Owen Gray Gets Aggrovated

adsfaAnother guy who was an Alpha School alum, Owen Gray, made his presence known in the ska, rock steady and reggae scenes, spreading his career out over about fifty years. His story is much like a vast number of folks who recorded early on in the JA music industry and chased fame for the remainder of the classic period of reggae with only a bit of success. His voice has been referred to as one of the best in all of JA music – and while that’s obviously up for debate, Gray was a consummate soul singer. And perhaps because of this weird in-between ground that he occupied it resulted in his now lost career.

Again since Gray began working pretty early on in the development of the game, he was able to not only feature the first recorded work by guitarist Ernest Ranglin (of the Skatalites) on a single, but was also granted one of the first releases by a fledgling label called Island and had some sessions helmed by Chris Blackwell. Because of this, Gray gained a bit of exposure in England and decided to move to the island nation during the ‘60s. Throughout the rest of the decade, he would tour the continent and attempt to break into something akin to the pop charts.

Gray worked out covers based on songs from John Lennon amongst other insanely popular figures of the time. But in this, it became pretty clear that the singer was simply looking for an in to some audience he had as of yet to reach. Despite that crass commercialism, Gray recorded a track called “Apollo 12” in 1970 that was embraced by the nascent skinner scene in the UK. Again, not making Gray a household name, the singer moved around a bit settling in NOLA for a time prior to returning to JA.

Amidst all of this moving and posturing, Gray may have precluded himself from finding the illusive success that he so desired. In the twenty year period between the beginning of the ‘60s and the end of the ‘70s, Gray only released a small handful of long players. Of course, singles were still a vital part of the record industry at the time, but I’m going to figure that it was easier to miss a single in the new release bin than it was to do the same with a full length. Either way, by 1975, Gray put out Forward on the Scene.

By the date that the disc was released, Gray and the 12 tracks that make up the disc sound antiquated, for the most part, despite having the Aggrovators backing him up. There’s nothing that’s unseemly, but the production scheme here doesn’t really dove tail with the trends current at the time of the album’s release. And while there’s a somewhat charming cover of “C.C. Rider” closing out the album, the effort still isn’t something to hold on to and carry around. Forward on the Scene isn’t a throw away – mostly for the performance of Gray as opposed to the band here, but it’s probably not worth the trouble of tracking down.