Rocksteady

Ska was a fast music which engendered a dance style both vigorous and extrovert. All through the early Sixties, ghetto areas like Trenchtown, Greenwich Town, and Riverton City were filling up with young people, looking for work they couldn't find. These youth didn't share in the general mood of optimism that followed Independence. They felt excluded, and favoured a cooler mode of expression altogehter. They didn't dance to ska like everybody else; their movements were slower, more menacing in posture, in spite of the music's tempo. In a society which denied not only their identity but also their existance, they sought solace in the group identity of 'rude boys'. Being a rude boy was a way of being somebody, when the wider society was telling you that you were nobody.

They connected with the so-called 'underworld', a layer of people who, to all intents and purposes, lived outside the law, and who have always patronised Jamaican dance music. Thence many rude boys moved into the political gangs, based in different ghetto areas of Kingston. the music acknowledged them, even celebrated them, in discs like The Wailers' 'Jailhouse' and The Clarendonians' 'Rudie Bam Bam'.

In turn the music itself began to cool down from the frenzied 'jump-up' of ska. The bassline no longer walked the ska boogie; it began to break up, coming in shorter patterns of notes. The after beat was still there, carried by the guitar and drums -- guitarist Lyn Taitt led the bands which fixed the pattern of the rhythm. This 'rude boy' music led directly into its commercialisation, via rock steady.

Several producers and artists claim to be the first to have made a rock steady record -- Roy Shirley cut 'Hold Them' in 1966 for producer Joel Gibson (aka Joe Gibbs). Derrick Morgan cut "Tougher Than Tough" for Leslie Kong the same year, and Alton Ellis sand 'Girl I've Got A Date' for producer Duke Reid. Reid was the producer who capitalised on this musical advance, who did more than anyone to define the sound. Duke issued records not only with Alton Ellis, but also with superb harmony trios like the velvet-smooth Paragons featuring John Holt, the crisp Techniques with Slim Smith as lead singer, the mighty Melodians with Brent Dowe and Tony Brevett, as well as The Silvertones, The Jamaicans and many others. Duke Reid had, finally, beaten Coxsone Dodd. But his triumph was to be short-lived. The rock steady phase lasted little more than a year. The lesson learned from Duke's success was that nothing succeded like a new beat and other, newer producers who had worked for Reid and Dodd realised that they had a chance--if they could come up with something new themselves.

Taken from Island Records Home