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3. THE SIXTIES: FROM SKA TO ROCKSTEADY

"In 1962, after I'd left Buster, I made "Forward March!" which was the start of it. Buster said there was an
instrumental break on the record that had been stolen from him." His response was to release "Black Head
Chinaman," aimed directly at Morgan and Kong. The problem lasted for two years until "the government finally
asked us to stop, because it was causing too much trouble."

While the feud continued, it fueled record sales for both artists. Not that Morgan needed the boost. Even as
new acts like The Wailers and The Maytals, or solo artists such as Alton Ellis and Eric Morris came along,
he remained the king.

"There were a lot of hits," he said. "There was a time when I had seven of the top 10, number one to number
seven. They used to call me 'The Hitmaker and the Hitbreaker'. Every producer used to come looking for me.
And every Saturday whoever had hits in the charts used to go to a club called the Silver Slipper and sing.
They'd pay two pounds a song. I ended up getting 14 pounds one week, and the other artists didn't like that.
But it was me. I'd sing, and people loved it, and my records sold."

According to Barrow, Morgan was so successful "because he sang soulfully, he had that sound, but he sang
Jamaican songs, things that could only have been written in Jamaica."

The ska sound swept through Jamaica the way beat music would take over England a few years later, and the
number of recording acts proliferated to meet the demand. It offered a start to a numbers of artists whose
careers still continue. The Maytals, led by Toots Hibbert, scored a string of hit singles.

It was also the beginning for a young Robert Nesta Marley who was part of a vocal trio called The Wailers.
Marley had received his first push from Kong, but once he began working with Neville 'Bunny' Livingstone and
Peter Tosh as the Wailers, recording for Clement Dodd at Studio One, the magic began. "Simmer Down" was one of
the major hits of 1973; rumor has it that the record sold 70,000 copies in just a few weeks.

By now, sound systems had become big business (Dodd alone owned four), and that meant more and more records
were needed. In turn, that required musicians. The main studios had their own bands to back singers and also
release instrumental tracks - another of ska's backbones.

And so the most influential instrumental ska band, and certainly the most famous, began - The Skatalites.

"I formed the group in June of 1964, and we did pretty good," McCook continued. "We were going all over
Jamaica. We did 14 months on the road before we disband in 1965."

Apart from live shows, they recorded a number of hits, like "Guns of Navarone." With reputations as skilled
soloists, The Skatalites were the main 'band' in a young industry. Most were graduates of the famous Alpha
Boys' School, a Catholic institution which seemed to churn out musical talent - Roland Alphonso, Jackie Mittoo,
and Lester Sterling, any number of instrumentalists who'd become famous in Jamaican music. And there was also
Don Drummond, perhaps the most gifted of them all, who'd meet a tragic end in an insane asylum after murdering
his common-law wife.

By 1964, ska had become the pre-eminent music in Jamaica, its identity closely entwined with the country. So
closely tied, in fact, that for the World's Fair that year in New York, the Jamaican government sent over
Jimmy Cliff (as well as bandleader Byron Lee, Prince buster, and Carole Crawford, the reigning Miss World)
in an attempt to export ska to the U.S.. There were performances, and classes were offered in dancing 'the
ska' and 'the shuffle'. As history shows, it didn't work.

Ska might not have caught on in America, but in England it was a different story. But Britain, particularly
England, had a growing Jamaican population. World War II had left the country decimated, both physically
and psychologically. The servicemen who returned came back to a place that needed rebuilding, both in physical
plant and infrastructure, to really make it a land fit for heroes. The only way was to import labor, so in 1948
the doors were opened to citizens of the Empire. The money promised was far more than they could have earned
in the colonies (although no mention was made of the higher cost of living, or the lack of availability of so
many things in a country still living in austerity), that people arrived from all over.

Unsurprisingly, each nationality gravitated to its own, both socially and in living areas. They needed each
other in this foreign place, especially when the immigrants discovered the promise of riches was no more than
words and they found themselves doing jobs the natives didn't want.

Around people from home, though, things were easier. For the Jamaicans, that meant importing ideas from the
island, one of which was the sound system. By 1956, the first one was operating in England, and soon 'blues
dances', as they were known, were a weekend feature of Jamaican communities through out the country. Once ska
hit at home, it made its way across the Atlantic, where it proved popular with the expatriates. In 1962, three
labels were releasing Jamaican music in the U.K. - Melodisc, which created the Blue Beat label for ska, with
Prince Buster and Laurel Aitken as their main artists; Island, Chris Blackwell's creation; and R&B. As more
and more Jamaicans moved to Britain, it became a more lucrative market for artists than Jamaica itself.

"You might sell five thousand records in Jamaica, but you'd sell a lot more over there," Morgan observed.

Aitken, a Panamanian, was one of the first ska musicians to make his home in England, where his records
always sold well, sometimes staggeringly so - "Mary Lee," an early single, shipped 80,000 copies in England
alone. He also made frequent live appearances in the country.

It took a couple of years, but ska, or blue beat as it was also known, did manage to break though briefly
into the British pop mainstream.

"My Boy Lollipop," by Millie Small was a cover of an old Barbie Gaye R&B tune. The record became a true
international sensation, climbing to #2 in both the U.K. and U.S., which was enough to make part of a generation
of Britons aware of the underground movement happening around them. The Mods listened hard. For them the music
of choice was soul, but there was also a definite attraction to ska, with its irresistible beat, and also to
the sharp looks of the rude boys, the most fashionable Jamaican youth. Shaved heads, good clothes, pork pie
hats - the rude boys had style, and the mods - some of whom became skinheads a few years later - copied much
of it. There was an affinity of sorts between the two groups that transcended race. Both were working class,
and had a taste for the good life and strong dancing music. The rude boy phenomenon had begun in Jamaica and
was soon exported to Jamaicans overseas. At home they were youth who'd flocked to Kingston after independence,
only to find no opportunity in the city. With no work, and no money, they found themselves existing in the
ghettoes of Trenchtown and Riverton City, making money any way they could, often turning to crime (as in the
film The Harder They Come), forming gangs, making their way in the underworld and even into some of the armed
political groups which were gaining in influence. They were cool, and 'bad,' as they said. Rude boys lived
on society's fringes, outsiders, and expressed themselves through their dress and their dance. Ska, with its
quick beat, demanded a lot of energy from its dancers. But rude boys didn't like to move that fast. "They used
to dance half-speed to certain ska records," explained Barrow, "and the music changed to accommodate that."

Which was the birth of rocksteady.