Q: But you never got to record in the ska era? A: I come in the rock steady, I was there but I didn't do any recording in the ska time. I come in the rock steady period, y'know. Q: Tell me the circumstances from that period, when Alton decided to form a vocal group which included Eggar Gordon and yourself. A: Yes, he used to sing as a duo, two of them - Alton & Eddy Perkins. But it was a duet, it wasn't a group. So after Eddy Perkins had migrated to America, he was cryin'. Q: So he took it very bad, it wasn't as if it doesn't really matter too much, when he had his solo stuff at the same time? A: I had a good friend, his name is Gussie. So Alton and myself and Eggar Gordon and many other good friends, y'know, like his brother was there too - Leslie Ellis. And what really happened now, Alton feel very bad after Eddie Perkins gone, because he figure more or less that the sound that they carry together not gonna be there any more, after he left. But I used to practice, sit down there and smokin' my herb and practicin' my guitar an' t'ing so Gussie said, "Man, I like how you sound, yunno". That's one of my good friend, he's a big man, elder man more than me, y'know. He said, "Man, why you don't check Alton Ellis and find out, like how Eddie gone you could a form a group". So I dunno about that, but I'm gonna ask him, really ask him. And he come back after that and told me that it's a good idea. So from that we sit down and we start talk about it an' all that, so... We call Eggar Gordon and then, y'know, the group started. Q: But prior to this, you didn't have any experience as a member of a harmony group at some point? A: No. That is my first time. Q: And this goes for Eggar too? A: They used to sing - they used to have a thing in Jamaica they call 'The Vere John Opportunity Knock', and that's where the music started from in the ghetto. Vere John, that's the name of the man, he used to keep all those Vere John Opportunity Knocks. He called it so beca' it started from the Ward Theatre, that is in Trench Town - no, Ward Theatre is downtown but we start at a theatre in Trench Town at that time, so they called it 'The Ambassador' - Ambassador Theatre, that's right in Seventh Street, in Trench Town. Between the border of Trench Town and Jones Town, that's where the theatre is. So Vere John always coming there, it's one of the best theatre in the ghetto so they had the Opportunity Knock there all the time. And sometime he go down to Spanish Town Road by another theatre named the Queens Theatre, and it's another theatre and the title of it is the Majestic, that is on Spanish Town Road also. And he keep the - the final now for that gonna take place at Carib Theatre at Cross Roads. So all those places now I call names, that's where the music started from, Vere John Opportunity Knock whe you have talents. You gonna have a lot of talented artists come and who can really sing properly and who can dance. You have that they break it down in different parts, like you have the singin' parts and you have the dancehall part and you have Bim & Bam, y'know, they come up and do their thing, some jokes an' t'ing like that. So that's where the testin' of the music started from, so... If you come in and you win then you can get a little pound or something like that. I was there and I didn't do no performance because, y'know, they're picking the better singers, like Alton Ellis, Alton and Eddy Perkins they performed there and then you have Toots & The Maytals and you have Stranger Cole and you gonna have artists like Derrick Harriott and Delroy Wilson and all those youth, y'know. So that's where the music really emerge from in the ghetto. And the people used to look up on us as Rasta people, they don't want to give you no - you can't get a good start. They discriminate you and if you're a Rasta you can't come by the family neither, they abandon you.

Joe Higgs. (Photo: Peter Simon)

Q: I suppose you went by Joe Higgs' yard in those days where a lot of activity was at that time? A: Well, I'm just livin' in Trench Town, whe it go now - you have First Street and you have Second Street, Third Street, Fourth Street, Fifth Street, Sixth Street, Seventh Street and it go right up to Twelfth Street, or Thirteenth Street. So, Joe Higgs used to live on Third Street and I used to live on Fourth Street, so if I want to get across to Fifth Street all I have to do is to walk in the yard an' just - you don't have to go right around, you just go through the yard, from yard to yard. Each yard you end upon you gonna come out on the other street. It was like that, so I used to go by Joe Higgs. Q: And that was the center of activity during that time, sort of anyway. A: Everybody come. If you don't come to First, Second, Third, Fourth or Fifth Street, that's where the center of all the musicians - I mean all the artists, lives. So a lot of the musicians are elder musicians, they used to live in the same community. So I go to Joe Higgs and his mother - in those days you have shilling, y'know, pound, shilling and pence times. So if you have two pence you could go there and have a lunch, so I used to go cross there and buy some cod-cake and all that, and greater cake and have a little choose for your lunch. So I used to go around every twelve o' clock and then I meet Joe Higgs and (Roy) Wilson, you didn't have Joe Higgs alone but Higgs & Wilson. Q: Right, tunes like 'Don't Mind Me', 'Oh Manny Oh', 'On A Saturday Night', and so on. A: Yeah! Yeah man, yeah. And you have Delroy Wilson live in the same place - very close, just next door. Q: I guess you met (Delroy's brother) Trevor Wilson too, also known as 'Batman'. A: Yes man! Same yard. Delroy Wilson, I loved his mother very much too and she was a nice lady, and she could sing too - very good. So, you have another group named The Richard Brothers - Calvin and Pete, the Richard Brothers. So, they were living in the same yard with Joe Higgs. Yeah. And then when you come across now to Fifth Street now you would have Alton Ellis, and on Fourth Street that's where I live, and Hortense Ellis used to live in the same place too. Q: His sister, yeah. A: Yeah. Stranger Cole living in the same community, he used to live in Denham Town. And then you gonna have The Kingstonians living in the same place in the same community also. So we have a bubble of talent used to live there. Q: A lot of people to learn from and socialize with if you wanted to enter the music. A: That's right, that's how it used to be. And even up to now things change again, through the politics business a lot of artists had to migrate and live some other places, y'know. But in Jamaica is very - it pass through a lot of talent. Q: And money wasn't the main factor either. A: No, man! That's right. We wasn't singin' for money, we just sing for the love of the music. And if you want to have a good girl, y'know, a girl would look nice in the community an' have a good education an' t'ing and if you're a singer she love you, man, and you used to sing for the girl. So we never used to get pay fe music or nutten. We never know that the music business gonna turn the way that it did, right now. In those days man when you're going to studio is a worker going like any other work, yunno. You may lay about three tracks for the day or four tracks for the day, and then you go back now and you put on the voice. So when the engineer is finished with the mixing now they decide which one of the song they gonna release first. So, the music never used to come out on label too, it was pre-release whe it just blank, selling for 7. 6 and at that time it was the retail price - is 7. 6. That mean it's pound, shilling and pence we're talking about now, not dollars. The dollar exchange rate didn't come into force at that time yet, it was pound, shilling and pence whe you pay 7. 6 for your record. But if you gonna buy a wholesale you gonna pay 3 shilling and 2. 1 six pence, for a copy.

Q: It was something the public could afford in general? A: Yeah, but it was very expensive. Yes, at that time it was very expensive, if you're gonna look back on those days then you gonna know it was cheap but at that time if you want to fit in, man, when you have five shilling, man, like you have a thousand dollar. Beca' five shilling can buy you a lot of food, yunno. Yeah man. Q: Who used to live in these tenament yards, how did it look like? A: Tenament yard, government yard - a lot of people live there, man, lot's of these communities, very big. Q: Not many owned a record player in those days, but like you had one or two to use at most in almost every yard? A: No, record players was very - everybody, y'know - nuff people used to have record player, a lot. Because people coming from grammophone 'til before people have some small lickle t'ing in them house. You know, stereo we call it, as stereo. Partly, every house have a stereo. Beca' you could go downtown and from you're working you could take out a music box and you go an' pay lickle-lickle until it finished. So because of that a lot of people have stereo inside of them home and if you want to build up a sound you can. They used to have King Tubby's building amps and you have another - you have a lot of people build the amps down in Jamaica. So you can get the amps to buy one of those lickle a hundred watt or fifty watt or whatever. Everybody have music playing in their house because it's their enjoyment that, they don't have to come out beca' they have everything in their house. It was cheap days but everybody loved their music in Jamaica so they can afford to buy a little stereo, and so that's how the sound system emerge. You have a lot of people - you can get the speakers and you can make the box and then you can buy the amplifier, and people used to have some heavy duty amplifier, puttin' out two thousand watts and one thousand watts and three thousand watts, five thousand watts. When the music is playing, man, is like your heart is coming out, man! Some people even drop on the ground an' die beca' it hit so powerful and you feel the ground is moving, the boxes is walking! Things like that. Big sound, people have twenty box, twenty-five box. Right now I have a man living in the country, right now most time when I'm going down there is an elder Rastaman and he have fifty box, and he have two sound system. it's still there, the same old time sound system, still there right now in May Pen. Q: What's the name of it? A: The sound? I would have to go look for the name of the sound, I can't remember the name of it. But is an elder Rastaman that he used to - coming from the original days, and he told me his life story that he go to prison in the early thirties. They trim Rastaman and send him to prison, kill him and suck the blood like a vampire. But the Rastaman was the type of people whe I really respec' in all the rass, and I grew up with Mortimer Planno on Fifth Street and that's where I used to get all my inspiration from. Q: That's where you sighted Rastafari, in the late sixties or thereabouts? A: 1972. Q: OK. A: No, I couldn't have on a dread in the sixties, my mother would kill me for that! They would abandon me and say 'Don't come back in the home!' After my mother died then, y'know, I used to go by Mortimer Planno in the sixties and he was living very close to my house, so that's where I met Bob Marley and Peter Tosh and Bunny Wailer same place, on the same place. We kinda grew up like a family at that time, y'know. And Mortimer Planno is the man that told me that, I used to go there and smoke my herb and I met Skully Sims, Zoot Sims an' all those man and John Dread and a lot of Rasta, elder Rasta from Back O Wall and Pinnacle and I used to support the Rasta movements - back to Africa, also with Bob Marley, Peter Tosh and Bunny Wailer, y'know. So that's where I get my inspiration from His Majesty I Selassie I the First.

Winston Jarrett.

Q: Expressing Rasta sentiments in the music back in the sixties, it was too hot, wasn't it? A: No, because the government come down on all the rasses from Back O Wall, Pinnacle, Spanish Town Road, an' they mash down the church and they beat the Rastaman and trim you and kick you to jail. And you couldn't talk of Rastafari, beca' they said you are disobeying the truth and rights of Jesus Christ, and it was all the old colonial days that make it so tough because it's how you grow, y'know. And you get wisdom, knowledge and overstanding and learn about truths and rights and know yourself and to respec' black supremacy. Q: Only a few were brave enough to express that faith, like Don Drummond,Vernon Allen, Melodians, a couple more I think, even the Wailers with 'Rasta Shook Them Up'. But not many had the courage at that time to do it. A: No, is the Rastaman is really the first, y'know, is the Rastaman really first sending the message about how it is and teach you how to live. And teach you Amharic, teach you African language and put in yourself that you don't know yourself and let you know about His Majesty I and let you be self-reliant. And you're supposed to be educated, you can learn a trade and uplift yourself. And we speak about Marcus Garvey and what Marcus Garvey really stand for with the black supremacy. So, we grow really rough and really tough and it kinda carve you out to be somebody special, and what you stand for and you know where you're coming from and you know where you're going, you know what life is all about. Those are very important things for any man or any woman, any boy or girl to really understand and know themselves. Q: The identity, the culture in general, that comes out in the music every time. A: That's right. You see, the thing is now where a lot of people don't realise that those policies is going to uplift you and make you more stronger and bolder, make you have a lot of wisdom by listening to elder people who have history and who can teach you history. So those is the type of person whe really Winston Jarrett from I was very small I always clinge to, elder people who can teach me things. I don't want to go amongst my little brethren them and men in the same age bracket, they don't know nothing. I am a type of person who clinge to elder people who know and can teach me and I listen to them and listen very carefully what they are saying. And you have to put both things into practice, don't be a lip-service or lippy-lippy. A person with all the things that you learn in life - put it into practice, and once you put that into practice, everything will be OK for you. So I really have to put all of what I've been learning in the music, and sing about it - it's so you grow. And you can live amongst your enemy but you can learn from your enemy, and you can sing about it too. I am a type of person, y'know, I am still that way all the time.

Winston Jarrett.

Winston Jarrett. (Photo: Lee Abel)

Q: Then, consciousness is in the centre of your whole output over the years, isn't it? It's more than just plain entertainment, it's more a form of 'edu-tainment', like. You want more than to just entertain. A: No, no, no, is my lifestyle, and the lifestyle that I live is what I sow, y'know. Many people can't understand and know that regardless of that you're coming from the ghetto but you are a person, and the ghetto can carve you out to be somebody good, and it can carve you out to be somebody bad - whichever. But you must know what you want and the road that you are taking and you've got to stop a while and think 'Is this the right road I am taking?' You gotta ask yourself that question sometimes and find out if you're on the right track, and if you're slipping off the track then you can put yourself back on the track if you are very intelligent and wise and know what lifestyle and life is all about. Q: Who came up with the name 'The Flames' for Alton's backing group by the way, to go back to the formation of that group? I'm not sure but this was from seeing James Brown and his group on stage in Jamaica, the Famous Flames? A: The first time I go to the Carib Theatre in Cross Roads I - they used to have matinee on Sundays, you have the kids and the family. Two children of four children or six children, then you dress them up an' feed them, put on them clothes and then take them to the matinee. And because it's an early show so they can't sleep out an' come in late in the night because it started about three in the afternoon on Sunday and it finished about five, so after five o' clock then you have big peoples show gonna start, from five go up. So I used to go to the Carib Theatre an' you didn't have those cables in your house so you got to go to the theatre to enjoy yourself. So, that's how I grow.

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