If Deejay Was Your Trade: In Memory of Prince Jazzbo

The death of Prince Jazzbo, who succumbed to lung cancer on September 11, aged 62, has robbed Jamaican music of one of its most stylistically consistent rappers. During a career that spanned over four decades, stretching from his 1972 debut to material cut earlier this year, Jazzbo made a name for himself with songs that expressed the street-level view of life in the Jamaican ghettos, typically delivering scathing social commentary and songs that spoke of the mores and values of his locality, as well as invoking ominous proclamations of biblical wrath, expressed from a Rastafari worldview.

Jazzbo’s gruff baritone was particularly suited to the deejay style, employed by toasters on Jamaican sound systems considerably earlier than their American rap counterparts, and as Jazzbo furthered his experience in the music industry, he became a renowned producer in his own right. He also remained very much in tune with the community from which he sprang, retaining a rough edge and a fearsome reputation that gave his work an undeniable hallmark of authenticity.

He was born Linval Carter in rural Clarendon in 1951 and raised in abject poverty. Describing himself as a “street urchin,” in his largely unsupervised youth, he naturally gravitated to the music scene in downtown Kingston, linking up with some of its most noteworthy figures, including Lee “Scratch” Perry and the Wailers.

During his youth, Jazzbo settled in Spanish Town, the former capital of Jamaica that lies some 25 miles west of Kingston, where he remained for the rest of his life. After gaining an apprenticeship on a local sound system called The Whip, in 1972 he bluffed his way into Studio One, then Jamaica’s premier recording facility, where he voiced the wild “Crab Walking” in a single take (over Horace Andy’s “Skylarking”). Other intense Studio One singles to follow included the ominous “Crime Don’t Pay,” the educationally uplifting “School” and an inspired cut of Burning Spear’s “Door Peep” called “Imperial I,” but Clement Dodd held back the bulk of Jazzbo’s material, meaning that his debut album, Choice Of Version, did not surface until the mid-’80s.

Although Jazzbo later stated that he felt Dodd to be “the best producer inna the whole reggae industry,” naturally, Jazzbo did not linger at Studio One. He swiftly linked with grassroots producer Glen Brown, who cut “Mr Harry Skank,” “Meaning of One” and “Mr Want All” with the toaster at King Tubby’s studio. Jazzbo says that Brown gave him a lot of concrete encouragement, leading him to launch into record production himself: his first crude attempts came on cuts of Brown’s “At the Cross Roads” rhythm, with the lewd “Plum Plum” using sexually suggestive imagery, but incongruously introduced by a religious phrase, while “Crankibine” decried the negative tendencies of loose females, its instrumental B-side utilising peculiar, out-of-time instrumentation, the piano and melodica lines tackled by Jazzbo himself.

After releasing sporadic singles on barebones labels such as Count 123, Mr Funny, and Brisco, Jazzbo voiced two songs for Lee Perry at the producer’s recently inaugurated Black Ark studio, in early 1974: “Penny Reel” was framed by a cool stream of proverbial sayings, and “Good Things” warned of the dangers of truancy.

Jazzbo’s international breakthrough was achieved via an infamous feud with I Roy, charted on a series of clashing discs produced by Bunny Lee in 1975, and instigated by the owner of Monica’s Records, a shop and label run by a Jamaican expatriate in Toronto. The first round traded insults: on “Straight to Jazzbo’s Head,” I Roy accused Jazzbo of ugliness, while on “Straight to I Roy’s Head,” Jazzbo claimed I Roy was an imitator of U Roy, an assertion that certainly rankled. The next round contained more serious allegations: in “Jazzbo Have Fe Run,” I Roy referred to an incident that took place near Kincaid Pharmacy in downtown Kingston, in which Jazzbo was physically attacked by music promoter Trevor “Leggo Beast” Douglas for allegedly plagiarising Big Youth’s lyrics on Jazzbo’s single, “Wise Shepherd.” Jazzbo’s retort, “Gal Boy I Roy” had bite, but was ultimately weaker; his insistence that, “If deejay was your trade, you wouldn’t talk about Kincaid” only emphasised the conflict, and his claim that, “If I wasn’t ugly, you couldn’t call my name in your record to get promotion” hardly asserted superiority. In fact, Jazzbo dropped out of the contest at that point, leading Bunny Lee to draft Derrick Morgan as a replacement.

Following the UK release of Step Forward Youth, which contained highlights of the feud along with other work by both toasters, including the popular title track, on which Jazzbo called Jamaica to embrace socialism, greater international exposure came through the Lee Perry link: a debut Jazzbo album, issued in the UK as Natty Passing Thru and in the US as Ital Corner, contained some of Jazzbo’s best recordings, with “Natty Pass Thru Rome” being a superb cut of the “Concrete Castle King”/”Dread Lion” rhythm, and “Ital Corner” being a great mutation of Max Romeo’s “One Step Forward.” Best of all was “Croaking Lizard,” an intriguing track on Perry’s 1976 Super Ape album that made fantastic use of Romeo’s “Chase the Devil.”

Following an extended period in England, Jazzbo returned to Jamaica to concentrate on his flagship Ujama label. Then, after Jamaican music went digital in the mid-’80s, he cut notable work with younger artists such as Frankie Paul and Horace Ferguson, using the barest of computer backing; he also worked with I Roy, U Roy, Johnny Osbourne, Johnny Clarke and Horace Andy.

Prince Jazzbo’s final project, a track called “Tribulation,” was cut recently at his home studio to raise funds for his medical care, but Jazzbo sadly lost the battle with cancer before its release. He is survived by Natalie Wellington, his longstanding companion, as well as three daughters, two sons and ten grandchildren.