Tribute to Bob Marley

More Toronto reggae here, this one coming from the S&W Soul King imprint based on St Claire Ave. Prince Heron’s Tribute to Bob Marley b/w Dance Hall Style is a gem that I recently picked up in Montreal. Don’t know too much about Prince Heron, but he kills it on this twelve-inch…
Prince Heron – Tribute To Bob Marley b/w Dance Hall Style
Tenor Fly interview (part 1)

Tenor Fly is one of the UK’s most beloved deejays, whose musical output has influenced many across genres and generations. MusicMNP was fortunate to get the opportunity to link up with the man in July of 2008, where he told us a little bit about his career.
Tell us about how you got your start in music?
I first started deejaying on a sound called Sir Coxsone Sound, which was one of the first sound systems in the UK when West Indians first started to come to Britain. Obviously I’m not that old so I wasn’t like one of the first deejays, but I was there from like 1985 I started on Sir Coxsone sound. How I got onto Sir Coxsone Sound was—Coxsone and Saxon was the two biggest sounds in England at the time, and as Coxsone is a Brixton sound, and Brixton where I live and born and grown. One of my friends who I deejayed with called Daddy IP—who is dead now, rest in peace—won a deejay competition in Brixton Fridge, which was then called Brixton Ace, and Coxsone invited him to start to deejay on Sir Coxsone sound. So he deejayed on Coxsone sound, and cause we was all grown up together, same school and everything, and I was making a name for myself with sound system them times, they brought me in, gave me a trial, and I passed the course. But them times there it was proper sound system, everything was proper, we had speaker boxes, treble tops, everything had to sound unique. So there were so many sounds around, that you could pass maybe eight—them times call them shebeen—dances and you would know which sound was playing in there without having a flyer, cause you could tell by how they sounded. It wasn’t like nowadays when man just goes with his record box, bag over his shoulder, or his CDs and says ‘my name is’—it was a proper team effort, where everything was done manually and proper. So that’s where I first started, and when I got onto the sound I used to lift sound, lift up the speaker box into the place, string them up, deejay to warm in for the elders, no one didn’t know me I was Satta Banton, bring in the elders, and when they’d finish deejay they used to look at me and say ‘my yout, go take out the sound’. I used to string down the sound and take it home, pack it up—it was daylight, go home and sleep for five hours, and come back in about six hours to do the same thing all over again, cause we was playing seven days a week and I just loved it.
So when did you change your name from satta banton to tenor fly?
I changed my name from Satta Banton cause when I had Satta Banton them times was ’83 where everyone was a ‘Papa’, a ‘Rankin’, or a ‘Daddy’. So I changed my name from Satta Banton to Tenor Fly between ’86 and ’88, when I started to make a name for myself on Coxsone Sound and Lloydie Coxsone—the elder for Coxsone Sound—came to me and said to me ‘we need a name for you that stands out more than just everybody’s name cause everybody’s Rankin and Papa’. And because I had an afro in them days, and there was an American TV cop show called Fly, or Tenor Fly, he said, ‘you know what, with that big afro of yours we’re gonna call you Tenor Fly’ and from then it stuck. I don’t have an afro anymore though.
Did you work with any other sounds before Coxsone?
I was on a sound called Stereophonic, which was just a little local ghetto sound with me and my friends from school. At that time there it was all about having your own sound, your own speaker boxes and your own amp case, and you wanted your speakers and your amps and your sound to sound different from his sound. So we used to have a little sound that I used to deejay before for about two years but we used to just play like local, anywhere for free just to be heard, you know, like busking. Just call us we’ll be there, and then cause I made a little reputation with the youths of my age at that time, cause we was born and grown in Brixton, my name was kinda ringin Satta Banton, and then the late great Daddy IP went on Coxsone, told them about me, and they said ‘lets give him a try’. I went on there, thank god done well, and that was the start of me.

Do any specific dances stick out from your days with Coxsone?
You’ve got many, cause them times there we was playing out at least—I would say for the first five years of my career on Coxsone there was only fifty nights when we was not playing out. We was resident seven days a week all over England, so this kind of made my name, and them times there it was all about the deejays. The selector would play the part one, and then he’d flip over to part two. So in other words, we would start from twelve and finish at seven in the morning, seven days a week, and every three minutes would be a Version, and you better have lyrics to deejay for seven hours. So that kinda built up my lyrics book, I always had to be writing lyrics—they used to call me the Reporterman or Human Teletex cause I used to always deejay about things I saw on the street like the Brixton riots, Police stop-and-search against black people and a lot of struggle we was going through. I used to deejay things that happened to me and that was happening around the world, and then after that, for five years there must have been about fifty or sixty days in them five years I had a night off.
When did you stop regularly deejaying on Coxsone?
I stopped in around ’91-’92. You could say I stopped in ’92, but once your in a kinda family like Coxsone or Saxon them days, you’re never out. So I stopped as in, I stopped in ’92 because of the sound system business had changed to like more about the selector, the Stone Love era, and plus I was making records then, cause my first record was in ’89 which went number one, called ‘Roughneck Fashion’. When that went number one, I was like a hustler, a street juggler. So I had done this record here and never knew that what was going on, and then I was hustling on the street and people say ‘that’s the guy that done that tune’. So I realized I should stop hustling, and then from there I started to do stage shows. But I was still on the sound for like two years cause that’s what broke me and made me and I won’t forget my roots.
Do you write your lyrics or improvise?
I’ve never wrote lyrics down, never in my life wrote lyrics down, I can’t write lyrics down. When I say I can’t write—I can write, but what I mean is when I make a lyric, I can make up in my head, and then I will go over it over and over and over, but I will do it in many different styles so it can suit any rhythm. I don’t know, some people write lyrics down but I’ve never wrote a lyric down in my life, and I could tell you them head by head, verse by verse, just like that, I don’t need to look at no paper. I can’t read from paper—I can read, but if I read from a paper my lyrics, it wont be the same.
So was it a big transition from deejaying on a sound to making records?
It was a transition as in, when we was in sound them days, you didn’t really need to have a hook line or a chorus, when you had a lyric that was engaging to the ear, to people listening, like ‘what’s the next line?’ that was all we needed. But when I went to record now, you had to have eight bars, then the chorus—it was all about money and selling a record, which was all new to me because before I used to deejay for like maybe ten minutes, and the rhythm stopped, and I’m still deejaying and people are still going crazy but I wouldn’t stop, I would just deejay until they say ‘stop now’ they used to have to grab the mic from me on the sound. So it was different when I was doing records but as I said, verses, bars, hook, and it had to last three and a half minutes—sometimes it might even last for ten minutes and they’d say ‘Fly you’re gonna have to cut it down and put the best bits it’ which was difficult but, not that difficult.
photos by P. Balasundaram. look out for part 2 of the interview coming soon
Posted: May 4th, 2009
at 6:24pm
Categories: dancehall, interviews, music, reggae
Comments: No comments
coagulation

Thanks to Jessie P, the first lady of the MNP Group and also possesser of the gift of Magic, some concerning thigs have been brought to my attention. Over the last few months things have began to coagulate regarding the content flow through the information pipeline, and the musical scramblings that periodically followed in the form of blog post recepticles. Needless to say, spurned back into reaction by forces beyond my own silly mortal understanding, The Behemoth Web Creature descends vengefully to claim its rightful domain. You see, in this war there are no survivors; let the weakhearts dissipate and the foolish meet their fate.
dedicated to my PA road dawgs

Many thanks for Jessie for resurrecting the page and sharing these southern dumplings with us.
This third coast playlist is a little tribute to my recent 8 month stint in southeast texas. i was there for work, and would describe my time as bittersweet at best, but one of the sweeter things I took away was an expanded appreciation for houston-area rap. i made the mistake one time of mentioning to my friend in port arthur that i didn’t really get the whole chopped and screwed thing. after giving me a nasty look, he gave me a beginner’s education on the history of the h-town rap scene. i still prefer most of the songs before they are chopped & screwed…i guess that syrup is just not in my blood. but it opened up a whole new world to my ears and i am loving it. anyway, this is by no means a comprehensive catalog of houston rappers. but it makes me smile. and thanks to mr. trizlam himself for some of these tracks!
dedicated to my PA road dawgs… download here.
01. Tops Drop – Fat Pat
02. Funkwichamind – Big Mello
03. Tha Third Coast – Z-Ro
04. Jesse James – Scarface
05. PA N***a – UGK
06. Swangin & Bangin (Screwed) – ESG
07. S.U.C. – H.A.W.K. ft. Lil’ Keke, C-Note, Pokey
08. Who’s Dat Hatin’ – H.A.W.K. ft. Z-Ro & Point Blank
09. Hand of the Dead Body – Scarface ft. Ice Cube
10. Man Cry – Z-Ro
11. If It Was Up II Me – Bun B ft. Junior Reid
12. Homie, Lover, Friend – Z-Ro
13. Real Women – UGK ft. Talib Kweli & Raheem Devaughn
your good thing (is about to end)

This record is a little bit damaged so the recording doesn’t sound so great, but its a fantastic tune featuring Lou Rawls at his best working with producer/composer/arranger extraordinaire David Axelrod. The song was originally penned by Isaac Hayes and David Porter and recorded by Mable John on a Stax 45 in 1966, but this version finds the late, great Rawls in a fine style singing sardonically over the drawn out instrumental arrangement.
livin that life

The one and only Mac Dre absolutely kills it on this Khayree produced gem that appeared on the Blackalation back in 1997. Im pretty nostalgic for that period in rap, 96 to 97, maybe even more so than for the early nineties that i spent so much of the two-thousands remeniscing about. 97 is cool in my memory because it is right before things took a turn for the worse–there is still something raw about some of the hip hop recorded in 97 that can rarely be found on stuff from 98-2000. Maybe its the death of cassettes… when did cassettes die out for good? I know I didnt have a CD player until pretty late, but that must have been at least by 98 or 99.













