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Byron
Lee: 1935 - 2008
Born in Christiana, Manchester in 1935, Mr. Lee died at the Tony
Thwaites Wing at the University Hospital of the West Indies on
Tuesday. Mr. Lee was admitted after developing complications,
after being diagnosed with stage three cancer in November 2006.
He was conferred with the Order of Jamaica on
October 26, while in hospital, one day after returning home via air
ambulance and being placed in the care of his local doctors. He had
previously been awarded the Order of Distinction, Commander Class.
Biography
In the years before reggae or even ska was known
outside of the Caribean, Byron Lee was the first band leader to
achieve an international following playing Jamaican music, and
played a vital role in popularizing it around the world. And when
Bob Marley was a struggling young musician and of the little-known
Wailers, Byron Lee was probably the most well-known Jamaican band
leader in the world.
Lee was 20 years old when he formed his band the Dragonaires in
1956. They began making a name for themselves almost immediate, as a
kind of big-band equivalent to the solo Calypso singing that Harry
Belafonte (and Sir Lancelot before him) brought to enormous
popularity in the late 1950's. Touring behind Belafonte, they became
internationally famous, and justifiably so-they played Calypso and
the ska, but their musicianship was impeccable in any idiom, with a
trumpet and sax section that could've passed muster with any big
band, and Lee's bass playing itself was extraordinarily distinctive.
With Lee leading and manager Ronnie Nasralla co-producing and
handling the business arrangements, the Dragonaires made all of the
right moves.
They were also lucky enough to be signed to
Edward Seaga's WIRL (West Indies Recording Limited) label, which was
not only a new and powerful label, but notably honest in paying its
artists. Lee had a hit in 1959 with his WIRL debut, "Dumplings,"
which also became the first release of the British-based Bluebeat
label.
One of their other shrewd moves was getting
featured in the debut James Bond movie, Dr. No (1962). Largely shot
in and around Kingston, the film was filled with local Jamaican
color, right down to the Calypso number that closed the credits and
opened the action, but Lee and the Dragonaires had the choicest spot
of all as a musical showcase, playing the song "Jump Up" in the
scene at Pussfeller's club where Bond and his allies discuss the
mystery before them, and confront an agent of the opposition
wielding a lively camera. Millions of people saw the movie, either
in its initial release or on its re-release to theaters in 1964,
after the success of Goldfinger, and they saw and heard Byron Lee
and the Dragonaires, who were also all over the Dr. No soundtrack
from United Artists, which sold in the hundreds of thousands. (The
scene in which Lee and his band appear is doubly interesting from
the standpoint of cultural happenstance; among the extras dancing to
the band's music is a white Jamaican named Chris Blackwell, who
formed Island Records about a year later-in that one scene are two
of the biggest and most important entrepreneurs in Jamaican music
crossing paths).
One of the first ska bands, the Dragonaires-a
14-piece outfit whose line-up was always changing (and sometimes
worked under the name the Ska Kings)--toured throughout the
Caribbean and into North America, spreading the ska sound. Lee
opened a concert booking and promotion agency in the early 1960's,
Lee Enterprises Limited, as well as his own label, Dragon's Breath.
He brought American acts like the Drifters, Chuck Berry, Sam Cooke,
and Fats Domino into Jamaica, booking them into the Carib and Regal
Theaters, with local Jamaican acts opening for them.
Lee's big year was 1964, when he and the
Dragonaires played the New York World's Fair, in their own set and
backing Prince Buster, Eric Morris, and Peter Tosh. They were all a
sensation at the fair, and even managed to work in some major gigs
at some of Manhattan's best nightclubs. It spread their names into
the gossip columns (there weren't any music columns as we know them
today) and newspaper entertainment sections, and did wonders to
boost Jamaica's tourism to even higher levels.
That same year, Lee made his biggest business
move, buying WIRL from Edward Seaga (now a government minister, in
fact the very one who had booked Lee into the World's Fair) and
renaming it Dynamic Sounds Recording, Inc. He also began
establishing a relationship with Ahmet Ertegun at Atlantic Records,
which resulted in his first release on an American label, the
multi-artist compilation Jamaican Ska, and a follow-up, Jump Up,
that was all Lee and his band, and gave him the distribution rights
to Atlantic's r&b releases in the Carribean.
Amid all of those business activities, Lee
maintained a full performing and recording schedule, cutting singles
regularly and albums at least once a year after the mid-1960's. In
addition to his own singles, these frequently contained covers of
other artists' ska hits of the period.
Lee was eminently successful, although in later
years, he would incur the editorial wrath of writers who regarded
his dance band as a pale, watered down version of ska, compared to
outfits like the Skatalites, the Maytals, or the Wailers. Lee and
his band, however, did more to popularize ska and Jamaican music
than any performer of the 1960's. Coupled with the success in 1964
of Millie Small's Island Records single "My Boy Lollipop," which
sold upwards of six million copies worldwide, it was the opening of
a booming musical era for Jamaican music.
By 1969, Lee was owner of the best recording
studio in Kingston, and Dynamic Sounds became the most popular
recording venue in the entire Caribean. By the early 1970's, the
biggest American and English rock stars had discovered its appeal,
including the Rolling Stones, Paul Simon and Eric Clapton. Paul
Simon's "Mother And Child Reunion," in particular, became a showcase
for Lee's studio. Meanwhile, he continued making his own music,
having evolved from ska to reggae and, by the late 1970s, to the
soca style. For all of their supposed watered-down nature, Lee and
the Dragonaires have maintained a following right into the end of
the twentieth century, their Jamaican dancehall-influenced sound
delighting crowds at the annual Carnival celebration. Lee and his
band also cut annual collections of covers of the year's most
popular Carnival hits, an extension of his early- and mid-1960's
covers of ska hits. ~ Bruce Eder, All Music Guide
Written by Bruce Eder
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