tell me more about Leslie. A: Well, Leslie was one of at least four brothers, but there was three working together: Cecil, Lloyd and Leslie. The fourth was priest, a Catholic priest, Ken. But Cecil ran a real estate agency and Lloyd (chuckles) was well-known as 'Fats', they ran an ice-cream parlour and sort of soft drinks/lunch counter, and next up they decided, or Leslie decided, to open a record shop, Beverley's Records. Where the name Beverley's came from, I don't know. But when they started producing records locally, I think Leslie decided that he would check out talent, and he had a very good ear for talent. You know, he found like The Maytals and Desmond Dekker and others. But he came to the studios to record and we developed a very, very strong friendship, he eventually became or agreed to be my son's godfather and like I said, I introduced him to his wfe, I was the best man at the wedding. But the good thing was that I could interpret every act that he did, he was a very quiet person. And if he twitched his collar or something like that, I could say, well, he want more bass, he want more guitar, he want more voice. And we had this wonderful relationship, this sympathetic relationship, that we could literally turn a hit record out of nothing (chuckles), because this was the interaction between the two of us. Q: Where did you work with him mostly, this was at West Indies (WIRL) studios, or Federal? A: No, I did quite a bit at Federal. The major hit session that we did, 'OO7', and of about twelve cuts I think we had ten number ones (chuckles). That was at Federal Records 2, the big studio. And then we did a lot of stuff at Dynamic. We never did anything at West Indies Records per se, West Indies Records... well, that's a lie, we did some things at West Indies Records. But the studio that was built, or I built at West Indies Records, became Dynamic. There was a financial problem and the factory closed, but the studio of course was still there, Byron Lee bought it. Q: I think there was a fire there at WIRL, wasn't it? A: Yes, there was a fire in the factory and so the pressing activity at West Indies Records ceased at that time. But when Byron Lee bought it he reactivated both the pressers and lots of other things, a lot of franchise for American labels. So he made a very good success with that, very strong success with Dynamic Sounds, and he re-equipped the studio.

WIRL

WIRL

Q: Who had WIRL at that time, it was (Edward) Seaga with a few others? A: No, it started off with Seaga and he was the only one initially, but it was later also George Benson and Clifford 'Bunny' Ray. George Benson was I believe Trinidadian or from Guyana, and Bunny Rae was Jamaican. Q: Local businessmen. A: Yes, Bunny Rae had an electronics company, I think George Benson worked for a record company in Trinidad or something like that, and then he formed a partnership. I think Eddie Seaga still had an interest in West Indies Records but control of the company was those two. Q: Who produced most of the WIRL releases? Was it Seaga himself who took care of this, or he had like an in-house producer? A: Well, the original WIRL stuff, as I remember Eddie Seaga did a lot of the stuff, and he really no more produced than Ken Khouri, if you know what I mean. Q: Right. A: He didn't go out to look for talents, they was usually brought to them, and they were more on the marketing side than the actual sitting in the studio, producing.

Q: That goes for most of the studios, the actual producer was the engineer together with the musicians and the artist. A: Yeah. Well, except for people like Coxson, Duke Reid, Mudies, Smith, Sonia Pottinger - they actually produced, and Leslie Kong of course, they actually sat in there. Q: Some would say that people like Duke and Coxson hardly participated at all though. A: No, that is wrong, he was there. If he wasn't there he had his man Alan, a man called Bim-Bim, he was always there. And he was - he may have arrived a little late on the scene, y'know, he may have arrived an hour late, but I cannot remember a Coxson session when Coxson Dodd wasn't there. You know, he definitely came and checked it out, and he also auditioned the artists. So, this is not true. The musicians may not have seen him... particularly when it was time to get paid maybe he wasn't there. Q: Obviously. A: (Chuckles) Yeah, 'cause he definitely was the strong man when it came to production. Q: Maybe he took a lower profile in later days but in the sixties I guess he was very much upfront and... A: Very active, just like Duke Reid. But Duke Reid moved to build Treasure Isle studios down on Bond Street, he was in the basement down below - well, actually it wasn't the basement, it was on the ground floor. And Smithy, Byron Smith, he was upstairs. But he had Smithy run a speaker downstairs (chuckles) so that he could listen to it and if something wasn't going right, then he'd just go upstairs to the studio and say, "This is not right!" So it changed a little bit. But Leslie Kong was always there, I mean the session didn't start without him.

Treasure Isle Liquor Store & Recording Studio.

Q: Why do you think people hold the Beverley's stuff in such high regard now, what would you point to as being his trademark or what in particular makes it stand out the way it does? Just like Duke Reid, it has such an high quality. A: Yeah. Well, Leslie did not go for the full sound system type of sound, y'know, with an over-emphasis of the bottom-end, Leslie was more... yes, he wanted it to get to the people and he wanted it to be played on the sound systems, but he wanted a little bit more refinement. I think Duke Reid and Leslie in particular got into this more because of radio play. And if you do it for a sound system it doesn't sound good on radio (chuckles), there's too much of the bottom-end. And I think, this is not just a matter of personal view and response or anything like that, but I think Leslie in particular, and I think there were a couple of others, I think he had, like Lloyd Daley, Matador, who tended to be a sort of classier type of producer. Q: Yeah, cleaner, refined. A: Yeah, cleaner type of production. And Leslie also was more particular about getting the good final cut, where Coxson and even Duke Reid and those type of people, they would do it three times, that was it. No matter how good or bad it sounded you're not gonna get another shot at it, but Leslie would take it up for maybe four or five, six cuts, until he got one that he knew was right. Q: How was Leslie, personalitywise? A quiet person, introverted you said. A: Incredible person. Very kind, like I said, very, very quiet, very inward looking type of person. I think he held a lot of feelings inside and rarely expressed himself. It was probably one of the reasons why he died of a heart attack, that he held back his feelings so much. Q: They said he didn't have any physical problems before this, there was no history among the Kongs that they had heart problem or anything. A: No, and like I said he was very, very quiet and not saying much at all, in fact I think eventually Colleen, his wife, realised that he was a very deep, a deep sort of person. But always glad to be around. You never really heard him get angry, not like that. Q: How did you react to this story about Bunny Wailer predicting Leslie's death when he put out that 'Best of the Wailers' LP on Beverley's? A famous myth by now. A: Ah, Leslie didn't worry about it, he probably had a laugh. Certainly he didn't pay any (chuckles) attention to anything like that, he did what he wanted to do. I mean, he never got angry about anything (chuckles). One of the things about Leslie, he understood or could speak Chinese, his father never sort of taught them to speak Chinese, but he never told anybody that he understood Chinese and of course what they spoke is 'hakar'. And he never told anybody that he could understand it. And one time we were at my house and a friend of ours was there, he was Chinese, he started going on about something with Leslie - in Chinese, and Leslie said, "No, no, no, no!" I said, "Hey Les, what you say?" He said what it was and I said, "You understood him?" And he said, "Yes man, I understan'". I said, "Why don't you tell people you speak Chinese?" He said, "No man, I find out a lot of things if they don't know that I speak the language". And that was just Leslie (chuckles) and in fact, later on we were in London at a Chinese restaurant, and it was my wife and I, she's Chinese-Jamaican, and Leslie and Colleen inside this Chinese restaurant, we ordered, and this waiter said something to the other waiter and Leslie said, "No, c'mon, let's go". I said, "Huh?" He said, "C'mon, let's go! Let's pack up". Of course we looked at one another and asked, "What for?" He says, "Oh, they were saying bad things about the white woman and the Chinese man, and the Chinese woman and the white man, why do they get mixed up like that". He said, "I wasn't gonna take that" (chuckles). So we walked out. But that's the sort of guy he was.

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