Prince Buster - Midnight (1964) Blue Beat 232 B
SKA Prince Buster - Midnight (1964) Blue Beat 232 B I was in a dance troupe and would sing solo. I used to have problems going to school in the day because I stayed up so late at night. I paid less attention to singing and was more into boxing and wanted to be in fights but really there was no money in boxing. You’d get punched up and then there was no money. So I leave that and go back to singing and started recording. From day one, I started for me. Tom the Great Sebastian had a hardware store and he’d play music there all day long on Fridays and Saturdays. They used to play rhythm and blues at the time imported from America. I used to hear a lot of rhythm and blues. I used to play at Tom’s and Coxsone came around one day and asked if I would help him, because of my popularity and a lot of people followed me at the time and I helped Coxsone. Coxsone took off by himself but I was the one who used to help Coxsone to find who were the artists on the records that Duke Reid played at the dance. Duke Reid was his competitor. But in those days they would scratch the labels off the record so you could read nothing. But Tom didn’t do that, and when I was at Tom’s, I read the names on the label and I identified the players who played and tell to Coxsone the labels they were recording on in the United States and he’d buy these records and bring back and the agreement was that a certain portion would be for me. But every time he came back he had something to fix or something to do, I didn’t get my work. So knowing I was the one keeping up his sound system, I went off and did my own sound system and challenged Coxsone and Duke Reid and dethroned them and became king of sound system. Understand that rocksteady is a child of ska and reggae is a child of rocksteady. So that makes ska the grandfather of reggae. Because Bob Marley said it quite plain. He said ‘I feel it in the one drop.’ My thing from day one was the one drop. Everybody knows, that what Drumbago play, the one drop. And he and, ‘I feel it in the one drop,’ and to this day, his alto sax player who alone tells that Drumbago was where the ska jump come from. I was called that [Prince Buster] from day one. I was born in a riot. There was a man who was fightin’ for the working class because in Jamaica, I was born in that day and they name me after him. He became the prime minister and they name me from him. Sir Alexander Bustamante, national hero of Jamaica. He is also cousins to the Manleys. I was born Cecil Campbell, but they call me Prince Buster. But to this day people call me Cecil “Prince Buster” Campbell. There were all of these political divides in Jamaica and on a similar scale, you tend to forget what happened then because the divide is so huge now. We had some violence, but compared to now, it was nothing. The politicians will do nothing to stop it. That’s part of the thing, you know, we hire them and employ them to go and find a better solution for the country and they go there and cannot do nothing to stop the violence and then the violence affect the economy and the country now is in a drain because of the violence. It becomes a hostile environment and then people think twice before they put their money in. So I am still asking them to do something about it, to this day, to do something about it regardless of political affiliation and they don’t do it. I’m up and down there. I’m from the people. I was called The Voice of the People. I have championed the voice of the people. That put me with many clashes with governments in Jamaica. The music was born from the people and Kingston is where the music came from, that is the area and ska was laughed at by Duke Reid, Coxsone, and the more well-to-do people up on the hill who at that time could profit from the American imports. Even the radio station gave us a hard time promoting ska because they had their thing going with the manufacturers of the American imports. People got licenses and started pressings in Jamaica, so most of the DJs had a good thing going with the manufacturers. We didn’t have much money to give them and we had a hard fight with the disc jockeys on the radio station to promote ska. Ska took over by the will of the people. People started writing to the station, they want to know why they’re not hearing this and that constant barrage converted them. And today I hear a lot of people praising that ska is good, but now they must remember we adapt ever since then. The people went through it and today even those hypocrites have done it. .... Prince Buster Interview with Heather Augustyn, 7-14-1997 http://skabook.com/foundationska/2015/12/prince-buster-interview/
SKA Prince Buster - Midnight (1964) Blue Beat 232 B I was in a dance troupe and would sing solo. I used to have problems going to school in the day because I stayed up so late at night. I paid less attention to singing and was more into boxing and wanted to be in fights but really there was no money in boxing. You’d get punched up and then there was no money. So I leave that and go back to singing and started recording. From day one, I started for me. Tom the Great Sebastian had a hardware store and he’d play music there all day long on Fridays and Saturdays. They used to play rhythm and blues at the time imported from America. I used to hear a lot of rhythm and blues. I used to play at Tom’s and Coxsone came around one day and asked if I would help him, because of my popularity and a lot of people followed me at the time and I helped Coxsone. Coxsone took off by himself but I was the one who used to help Coxsone to find who were the artists on the records that Duke Reid played at the dance. Duke Reid was his competitor. But in those days they would scratch the labels off the record so you could read nothing. But Tom didn’t do that, and when I was at Tom’s, I read the names on the label and I identified the players who played and tell to Coxsone the labels they were recording on in the United States and he’d buy these records and bring back and the agreement was that a certain portion would be for me. But every time he came back he had something to fix or something to do, I didn’t get my work. So knowing I was the one keeping up his sound system, I went off and did my own sound system and challenged Coxsone and Duke Reid and dethroned them and became king of sound system. Understand that rocksteady is a child of ska and reggae is a child of rocksteady. So that makes ska the grandfather of reggae. Because Bob Marley said it quite plain. He said ‘I feel it in the one drop.’ My thing from day one was the one drop. Everybody knows, that what Drumbago play, the one drop. And he and, ‘I feel it in the one drop,’ and to this day, his alto sax player who alone tells that Drumbago was where the ska jump come from. I was called that [Prince Buster] from day one. I was born in a riot. There was a man who was fightin’ for the working class because in Jamaica, I was born in that day and they name me after him. He became the prime minister and they name me from him. Sir Alexander Bustamante, national hero of Jamaica. He is also cousins to the Manleys. I was born Cecil Campbell, but they call me Prince Buster. But to this day people call me Cecil “Prince Buster” Campbell. There were all of these political divides in Jamaica and on a similar scale, you tend to forget what happened then because the divide is so huge now. We had some violence, but compared to now, it was nothing. The politicians will do nothing to stop it. That’s part of the thing, you know, we hire them and employ them to go and find a better solution for the country and they go there and cannot do nothing to stop the violence and then the violence affect the economy and the country now is in a drain because of the violence. It becomes a hostile environment and then people think twice before they put their money in. So I am still asking them to do something about it, to this day, to do something about it regardless of political affiliation and they don’t do it. I’m up and down there. I’m from the people. I was called The Voice of the People. I have championed the voice of the people. That put me with many clashes with governments in Jamaica. The music was born from the people and Kingston is where the music came from, that is the area and ska was laughed at by Duke Reid, Coxsone, and the more well-to-do people up on the hill who at that time could profit from the American imports. Even the radio station gave us a hard time promoting ska because they had their thing going with the manufacturers of the American imports. People got licenses and started pressings in Jamaica, so most of the DJs had a good thing going with the manufacturers. We didn’t have much money to give them and we had a hard fight with the disc jockeys on the radio station to promote ska. Ska took over by the will of the people. People started writing to the station, they want to know why they’re not hearing this and that constant barrage converted them. And today I hear a lot of people praising that ska is good, but now they must remember we adapt ever since then. The people went through it and today even those hypocrites have done it. .... Prince Buster Interview with Heather Augustyn, 7-14-1997 http://skabook.com/foundationska/2015/12/prince-buster-interview/