Q: What happened to the Beverley's material, the whole catalog itself after he passed away suddenly in 1971? A: Cecil took it over. Q: Did he continue to produce for the label? A: No, they didn't produce as such, just used the back stuff, they made some reissues on albums. But from what I understand and it's a personal view, and I was never involved in it, but I believe Cecil undertook it to look after Colleen and the two children and all the other interests Leslie had. I don't think Colleen and Cecil reissued a lot of stuff either. Colleen now lives in Canada. Q: Remarried. A: No, not at all. Q: Are his children involved in music at all? A: Quentin... I think Quentin went into the police force. Q: In Jamaica? A: In Toronto. Q: OK. A: But the music stopped there. Q: To a couple of years after he passed. But they sold the catalog, what I've heard is that Blackwell bought it. He purchased it for Island when Boney M got the hit with 'Rivers of Babylon' and he decided to milk something out of the original by the Melodians, and bought up the whole Beverley's catalog from what I understand...

The Melodians.

Lee Gopthal.

A: You got to understand that the Jamaican music industry got out of hand during that time, even when Duke Reid was around. Now Duke is dead, Coxson is dead, Leslie Kong is dead, and I have heard that songs I have produced for myself, when I had Doctor Bird in England, the Doctor Bird group where I had Pyramid, some that I did has been released all over the world, in France, I'm sure they've been released all over Europe. These people had absolutely no right to make claim of it. But is it worthwhile chasing them down? No, most of them don't have anything to show if you go after them. And if you go after them you put a legal injunction against them, a small fine, and then they go around the corner and next week they open up at a different place. There's a lot of piracy. And in fact, frankly one of the people in the Beat & Commercial group, y'know, the later Trojan group, they were the worst! They were pirates in the extreme. Q: The late Lee Gophtal. A: Yeah, Lee Gophtal. Q: Their business approach could've been nicer. A: But this is typical of the music business, not just the West Indian music but also in Europe and the States, it's pretty easy to lose. You know, I know a lot apart from myself who has been pirated. And also, a lot of these records fetch an incredibly high price on the collectors' market now. I wish to God (chuckles) I had some of those records that I destroyed, I threw them in the trash can. Because in those days it wasn't of any value afterwards in England. But now it's changed. I wish I had them now. But there's a lot of piracy going on and not only Jamaica, in Japan, Florida, y'know, anywhere they sell reggae music there's someone get a kick off. And in fact, one of my friends are telling me now that the latest thing is mento, that is the new kind of thing. A lot of those stuff is produced by Stanley Motta, they're not around anymore, y'know (chuckles). And probably their descendants don't know anything about it. If they know that he was so big in mento production - and Ken Khouri, you know, maybe Richard knows. But there's a lot of stuff that came on Federal, y'know, Starline, and I bet they're being pirated also.

Q: I don't know the source for them, but a few years ago you had a bunch of vintage 45's that came out on such labels as Ska Beat, Island, R&B, and even Doctor Bird I think. Pirates. A: Oh yeah. Q: And I think Blue Cat as well. A: (Laughs) Q: All done on the original labels, reproduced, clean pressings and all. 'Moon Invader' by Tommy McCook on Doctor Bird is one I know of. A: Yeah, well... Q: Maybe out of Italy or France or Japan, wherever. A: Who knows, who knows. Q: Why doesn't Buster put out his back catalog, why doesn't he let someone dig deep into it and unearth all the goods he has there, stuff that has never appeared since the sixties and early seventies? He occasionally does some repressings, but it's not enough. There are some 45's out of Japan, but who can get those apart from the few who know about it. Seems like he doesn't care anymore. A: I'm sure we all, y'know, care about it, but what is the direction to take to get this corrected. And like I said, if you do correct one another one will pop up and do the same thing under a new name, or it turns out to be the same person. So I think that more than anything, probably all of us - Prince Buster included, just want the recognition of what we did. Q: Right. And not reissue too much, it will be pirated in any case. A: Exactly. It's the same with movies or whatever (chuckles), always enemies to speak about who will steal behind ones back. Q: Definitely. How did you take the widespread culture of smoking within music circles, the sweet smell of herb among the players, the Skatalites, being new to all this in the fifties especially? Prevalent then and I suppose it increased when Rasta grew in stature. A: (Chuckles) I just adjusted to it, it was part of the whole scene.

Q: Must have been a mild shock for you to see the amount used of it back then? A: No, not really. I mean, you gotta understand the way of life (chuckles) among those men. They had a thing called 'roots', it was just ganja buds, seaweed, white rum, and everything mixed in there. The Rastafarian thing became fashionable but the other line, y'know, drinking some roots, that was undercurrent all the time. But it didn't worry me at all. One thing I realised from very, very early on was that someone, in some way, has got to stay straight. Q: (Laughs) And that's gotta be you, naturally! A: Someone gotta stay straight. And I never saw Coxson smoke a joint, I never saw Duke Reid smoke a joint, Leslie certainly never did - we had no need for it. (Chuckles) It was just something that didn't came about, why would we smoke a joint. It was absolutely no requierment for it. A lot of the people, Bells, Mudie, they never, never smoked. These people like Duke Reid, they used to make money off the liquor sales. But I know a couple of other people, Skatalites, Count Ossie, the Nyahbingi drums, it was an interesting concept to record them. And I mean, at one time - yes, the musicians used to smoke a lot... Q: (Chuckles) A: At Federal Records they used to go out in the back, y'know, sit out there and pass the joint around. But I would never allow any smoking in the studio, never! Never, never, never. Q: No protests? A: No, no. I was Mr Goody - 'do what Mr Goody says'. They used to smoke outside but I was not going to run any risk, because it was illegal. It was illegal and still is illegal. And I wasn't gonna run the risk of having any smoking in the studio, neither did Duke. Ken Khouri would have had a pit. Like I said, I had to stay straight, otherwise I wouldn't push the right button. Q: (Laughs) It got more common as time went by in any case. A: That wasn't the actual problem. If they relaxed and put it down well it didn't matter whether they were drunk, high or sober. It didn't matter if they were getting a good sound out of it, I would edit it down and I could eventually put it down on a disc. That was all that mattered. People like Leslie Kong, of course he cared how it sounded but as long as he had a hit record, he didn't care less how it got that way. Q: Yeah, the result is what counts. A: People who came through the studio, I showed them, like, you cannot get high like this, because, y'know, I said: "When you're high and you come in here, you try and cut a master and I play it back for you and you'd say, 'Where the hell does that come from?!'" You gotta think straight.

Q: You haven't told me the story of how Doctor Bird was set up, you went over to London in about '66 I guess. It was like a subsidiary to WIRL at the time, or a link to some other company to begin with? A: '62. I was part-owner of Island Records and Chris was doing his own thing, he had people like David Betteridge to join in the company. I felt I was pushed to one side and I said, well, why don't I get my own... Then George Benson and Bunny Rae came in and said, "Let us have a label". And I said, "OK, that's fine". So they had the control and I had forty-nine percent, and we started exchanging ideas with what name we would use, and I said, "Well, Doctor Bird is the national bird, so let's make it 'Doctor Bird'". And that's how it came about. And the label we created of course it's gotta be yellow, green and black, which is Jamaica's national colours. Island Records was red and white so we felt, no, why don't make it yellow, green and black. I think one of the classic things - I did love it though, strange marketing for some but they all seemed to work, very few failed (chuckles), but it was the leopard skin record jacket. Which I thought was a classic and to this day I'm sure it will go down to the classics of the record industry. But anyway, Clifford 'Bunny' Ray and George Benson and I, we sat down and we worked it all out; they started feeding material to me and in fact, I used to go down and visit their sessions at West Indies Records studios. I built that studio for them at the time. But when they ran into financial difficulties, the factory caught fire and they decided to close down the record pressing plant, I just bought out Bunny Rae and George Benson off the chairs and had control, a hundred percent control. But then I started figuring out, well, Doctor Bird was one thing, but then I said, "There's a lot of pride in the labour union, why shouldn't we, y'know, could have Duke Reid material, Treasure Isle". When Leslie Kong said well, he wanted it, I said: "OK, well, make it fifty-fifty" - fifty percent Doctor Bird, fifty percent on a new label, which was Pyramid. And Leslie and I created the incredible light-yellow colour, and that was from a jazz quartet - no, a jazz quintet album, called 'Pyramid'. And we were just listening to it one day and I looked at the album, the cover, the jacket, and the name, and I said: "Man, what are we looking any further for, let's just go for 'Pyramid'". Pyramid was the name of the album, but they came up with this beautiful light-yellow colour and grey printed on it, and it was just outstanding and so cool. I said, "Let's do it", and Leslie said, "Yeah man, yeah man, cool, cool, yeah man". (Chuckles) This was how Pyramid was created. And then I did a few other things on my own, Attack, some stuff of my own productions. And I had another one called The Master's Time which was a gospel label, y'know, it was a total failure... Q: (Chuckles) A: But the leopard skin jacket... I would walk down Brixton or Portobello Road on a Saturday, and they used to sell the records, they buy three or four 45's and they'd put a piece of string to the center and tie a bow at it at the record store, and they'd walk along with this. And I had seen people walking around with it and I thought to myself: 'Wow, why can't I do something about this? How many of my records have been carried in that piece of white skin or that piece of string?' I went into the record store and there's always white in front of me. But you know what? Decca had blue, HMV I think had red or Polydor had red, Pye had sort of a light blue, and they all had colour jackets. But all those West Indies records were white. And I said, "I gotta do something about this". So I went to an artist friend of mine and I said that I'm poor, I can't afford much, remember that this is, y'know, I don't want you to increase the price for manufacture. So he said, "Oh, oh, that's easy. We get yellow paper and we'd print brown over it, and we'd make it leopard skin". So we'd make it so that each edge as it were would be the same no matter which way you'd turn it, so when you'd put it up on a record store it'd be yellow or brown the whole line, and I said, "Yes, that sounds good". And they became so much of a classic and a cult thing (chuckles), and then I'd go down Portobello Road and see people walking around with these yellow and brown jackets, and I said, "Yes man, I got 'em, I got 'em!"

Q: (Laughs) OK, inventive. So what was among the first releases on Doctor Bird, could that be 'Every Night' by Joe White for example? A: I think that could've been one of them, yes. I can't remember, it was so long ago (chuckles). Q: Right. A: But then again, I was determined to come out with a hit, y'know, hit them strong, hit them strong with my records. Q: How did you find the task to distribute all this around the UK? A: Well, remember I was hangin' around with Island (chuckles), so... Q: So you had all the connections set. A: Exactly, yeah (chuckles). That was one good thing that came out of Island Records. As far as I was concerned, I didn't have to go around and find out which record store was selling. In fact, Bob Lynn worked for Island Records, he came with me to sell. Q: Driving all over the place in a van, distributing to all the record joints. A: Oh yeah, I used to do that every Saturday morning and in fact, I used to drive up to Birmingham on a Thursday night or a Friday night, actually the records were packed five o' clock on a Friday and stuff them in my little mini-van, scream up to Birmingham and drop off five thousand records around Birmingham on a Saturday morning, early, y'know, sleep in the van. Got all this sorted on a Saturday morning and then come back to London on Saturday and then get another load and take them out there and make sure that the records were selling. Because remember, all the charts and everything were based on weekend sales, on Saturday sales. And if you could get one higher in the charts that increased the sales for the label for next week, also the television of that day, y'know, 'Top of the Pops', they based their program on the charts. But yeah, we would go out. I mean, I had a mini-van and fitted it out, I'd go out with five thousand 45's and wouldn't stop, wouldn't stop for anything. If I hadn't the tyre/tires break or something. But yeah, I used to do all that, get out on a Saturday morning, all out. Make the circuit, 'what is it you sought, what do you want, what do you need, what's not selling? In fact, take some more of this'. Bob and I, he wouldn't go out on a Saturday, usually, but I went out on Saturdays to do all this stuff.

Who could have guessed the level of recognition ska, rock steady, the early reggae and, to a certain extent, even mento would get when Graeme started out in the 1950's. The music of this tiny little island reached far beyond its borders and, in some way, quickly paid back its debt to American R&B, jazz, country and gospel in innovation, inspiration and sheer joy. It's all about sound, and Graeme personifies what it's all about. I can imagine him standing beside it all after moving away from Jamaica and enjoying at a distance the attention Jamaican music now is getting. That the earliest music is still requested among young fans today just proves the timelessness of the music they put on tape back in those days, and, arguably, that's the best form of musicianship when you've reached that level where it doesn't fear time. Just give that some thought next time you put on some of the local R&B recordings, ska, or rock steady. As a pioneer it is a sad fact that Goodall hasn't been the subject of some sort of tribute for his Doctor Bird efforts. The only label I could see taking on such a project would be Trojan Records. It would be good to know that his name and skills are being recognised and put together on one album at last. 7" single information courtesy Roots Knotty Roots.

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