Laurel Aitken

Active Decades: '50s, '60s, '70s,'80s and '90s
Born in Cuba on 22nd April 1927
Genre - ska
Styles - calypso,ska

Laurel Aitken, the performer who first brought the Ska to England, was born in Cuba on 22nd April 1927 but moved with his parents and five brothers and sisters to Jamaica when he was 11. By the time he was 15, Laurel had won his first singing competition with his version of the jazz tune "Pennies From Heaven", and one of his early jobs (not counting a false start as a plasterer) was for the Jamaican Tourist Board fronting a calypso band as welcomed visitors arriving at Kingston on the cruise boats. Before long Laurel had become a very popular local artist. He started recording in 1957, as Laurel remembers, with 'Roll Jordan Roll' for Caribbean Distributing, long before Coxsone and Duke Reid started making Ska. I produced it myself, it was like Ska but with a spiritual feel. In those days they would sing a record for nothing. I was in the studio with Duke Reid and Rico making a song called 'Judgement Day' when Derrick Morgan came into Federal Studios. He said 'Don't pay me, sir' and all that jive.
top
That was the day he made his first record. The ska beat came about when players like Ken Richards started putting the upbeat on the guitar, and then the boogie and the Ska came together." Laurel won the esteemed "Opportunity Knocks" talent show at the Majestic and Ambassador Hotels ten times: "It turned out singers like me, Owen Gray, Jackie Edwards. The house band was lead by Val Bennett, the legendary 'Return To Django' saxman. Those were great days. You see those guys that are jumping up and talking over the rhythm it was nothing like that. You had to enter a proper contest on a Friday night. This was the only way you could get to sing. You had to share the prize money, which was only two pounds, between your friends that were cheering for you."
top
Jamaican singers of the Fifties were never represented in the Jamaican Broadcasting Company's pop charts which favoured American artists, but Laurel changed this in September 1959 when his "Little Sheila" c/w "Boogie In My Bones" (released on the new STARLITE label owned by Chris Blackwell, who went on to found ISLAND RECORDS) entered the JBC chart, went to No. 1 two weeks later, and stayed at that position for ten weeks. By the time "Little Sheila" left the chart in January 1960, two additional songs by Laurel Aitken were in: "Boogie Rock" and "Heavenly Angel" despite their being the a-side and b-side of the same record! As Sounds accurately concluded in 1980, "Laurel Aitken was the first big star in Jamaica long before Prince Buster, heralded as The Master by such mistaken souls as Madness and God knows how many others." "Buster used to be what we'd call in Jamaica a band man," says Laurel. "In England he'd be a heavy. Striding down Orange Street with six or seven guys and everybody got out of the way. Everyone looked to him as a hero, he was well loved. A real rude boy- he didn't care. He used to be a heavy for Duke Raid and Coxsone Dodd, but he was so loved by these bad guys, they said 'you got to be doing this for Reid and Coxsone? Why don't you try it out for yourself? That's how Buster got started.
top
After his first burst of fame, as has repeatedly happened with Jamaican recording artists, Laurel moved to England: "l was the biggest star in Jamaica, but everyone was making records and there wasn't any money Everybody starting running me down to make records. People would just come into the studio, cut a record and leave with just five pounds. So, if the big Laurel Aitken wanted to make a record he would have to take a five or nothing." After finding that "Little Sheila" bootlegs were "selling like hot cakes" in England, Laurel signed to Melodisc where his "Boogie Rock" c/w "Heavenly Angel" became the first single released on the immortal BLUE BEAT label, and his "Mary Lee" (recorded on 10th August 1960) was the first tune laid down specially for BLUE BEAT, and the b-side of "Lonesome Lover" was inspired by his depressing Camberwell bedsit. "MELODISC was the one record company in England that was in charge of Ska, calypso and everything West Indian. If you wanted to know about a West Indian record that was the only place you could go, whether you got it there or not.
top
Some of the sessions were pure white, like 'Mary Lee'. Except for one guy on guitar, they were all white." Laurel went on to record seventeen singles for BLUE BEAT, four singles for DICE, three each for KALYPSO and RAINBOW, not to mention for EMI, SKA BEAT, DIRECT and DOCTOR BIRD RECORDS. His most successful English releases, particularly in the late Sixties period of Skinhead Reggae, were for the PAMA group of labels and include such classic cuts as "Skinhead Train", "Jesse James", "Landlords And Tenants" (featured in the film Absolute Beginners), "Mr. Popcorn", "Pussy Price", and "Fire In My Wire".
top
The last two songs were in a style called "rude reggae", which Laurel points out started up "because the Jamaicans like a few rude tunes, for a laugh. It had been going on calypsos from years ago, with numbers like 'Night Food'. Now I have been through a lot of phases in my music and the rude reggae was just one of them. One time up at a show I heard a guy say 'That Laurel Aitken, he's got fire in his wire' and I made a tune up about that. Now take "Rise & Fall", well that tune is a classic. I played at a festival in Wembley one time, only did two numbers but that was one of them, and I took the whole show away from everyone. That song has all kind of different meanings and I was making certain actions to go along with the lyric, and the crowd went mad. After that I heard the record had been banned! My 'Pussy Price' was another classic like that." Sufficiently classic that The Beat liked the song enough to re-write the lyrics into their "Rankin' Full Stop". It was during this rude period that Judge Dread, later to build a considerable reputation of being possibly the world's rudest singer (and was banned by the BBC more than any other artist, much to The Judges credit), worked as Laurel's minder.
top
Despite all the hits he made, Laurel saw little of the financial benefits from either BLUE BEAT or RIO, the other label he was heavily involved with. With RIO he says that the only satisfaction he got was some years later when he saw the label owner begging a bus fare after his company had gone bankrupt. The story of how he came to PAMA RECORDS is a classic of its kind, and all came about because of his having a paternity suit filed against him. After he fell behind on the weekly thirty shilling payments he was arrested on stage in Birmingham and remanded in jail until the following Monday. With a 200 fine or six weeks in jail staring him in the face, Laurel says "the label 's owner was the only guy that I could get in touch with to get me out, and the guy brought the contract with him as well as the money. So I signed."
top
Throughout the Seventies Laurel continued to practice his craft from his now hometown in Leicester, a city about eighty miles from London, and with the advent of the TWO-TONE period he released what has, amazingly enough, been his only U.K. chart hit: "Rudy Got Married" on the ARISTA-affiliated label I SPY (featuring Rico once again on trombone). Through this song Laurel introduced the world to another Jamaican character: the yagga yagga. "A yagga yagga is a guy who doesn't care what he does. Not like a rude boy, cos he doesn't fight much. Like he'll not care so long as he's living. If you got 100 pounds good luck to you, if he's got one pound he's happy. Live careless, you know?" Touring England with Secret Affair and The Beat and recording some early tracks with The Beat brought Laurel Aitken once more to the attention of white audiences. During the early Eighties he produced local bands Oneness and Cabana and continued to gig in his own right. Then, in the mid-Eighties, he connected up with a talented young band which was passionately devoted to the original sounds of the Jamaican Ska, the Potato 5, and he joined them as lead singer for a year and a half ~ a partnership which resulted in two singles ("Sally Brown" and "Sahara", both penned by Laurel as was the UB40 classic "Guilty") and an album entitled Floyd Lloyd and The Potato 5 Meet Laurel Aitken, all on Gaz Mayall's GAZ'S ROCKIN'RECORDS label.
top
As the Potato 5 moved off in their own directions, Laurel formed his new band The Pressure Tenants and has been continuously performing since. But Laurel has still had time to sing with other Ska bands which he finds interesting, including the teenage group The Loafers, hitmakers Bad Manners, Germany's excellent The Busters and No Sports, and France's Beurk's Band. The year 1989 brought Laurel to the forefront of the renewed global interest in the Ska, and his performances at each of the Annual London International Ska Festivals have been the highlights of their respective evenings. In addition to his regular concerts in Britain, Laurel Aitken was very active that year on the international scene. He linked with Bad Manners for eight German dates in June, then did another eight concerts in the United States and Canada the following month. A whirlwind swing through Germany followed in August with two concerts (Berlin and Hamburg) plus radio and television shows and he returned to Germany in October for an eleven-date mostly sold-out tour ably supported and backed by The Busters.
top
Opening the decade of the Nineties, Laurel Aitken played four concerts in Holland in January again with The Busters, he took his Pressure Tenants to Italy for seven concerts in February (playing with Casino Royale at The Casino in Venice was almost as amazing as "The Godfather of Ska" playing in Sicily!), France was at his mercy for ten dates with Beurk's Band in March, in April he returns to Germany with The Pressure Tenants for a full tour, and five concerts are set for Ireland in May. Additional gigs have been planned for the remainder of the year in the United States, Spain and Switzerland not to mention a number of appearances at European music festivals during the summer with The Pressure Tenants.
top
As for recordings, Laurel has also been extremely active. During 1989 he released his "skacid" single "Everybody Ska" backed by a six and one-half minute version of the crowd favourite "Skinhead", the first two volumes of a compilation series of his rare Sixties Ska and Ska-boogie singles (plus unreleased tracks) under the banner of "The Godfather of Ska", a four-track mini-album entitled Sally Brown, and an hour-long professional video Live At Gaz's Rockin' Blues which celebrates the 30th anniversary of Laurel's first hit single. The year 1990 won't see any decline for Laurel either, with the release of his third "Godfather" lp featuring twelve tracks recorded in 1963 with The Skatalites, his first new album in many years Ringo The Gringo on worldwide release, and a French-language mini-album entitled Eskapade En France. And, as if all this were not enough, Laurel launches his new record label, L.A. RECORDS, specialising in classic sounds of the Caribbean past, present and future. The undisputed "Godfather Of Ska" will never rest - life doesn't stop simply because you're 70 years old!
top Home