Q: So what was the response for that first record? A: Well, I didn't see the return of it pretty quick as months after I realised, maybe a year after I realised that it was released, and it was released on a compilation in England. And people liked the song because it was something new, because at that time there was a place called the ghetto - the ghettorisation of Jamaica had come into play. We had a place we called Shanty Town, you had a place called Back O Wall, you had all these places where people - Rasta mentality came into the view. And people were looking and taking things serious. Some people move, y'know, who were in-the-know started to check out the reality of what was being said in the music. And this is what called people to really invest their time and their money into these songs, because it was something new, talking about them, talking about things they didn't know about. Q: Right, and even if you had a few recordings done at Coxson at this point, running the sound, you still were at a stage where it wasn't to be on a full-time scale - yet, it was basically still a hobby, wasn't it? A: Well, yes. Yeah, it was a hobby then 'cos it was for the love of music why most people get involved in it 'cos it was something that you didn't get a pay a lot, y'know. And a great deal of it was for because of the love of it, it was something that you loved and you just invested your time in it. So I guess most of the people who were involved in it were still working or was at least trying to secure another way or means of getting some food on the table, to pay the rent, y'know, so the music was just a part of love. So I classed it as being a hobby at the time. Q: And the sound system was a part in this, playing at weekends, and so on. But that was hardly something you could survive from. What did you work with during the week, at that time? A: Right. Well, I was in electronics business, I was involved in... There was a company in Jamaica, when I left school I started working with them. And they were distributors of some of the European components, like Wega, Grundig, Magnavow and they were distributors for Blankwax, an American company in Jamaica. So we used to assemble all this stuff where stereograms, y'know, the duty that was coming in which was the set, the hi-fi sets them. So we used to assemble these things, tv's and things, and sell them to the public. So I was involved in electronics from an early start. Q: Now, this was around the time when you joined the Set Takers band? A: It was around this time when I joined the Set Takers because I had just released 'Gone Through', Studio One, and started doing some productions for myself, which was on a label called Soul Sounds. I started doing things for myself, my first song was 'Prisoner Of Loneliness'. And then I did like 'Get Ready', y'know, 'This Magic Moment'. Q: Which studio did you use for it? A: Well, we used at the time - I used various studios like Treasure Isle, which is Duke Reid's, and I use Harry J. And I used Randy's. Q: How much did you get to record, around three or four tracks with the Set Takers? A: No, more than that. Right, the Set Takers, and so I wanted to keep something to remembering the whole scene because it was a nice vibe, working with the brothers, y'know, everybody was cool. Everybody was young, everybody had like a view in mind, y'know.

Original Studio One sleeve.

Willie Williams

Q: What was the line-up you had in the Set Takers? A: Um, at the time it was Bobby Kalphat, was the leader of the band, which was a good friend of mine, we used to be friends. And we had Benbow (Creary), was a singer at the time in the band (chuckles). Q: The drummer? He was the singer (chuckles)? A: Right (laughs)! In the band, he wasn't a drummer yet. We had Albert Griffiths, was the guitarist in the band, and singer too. We had Errol, he's from the group called The Chantells, but he's now in a group called The Jays. On bass we had a brother called Harry, which I no longer - is years I haven't seen him since the break-up of the band in the seventies, or late sixties. We wanted to - I decided when having all these people around to keep a record of all the bands, all the people that I played with, 'cos I like to do that, I do that from time to time in the band I play with, I like to record them so to keep them for posterity. So this was the reason for recording these songs and starting off with something, some music, and of course music for my set which I had, to make songs that was different, y'know, that I could identify with my set, and myself. Q: You must've had a tough time in getting the conscious music established, we are talking social awareness at its earliest stage in the music. A: (Chuckles) Well, I think I still do have a hard time in getting it acceptable, because the people would like you to sing the things that don't really have any real meaning to them. You know, 'ooh baby I love you', as I said before, y'know, about your girl, which I think we have more important things to talk about. It's not that girls, women or things of that nature aren't important too, but we have more important things. Because ever since the introduction of slavery into the black man, we haven't had an answer, and we haven't had any redress, or compensation. So this is my whole life in general, in making these things known to the world. And we've been dealt unjust, and with injustice. And my music is geared toward these things, to let the people know the plight and the suffering of black people in general, all over the world. Because that's slavery, and there's no redress and no answer, and my music was geared towards these, and still geared towards this, to make the people be aware, and so much make the black people be aware that there is hope, in general. And not just for black people but in general, to let people know that we're family. It's just one big family. It might be a different colour, but it's the same colour blood. The same spiritual make up, y'know. Q: You decided to produce some other acts, like Delroy Wilson. Was this after the split with the Set Takers? A: Right. I hooked up with diffrent artists after the introduction of myself into that and started working with different artists. Delroy Wilson like you mentioned was one of them, I did some recording with Bobby Kalphat also. Q: How did you link with Bobby (who did at least one solo LP for Phil Pratt, long since unavailable) the first time? A: Well, Bobby, I was introduced to the band, the Set Takers, by a friend of mine, and we met Bobby and I - we just hit it off, 'cos Bobby is a real nice brother and a real great musician, that hasn't been something that a lot of people has known about, y'know. I don't think he gets his right dues in the sense of what he is capable of doing, of the music that he plays. You know, 'cos there's a lot of people, Gregory Isaacs, Pat Kelly, he's played with most of the seasoned players, but lots of people don't know about Bobby Kalphat. So now, I decided to record Bobby Kalphat. You know, with melodica, so as to let people know of him because he has the keyboard mastery, y'know. Q: He certainly has. What was his previous experience in the music, before the Set Takers - Studio One? A: He used to play in different places, different studios. Studio One, yes. He played in different studios, with different sessions, with different artists. But most of the people that you notice from the older times, people don't put the names of musicians who is playing on their product. But he was playing with a lot of people, with Bobby Aitken, used to play with the Hippy Boys, which became The Wailers afterwards, so... which were The Upsetters, y'know, so... They made a lot of transition and a lot of changes, with people from its history. Q: So we're speaking the early part of the seventies now, and you recorded Delroy Wilson among others. How much did you cut with Delroy? A: I recorded a couple of tracks with Delroy. As a matter of fact we wanted to do an album but I had migrated to Canada before, so we embarked on that. And so we never (inaudible) that venture. So I didn't get the opportunity to really finish off what we were doing there. But we record a couple of tracks, which I put out one of the tracks on the compilation album - the M10, from which was released in Paris.

Q: Yeah, excellent release - 'From Studio One To Drum Street'. On it you have some tracks by The Versatiles, like 'Give Me Bread', that was after Junior Byles had left them? A: Right. Junior Byles had gone solo and we had a couple other brothers who were taking up the reign, Earl, I don't remember his surname right now, 'cos y'know, it's been a few years now since I did this (laughs)! But they did - the rest of the Versatiles they took up the group, they wanted to keep the group going, and they approached me with some songs which was good, they wanted to record with the Wailers band at the time, but it wasn't called the Wailers band at that time, 'cos Bob Marley wasn't working with them as yet. They were called The Rhythm Force. So we went into the studio and we did two tracks, and we overdub like horns and percussion and things like that. We had Bingy Bunny and Bongo Herman who was the percussionist, we had Ron Wilson who was the trombonist. He was a teacher at Alpha (Boys School), which was a kind of school for, y'know, street kids. That's where most of the musicians came from. So, we embarked on this and start doing stuff like that - the Set Takers and the Versatiles, through they were a nice group, they had visions of years before to do roots. But as I said at the time the music wasn't taken serious by the media, it was just by the people who came to dances, an' things like that. Because the music that was put out was because of the people who were - who didn't want to be involved with politics, 'cos politics is a dirty thing, and they didn't want to get involved in gangs or anything like that - the music became a platform for them, which they could speak their mind and let the world know what's happening to them. Q: The feedback you got for those recordings with the Versatiles? Their kind of music, it was at this point becoming more and more as the socially related music we know reggae music to be nowadays, or should I say 'used' to know. A: Right. The set of response that we got for those guys it wasn't in general, the response that we got - that I got, when we started in the business, the kind of music that I started out with in the business, the people weren't responsive in the sense of... When I did 'Get Ready' I got more response, because I was talking about the girl (laughs)! Q: Yeah, sure. A: When you talk about serious business, people don't give response - y'know, serious response - until someone else, the masses outside, start checking for you - the people. But who start checkin' the music was the poor people because they didn't get no - they didn't have no one to speak for them, 'cos politicians just come down and use them, for their votes. And that's it until next election. So they wanted someone to speak for them, so the musicians became their spokesperson, speaking for them, standing up for their rights. So this is why these things weren't appreciated by the masses. It was jus' appreciated by poor people, the ghetto people, at the initial stage. Q: So for how long did you run the Tripletone sound system? Did you quit that after a while, after you went more into production, to concentrate more on that? Even if the sound is a good outlet to get your music heard - often the only one, it can be pretty heavy running it. It didn't stop until you moved to foreign? A: No, I still had it going. I quit the sound system when I migrated to Canada, I gave it over to a friend of mine. That was history afterwards (laughs)! It lasted for a while and the job that I was doing it was keeping my community really together, and (got) people aware. And we didn't have that violence and things that was happening 'cos we were keeping people happy and, y'know, keeping the peace. At the same time keeping people educated, sensible. Q: I guess a couple of years into the seventies people got more responsive and were more open minded now for this kind of music, more receptive to what was being projected, because this was also being accepted in other forms of music, things that was played on the radio. A: Right. Well, the only people who did respond a lot to these lyrics were the younger people who were coming up, they started to respond to the lyrics. It's just like how we have the dancehall craze now with the hip-hop. Maybe the older folks don't like it but the younger folks like it, so it's just like in our period of time. You have people who didn't like what we were doing because they thought that we was steering up trouble, talking about certain subjects an' things like that. But we knew the impact and we were more educated in the sense of these things. So we decided to break it mildly and to let the world at large know what was happening, and to educate our people to let them know of how to address these things. So, the music played an important part in that era, it did the job.

Q: Right. Tell me about the work you did with two other bands at that time, the Generation Gap and Thoroughbreds. A: Well, Generation Gap was a band that was formed by a people - great players, Geoffrey Chung, his brother who used to play with Peter Tosh's Word Sound & Power (Mikey Chung), we used to have Mikey Boo who was the drummer, and different drummers. But the whole outfit of the band was that it was a different kind of band because the first time that I played in the band we had a full horn section lined up on stage, and they had more equipment. So it was a more equiped band. Q: Since these two obviously has a lot in common, what's the difference then between Generation Gap and the perhaps more known Now Generation band? A: Generation Gap was... Now Generation was Geoffrey Chung - I'm sorry, I made a mistake a while ago - Generation Gap was different people. Generation Gap was Mugs, who was the bass player, Mikey, Generation Gap was also Freddie McGregor - he was the lead singer for Generation Gap. I was the guest artist who, y'know, when we go on (stage), I'm the guest artist with the band. But Freddie McGregor was the lead singer for the band, and we had the keyboard player which I'm trying to remember the name of the fellow... But Generation Gap came about after Now Generation, because Now Generation was Geoffrey Chung's band (Geoffrey who's now sadly deceased), which we had Richie Daley was the bass player, the one who plays with Third World, right. We had different people in that band, but Generation Gap was a band that I did play a guest part to it, doing tours around Jamaica. Q: Generation Gap was as far as I understand a band rooted in the Twelve Tribes. A: Well, afterwards it was. But before it was the band that made all these songs for like the Derrick Harriott period - you remember Derrick Harriott? Q: Yeah, but he called it the Crystalites. Were they ever the Now Gen band? I think they were. A: Right. But it was even before the Crystalites, because I mean after the Crystalites... but his players was called the Crystalites. But Generation Gap was the guys who did like the seventies set, that was the band that is backing him all the time, and they were the studio band that was playing behind like just serving the man, with Ernie Smith and all those guys, y'know, in that period of time. So, I did a short stint still. Q: You played like guitar too? A: No. I was the singer, and that was in a short period before I embarked, and I came to Canada. Q: And the Thoroughbreds? A: Thoroughbreds was after the break up of the Set Takers. Bobby Kalphat was the resident in that club on the Red Hills strip - which is the Red Hills Road, what they call a 'club strip'. Because there was lots of clubs on that road, and the name of the band was Thoroughbreds, the name of the club was Taboo. So it was right in the initial stage of the club when Thoroughbreds played, they were great musicians. And next door we had like Sly (Dunbar) and Lloyd Parks, they were playing in a band called Skin Flesh & Bones.

Q: Was Thoroughbreds only a performance band, or this band recorded as well? A: It was performance. They recorded stuff for me during that period of time too, because my label was going at the time and I started writing more stuff, so I did stuff like over that period of time that was when I did songs like the Delroy Wilson song, which was 'I Wish It Was Me'. I did some songs with Bobby Kalphat - instrumental, y'know. And we did some more songs with the Versatiles, which isn't released as yet. We have stuff that we did with different artists that isn't known, and some of these artists they just didn't bother with the business (laughs)! So they're just out! But the main artists I was concentrating on was myself, Bobby Kalphat, we cut stuff with, yeah, that was more like it, at the time, the Thoroughbreds, in that period of time. But we did mostly stage work at the time. Q: What was the stage repertoire? A mixture of reggae, soul, funk - the usual variety? A: Yeah, well, the repertoire was a mixture of, y'know, reggae, soul - we did a lot of Al Green covers, Earth Wind & Fire. We did a lot of different covers in-between when we do like our regular Jamaican stuff, y'know, some of our stuff. Q: Did you get airplay support as the independent producer you was, for stuff like 'Get Ready'? I can imagine how difficult it was if lacking the finances, payola was the thing as much then as it is now? A: Well, in any era it's rare when a song makes it out there without getting any promotion, and in any era when a song makes number one, anywhere, unless it's by demand by the public in general, like 'Armagideon Time', I'm quite sure 'Armagideon Time' didn't need no promotion, it just - it was just promoted by the public, y'know, they loved it, they made it a hit. But any song that you listen to on the radio, no matter how great the artist is, the promoter and the producer has to pay to make that song a hit song (chuckles)! If you don't have money it doesn't make sense, y'know what I'm saying (laughs)?

Willie Williams. (Photo courtesy Drum Street)

Q: I don't know if its the same procedure nowadays but at that time producers bought like fifteen minutes of airtime to have their stuff being played, like most major producers had their own slot on whatever station. A: Right. You just give the money to the radio announcer and he played the song, if you had the money to give to him. You know, just like a bribe payola, or what they call it. Yeah. In some cultures it's legal, in some places it's illegal, but that was the norm and still is the norm because some of these songs you're listening to, you wonder how come they hit! But it's because money is behind it (laughs). Q: And even though this was a setback for producers in your position, you still had the sound system, as an outlet. A: Yeah, well, this was my outlet - the sound system. Because I found out that I didn't have the money to go to the radio guys to give them. Of course they had my material but they weren't gonna play them if I didn't pay them. So I had to resort to my sound system, and the public at large. People used to love my stuff, in general, and I used to get some airplay but not a wide coverage to assist the promotion part of it. And of course, the kind of music I was putting out too, it was pretty new to people. The people didn't want to bother to get involved with something like that, because they didn't foresee things like what is happening down in the world. They were quite relaxed to just listen to stuff like Tom Jones, Engelbert...? Q: Humperdinck. A: Humperdinck. You know, that kind of stuff. Q: Right, the easy listening mainstream type of dross, the 'adult contemporary', MOR or whatever they call it. A: Yeah. They weren't ready for the reality yet because we didn't have like... I mean, most of the things that were happening were far away, like the Vietnam war, like what was taking place before. But they didn't want to hear about it. It's not like now when you can visually see planes going into the World Trade Center, and parts of people laying splattered all over the sidewalks, and things like that. But I think we were inspired by the Creator to see these things within that time, to the perception on behalf of these things taking place on earth and we were trying to wanting the people to live better, to live good, to live with one another. You know, to share the wealth that people would have to reach in these stages. Q: I can't really come up with any other act from the very early seventies period, other than the Wailers - in Jamaica, who stood for these messages so consistently, what you wanted to project through the sound system. How did you check for them at that time? A: I knew from that time, the Wailers was one of the guys, the people who had a hard time in getting radio play, 'cos their music was like mine too. And, the masses of the radio stations we was charging didn't want to hear about Rasta, didn't think about that too tough, y'know. So, what happened is that you had other artists too, you had like Junior Byles, you had a couple of artists. But because the reason why the people didn't hear about these artists, like they didn't stand up like the rest of the artists, because of the kind of material they were into. You know, people didn't want to hear about it, they just wanted to sweep that aside. They didn't want to hear about the plight of the poor people, that they shot you down, or the people that were massacred somewhere else, or something bad going down. It was just like 'who cares!' Q: So The Wailers music was the kind of music you often selected at a dance with Tripletone. A: Well, incidentally this is the kind of things I used to play because I knew Scratch Perry very well, y'know, and I used to get music from him. I used to distribute... Q: 'Get music from Perry' - like what? Sound specials, dubs, or just blanks? A: Um, blank labels. And of course, at the time, is just the rootsman or the poor man - the ghetto people, who used to love that kind of music, y'know. I used to play the music at the dances and sometimes, to be honest, you put on a Wailers at the time - I can remember playing parties and putting on a Wailers and people said 'take it off!', because they wanted to hear 'ooh baby I love you' (laughs)! They don't want to hear no reality, right now. So, it was a hard task, y'know, putting these things forward, 'cos it was something that most people didn't want. Especially people who were high society.

Q: There is something similar between you and other vets like I Jah Man Levi and Pablo Moses, those two spring to mind for some reason - and certainly not soundwise, but in the sense of staying out of the mainstream, following your own paths, maintaining the independence and integrity and the will to creatively do something which is genuinely you and not reminding us of anyone else but you, individually, as artists. You get me there (laughs)? Without any involvement of other producers. A: Right. Well, I tell you something, we could be in the mainstream if we wanted to, because over the years I've been offered contracts by different companies. The last contract I turned down was from EMI-Capitol, and I just don't stand for certain principles, and money. Of course everyone needs money in this material world, to survive. But I don't make that my mainstay. I think that there is more important issues than money, because money don't make air, money don't make sun, money don't make the birds or the bees. I take the real issues very serious, and I know the results, or the repercussions. So I can't fool myself, so that's why my music have to be true. And I think most of these artists have reached a stage where they could be a Michael Jackson of reggae, if you want. I got a contract from EMI in the eighties, and I didn't like what they wanted me to do. They wanted me to cut down on the kind of blurt I was doing, they wanted me to revel Boy George... Q: What (laughs)?! A: And I said (chuckles)... I think that was an insult! Because, y'know, in Jamaica we are very homophobic, we don't deal with that kind of stuff. And in the public system the society people don't make it known to other people, they're making it into a secret (laughs)! So working with somebody like this who came up on the radio amd said that he's proud of his background, I think trying to make a person like me to work with that is disrespect, 'cause that wouldn't be natural, y'know what I'm saying? So I turned down these things and it was thousands of dollars I turned down, or thousands of pounds that I turned down (laughs)! But in myself I feel very happy and good about these things, and I think, y'know, so many people a talk about Jesus Christ and the man who is supposed to be Jesus, who is supposed to be representing that person, but no one knows him, and they write so much about him. So I think we are in the same kind of mould in the sense of putting forward the real thing, and doesn't matter if people regard you as a superstar, because that's not what it's about, it's about, y'know, real things.

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