THE JAMAICAN JAZZ GENIUS OF ERNEST RANGLIN:
One of the great pleasures in life for me is to be listening to the radio and suddenly hearing a song that electrifies me, makes me stop talking or doing anything. At that moment the music compels me to listen. As soon as the song is over I pray that the dj says what the song and artist is, something that tends not to happen very often on commercial radio but does most of the time on non-commercial radio. Thank God!
Well, a few Saturdays ago my lady and I were cruising back from seeing a friend sing in a club in Philly and as is our habit when we’re out on Saturday nights, we tuned in to The Blues Show on WXPN in Philly, hosted by Jonny Meister for over thirty years. For many of those years my own show immediately preceded his show. Jonny has great knowledge and great taste and he mixes in a healthy sprinkling of new releases among older classics. After midnight he has a segment called “Blues & Beyond” in which he stretches from blues into jazz and groove music. I almost always hear something really good that I hadn’t heard before. On this particular night on the “Blues & Beyond” segment I heard this mesmerizing Afro-Caribbean groove, with a kind of South African tinge, not immediately identifiable or classifiable, topped by some taste jazz guitar soloing. It was fantastic!
At the end of the set, Jonny (my God bless him!) announced the song as “Manenberg”, followed by “Memories of Senegal”, both by a group called Avila. featuring Ernest Ranglin. “Mannenberg” was a composition by South African jazz musician Abdullah Ibrahim. That all made perfect sense. Ernest Ranglin is a Jamaican guitar master who has played on countless Jamaican ska, rocksteady and reggae hits but he’s really a jazz man at heart. And he has also collaborated with African musicians so his musical vocabulary spans America, Africa and The Caribbean in a way that few musicians do.
To those who are familiar with Ernest Ranglin’s talents he is god-like. Now 80 years of age, he plays at the same high level he has always played at. But the thing is not that many people outside of Jamaican music circles and Jamaican music fans worldwide know who he is. And this is a shame. He is one of the planet’s great guitarist, technically
tremendous and really unique in his musical perspective. Born in the Manchester region of Jamaica, like so many Jamaican youth, he built his first guitar out of a sardine can and wires. But he obtained a real guitar and began learning it. Charlie Christian was an influence. You see jazz was heard by people in The Caribbean, Latin American and Africa and it had many acolytes in these regions.By the time he was a teenager he was playing with the likes of Monty Alexander (who went on to be one of Jamaica’s foremost jazz musicians) and popular big bands led by Val Bennett, Eric Deans and others. There were many accomplished jazz players in Jamaica. In the Fifties Ernest started doing a lot of session work, playing on mento sessions; mento is a Jamaican roots music that some compare to traditional calypso but quite distinct from calypso. When a style of Jamaican R & B evolved he played on those records also, on such hits as Theophilus Beckford’s hit “Easy Snapping.”
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=veWRWeWlsOg
He played on the soundtrack recording of the James Bond film “Dr. No” and on the first Jamaican song to become an international hit, the pop-ska “My Boy Lollipop” by Millie Small. By the early Sixties he was also recording jazz and traveled to London to perform as house guitarist at the venerable jazz club Ronnie Scott’s, working with many notable American jazz musicians who came to play. He was at the center of the development of such styles as ska, rocksteady and reggae, playing on Bob Marley & The Wailers’ “It Hurts To Be Alone”, the Melodians’ classic “Rivers Of Babylon” and countless others hits. He also recorded a couple jazz albums with Monty Alexander that were released in America. In the Seventies he moved to Florida and focused more on jazz for the next couple decades. I was lucky to seem him in a rare New York city club appearance; what struck me was his precision, economy of style and flair for playing tasty licks that just sparkled. He—already gray-haired when I saw him—just simply played with complete command and ease, without any particular showmanship.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=0mjcmkNkpxA
In the late Nineties, Chris Blackwell’s Palm Pictures label released a number of jazz/reggae recordings ( a fusion I had been expecting and hearing hints of for a long!) by Monty Alexander, Dean Fraser and Ernest that really fulfilled the potential of that fusion.
Here’s a cut from one of Ernest Ranglin’s albums:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=PcMx7o2_L7I
It is a kind of miracle that, as his recording career enters its SEVENTH decade, that Ernest Ranglin is still here to dazzle us. That is a somewhat miraculous and a blessing.
The genesis of Avila was Ernest Ranglin’s appearance at the venerable High Sierra Music Festival in California (one of the great world music festivals) in 2011. The festival organizers assembled a band that could do justice to backing Ernest Ranglin—Yossi Fine, who has played with everyone from David Bowie to the world-music group The Toure-Riachel Collective, Inx Herman, who has played with Paul Simon and the Grateful Dead’s Mickey Hart, on drums and percussion and keyboardist Jonathan Korty. The combination worked out so well—they just meshed!—that it seemed only natural to go into the recording studio. The result is Avila featuring Ernest Ranglin; it is available on Amazon or direct from www.avilastreetrecords.com. The music holds up throughout on a selection of mostly original compositions by Ernest and the other musicians, except “Manenberg.” It is a very satisfying set.
Too often, we celebrate great artists when they pass away. This is wrong. We need to celebrate them, enjoy them, appreciate them, receive their gift, while they are here. Fortunately, Ernest Ranglin is still here. Pick up the Avila CD and seize any chance to see him live. You will not be disappointed!
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