Cool Cat Wild!: Get a No. 1 cut, pull on yer Doc Martens and yer braces

Theophilus Beckford

I’ve long believed that the first ska record was recorded in New Orleans by Fats Domino – namely “Be My Guest", which reached No. 8 in the US charts in October 1959: walking bass, guitar providing the accent on the upbeat, joyous horns. It is perfect (for proof, click here). However, I may have to bow to the claims of the splendidly-named Theophilus Beckford, whose rather more laid-back “Easy Snapping” (listen here) was supposedly also released in 1959 (although Beckford has claimed 1956 and some have it listed as 1960).

Well, it doesn’t really doesn’t matter, and, given that the Fat Man was one of the most successful recording artists of the 20th Century, he doesn’t need any more plaudits. So, Mr. Beckford, take a bow.

Whoever got there first, Jamaican Ska - and its successors, Rocksteady and early Reggae – had an enormous and almost entirely beneficial impact on the UK music scene, having, weirdly, almost entirely bypassed America. Obviously, Millie’s “My Boy Lollipop” was the first ska record most of us heard. I think the next big hit was Romford boy Chris Andrews' rather lumpy “Yesterday Man” in 1965. Then there was a bit of a lull, before skinheads embraced Ska/Reggae as their musical genre of choice in late ‘67/early ’68.

After that, it seemed to be everywhere for a while, including the Grønmarks' kitchen where, for some odd reason, our ancient but beatylicious Blaupunkt phonogram ended its days. A friend lent me Prince Buster’s 1968 FABulous (sic) Greatest Hits album and, when nobody was around, I used to whack up oiur mighty record player's industrial-strength bass control and do that simple, clod-hopping reggae stomp that suited people like me who couldn’t actually dance (see a sample here).

I won’t pretend to have turned into a life-long adherent of Jamaican music – but I still love the stuff from that odd era when white working-class English boys adopted a musical genre which was entirely the preserve of the black immigrants whom skinheads supposedly despised (Jamaican popular culture has once more been adopted by working class youth, many of whom have even adopted “gangsta” speech patterns - plus ça change...)

Here, in no particular order, are some of my favourite Jamaican classics, starting with the genre's first true superstar:

Here's Lee 'Scratch" Perry's houseband, The Upsetters:

The Pioneers created possibly my favourite all-time Jamaican disc:

When it comes to favourites, Toots and the Maytals weren't far behind with this heart-rending tale of police oppression:

Here, Symarip pays tribute to the thugs we spent our mid-teens avoiding:

The soundtrack album of the Jimmy Cliff film, The Harder They Come, included a number of classics, including this moody thumper from Scotty:

Intensified! an album of '60s Ska classics released in 1979 introduced us to tons of great tracks most of us had never heard before, including this one from Baba Brooks:

And because it's impossible to get enough of Prince Buster, here's the mighty original of Madness's first hit:

Here, David and Ansell Collins wear the sort of outfits habitually sported by popular entertainers in the 1970s (for reasons best known to themselves):