“The Voice Of The People” -

“The Voice Of The People”

12:13 PM GMT 21/05/2008

A FRIEND OF MY BROTHER’s came round, this was 1965, ’66. I was about 10, and my brother was in a soul band at the time. His friend had this record with him, Al Capone by Prince Buster. He put it on and I thought, What the hell is that? I’d never heard anything like it before.

By 1970 I was listening to reggae, and it wasn’t until 1973, ’74 that I re-discovered Prince Buster and ska at college. His Fabulous Greatest Hits was the record to have and me and a couple of mates would put this record on at parties to annoy all the hippies, who were sat around listening to Yes.

With The Specials, I thought if we are going to make a statement about playing ska then Al Capone is the obvious reference point. I’d written Gangsters when we supported The Clash on their 1978 On Parole tour but added Al Capone as an afterthought. It was an obvious introduction to ska. We also covered Too Hot and Enjoy Yourself.

When I DJ I’ll play Freezing Up Orange Street, Ghost Dance. The idea of all these ghosts dancing around in a graveyard always appealed and that was in there as a background reference in Ghost Town. Big Five is a strange song, it has those rude lyrics but sounds really sad. On the first Two Tone tour Madness and The Specials did a version of Madness – we did it as an encore. The first time I saw Madness I was amazed to find another band playing ska, who knew Prince Buster.

I’ve met Prince Buster a couple of times and he’s incredible, a proper youth man, his voice hasn’t changed, he looks amazing, he’s still very stylish. I was buying some records on Brixton Hill a few months ago and he was walking up Brixton Hill with his jacket off his shoulder, you know dangling, dressed like a teenager. I told the guy behind the counter, he didn’t believe me because he looked so young.

He’s very charismatic and he still has his incredible voice. He developed, well more or less invented, that delivery of somewhere between speaking and singing. As he said, he was ‘the voice of the people.’ He was the first Jamaican artist to get known around the world, the cream of the crop, the ambassador for ska.

Jerry Dammers DJs at a Cultures Of Resistance night at London’s Astoria 2 on July 7. Neville Staple and Linton Kwesi Johnson also fight the power.

Posted by Danny_Eccleston at 12:13 PM GMT 21/05/2008