TWFOR: The Gladiators x The Skatalites

The Gladiators

The Studio One Singles

(Heartbeat, 2007)

To comment upon this group in an unbiased manner is ostensibly impossible for me. To extricate the sounds that I hear – the harmonies, the rhythms – from a time that, in my mind, is linked to them, simply can’t be done.

Whatever period of one’s life gets replayed incessantly in the mind, if you’re a music devotee at least, there’s a theme song that goes along with the images. I know others have made this same heartfelt and exuberant connection. But that just points to the fact that this music possesses the power to hold a literal and emotional meaning.

The reason that these meanings are possible most likely stems from the intense belief that this trio, whose only consistent member was Albert Griffiths, had the ability to enrich a mass of people who felt marginalized. Touching upon secular and spiritual life, Griffiths worked to give voice to points of culture that he felt were either misunderstood, ignored or exploited.

Since this disc is made up of singles, as the title clearly states, a quarter of the tracks represented here are versions, or dubs. Being arranged in such a fashion as to have each dub accompany the vocal track serves to exemplify a showcase style that Wackies exhibited, in contrast to a relatively recent reissue of the Mighty Diamonds’ Deeper Roots, which separates the versions.

Every vocal and every dub – save for “Don’t Fool the Young Girls” and its version – is rootsy and free from blemishes. The one exception wouldn’t be as blatant a departure from quality if it sat along side other artists or lesser tracks. Basically a weak Gladiator’s workout still surpasses a great deal of other Jamaican music.

If the listener is familiar with either the group’s first studio effort, Trenchtown Mix-Up or their Live at Sunsplash - split with Israel Vibration – these offerings occasionally sound a bit slower than the later recordings. It’s not a re-tread; it’s just a re-arranging of classics that might not have been heard in any other way.The Skatalites

Stretching Out

(ROIR, 2008)

Even if you have a never-ending penchant for a true ska, two plus hours of mostly instrumentals might do more than just satisfy you. In direct opposition to their work as the backing band for various vocalists, partially collected on At Randy’s, the Skatalites here work with mostly instrumental numbers. Occasionally, Doreen Shaffer joins the group on stage – as she does to this day. What’s remarkable about this 1983 session though is that the group of musicians on Stretching Out had not re-convened since their mid-60’s break up. Of course, for the most part, each member continued to record – Jackie Mittoo perhaps being the most prolific even after moving to Canada. Seemingly, none of this matters and even the ostentatious absence of Don Drummond eventually vacates one’s consciousness after about two minutes of the lead off “Freedom Sounds.”

Given the extended break that these players had from each other, there are musical interactions that seem tenuous at best. This group though, in its initial few years of existence ostensibly created the standards that instrumental ska groups refer to until the present. Quickly these minor blemishes disappear as the list of familiar tunes grew. Turning in a performance of twenty plus songs seems no simple accomplishment, but the vitality of the music, the pulse of the stylistic singularity, invigorated all involved.

Subsequently, Return of the Big Guns gets recorded within a calendar year of this performance. But perusing the tracklist of both Stretching Out and Return of the Big Guns, there are no apparent overlaps. The re-immergence of the Skatalites, which can date to this very performance, served to prefigure the genre’s renaissance less than a decade later. But even in the throngs of commercial viability, the Skatalites, refusing to assimilate its ska to what was being broadcast on the radio and television, churned out Ska Voovee (1993), Hi-Bop Ska (1994) and their last recording of the 20^th century, Ball of Fire (1998).