Junior Delgado: Sister, Sister, Brother, Brother
Voices Changing
Funny thing about life that a skinny kid can grow up to sound so mighty and fierce, without losing any warmth and tenderness. The beauty of age is range is opening up.
"Yeah, my voice becomes like, believe me, you know that singer Paul Robeson. He's a longtime singer. He used to sing those, like, opera songs, those big songs. He sings like cotton picking songs, yeah. When I listen to him, sometime, I wonder if my voice becoming like him the more I grow. I give thanks. Because I think it's grow up, because I don't sing like when I was a kid anymore. Now my voice get more deeper and stronger. And I could use it more like dangerous, you know."
Junior Delgado (born Oscar Hibbert - 'delgado' means skinny in Spanish) has come a long way since being born in 1958 in West Kingston, Jamaica. To think that there was only 500 copies of Junior Delgado's Dance A Dub, when it was released in 1978. If it was never reissued in 1997 by Big Cat, I would never heard it. I have to say thanks. I have to say big up to these labels that reissue this great music. 500 copies to begin with, and now twenty years later, across space and time and continents, it gets do deep into me.
Old as it was, it was new to me, so it was a total shock to hear Junior's 1998 album Fearless, a year after the reissue. His voice has always been so emotional, so intense - but now he sounds like a giant. It features Junior, a classic roots reggae singer, meeting up with an impeccable assortment of modern talents (who Junior affectionately refers to as 'kids'), all with appropriate reggae affinities in that particularly English way. On board is Naked Funk (Howie B's production partners, the Jungle Brothers, Maxi Jazz (the rapper for Faithless), Sumo, Kid Loops, Smith and Mighty (the Bristol connection, in effect), Ultimatum, Jerry Dammers (Specials fame), Ballistic Brothers, and Steve Spacek. Fearless showcases new versions of classic Junior tunes, ranging from tracks originally recorded by Lee Perry ("he's a magician," says Junior) at Black Ark, like "23rd Psalm," the Joe Gibbs produced "Armed Robbery," and the Augustus Pablo produced "Fussin' and Fightin'" ("Blackman's Heart" on Pablo's essential Classic Rockers compilation another fine example of the fruitful collaborations between Junior Delgado and Pablo --check out the albums Raggamuffin Year and One Step More). This time around, however, the songs have gone global.
"Fearless is a very good album," says Junior. "I think it stretches the boundary of the music. It's like American, it's Indian, and European, and African, with a Caribbean flavor. It's crossed, it's mixed - it's a mix album ... It's natural, it's natural. Because we grow up with European influence, and American influence, so there is no running away from it. Believe me - it's reality I am telling you. You know, so, I used to listen to a lot of R & B. I've been listening to all this music, and the music changes as it go along, from decade to decade, you find different music comes up. You got hip-hop, you used to have Soul and R&B, and funk, and you used to have Ska, and Meringue, and Reggae. So, when I check some of them, like the Jungle and the hip-hop, most times they're using the reggae bassline, and the drums, you know, Sly (Dunbar) and Style (Scott) used to play, they copied it a lot. You got to move with the times, you know."
Add Adrian Sherwood to the list of great dub producers Delgado has worked with. Recorded in Port Antonio, Jamaica, at John Baker Studio, Junior's latest album, Reasons, features classic players like Chinna Smith and Robbie Lynn and Chantells harmonies. Says Junior on working with Adrian, "He been around long, he deserves it, too, you know. It's very nice working with him. He's a very nice person, and I respect him, you know, and honour him. He's good. I'm not just saying it, because I worked with him. He's naturally good, you know. He knows his work, Adrian, you know."
Like Fearless and like another fairly recent Sherwood production of a classic reggae singer, Bim Sherman's Miracle, Reasons is a classic melting pot of sound. In the same excellent way that Sly & Robbie (two Junior classic, "Fort Augustus" and "Merry Go Round," came out on the famous rhythm section's late 70s record label, Taxi) gracefully adapt Latin elements into their sound on a recent Howie B collaboration, Reasons takes place in a diaspora, in which American blues and reggae all sound like offshoots of the same roots.
For The Good Times
So I wanted to ask you a couple of questions about producers that you worked with in the past.
"Well, the first producer I worked with was Upsetter, Lee Perry, Scratch."
What was that like?
"That was like magical, because that was when I was very, very young, you know. I was 17. Scratch, he was a man I could remember. Bob Marley was there, Peter Tosh - but they were like big men - and Family Man (Aston Barrett), and Carlie (Carlton Barrett), and Reggie - a lot of people don't know that Reggie used to play in the Wailers, too. He was a guitarist. And they were there. And Junior Byles and Max Romeo and a lot of people. That's where I saw Chris Blackwell the first time."
All in the same day?
"No, you go to the studio over a year straight, you know. That's where I met Johnny Rotten. He came to Upsetter. Yeah, and another guy called Chris Lane - he used to write for the paper in England. So I met lots of people, when I was young. Upsetter, you know. People come in from far to visit him. They didn't come to visit me. They came to visit him. And when they came, I saw them. I couldn't even hold a conversation with them. I only could, like, look."
So did lots of people just hang around Scratch's studio?
"Well, if you was an idler, you couldn't hang around Scratch's studio. You had to be making music, or be one of his singers, or one of his musicians, to hang around, but it was very great. And then I move on, and the second big guy I record for was Rupie Edwards. We couldn't put out the song under our name (Time Unlimited), cause we were singing for Scratch, so he puts it out under the Heavenly Brothers. And then we move on, and then the group becomes broken up. The group took five, six years. And then I go solo, and that's when Dennis Brown hooked up with me, and he wanted me to go solo."
Did you sing with Dennis Brown?
"Yeah, I and Dennis Brown do a lot of producing and making songs from the early seventies."
Yeah, he does one of my favorite songs, "Things In Life."
"Yeah, 'Things In Life.' I love that song. Wicked, wicked, wicked. Yeah. But me and Dennis Brown were like kids. I'm one year older than him."
What year is this, that you're talking about, around 1976-1977?
"No, it's earlier, 74, 75. The early songs like "Tricksters" and "Storm Is Coming," a lot of early songs. A lot of early hits for me was like me and him. And then I sing for Joe Gibbs, all types of producers. But I don't like to sing for a lot of people. I don't like to be singing all over the place."
So in this time in Kingston, when you hear the music from the period, it seems like there's so much love. Was it fun?
"Yeah, there was so much love, man. So much love, but lately, after the eighties coming down, they start doing crazy things, even in America - the rap and the gun and the killing, believe me, it becomes sad. Believe me."
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