Clevie Brown

Steely & Clevie

“I started playing drums when I was about fourteen years old, I was a singer first.  I was with my brothers we were called the Brownie Bunch. We did how first recording in about 1972. When we did the rehearsals for the recording, I was sort of fasinated with the drums, I had a liking for the drums from then. I made up my mind then, that I had to learn how to play this instrument, at the same my brothers had their eyes on other instruments. When we put how heads together, we realised that all of us had chosen a different instrument.”

“All of us now are currently involved in the music business, there are five of us. The eldest is Glen Brownie plays bass for Ziggy Marley, then there is Dalton Brownie plays rhythm and lead guitar, for Freddie McGregor, Noel Brownie is next, he works with Michael Rose - keyboard, he programs he does a lot of computer work in the music industry. Fourth is line is yours truly, and then there is Danny Brownie from Blood Fire Posse, and he also tours with Sly And Robbie. We are all involved with successful groups in the business. We are currently working on a album, the five heads all put together.”

The Brownie Bunch?

“Yes, at that time though we were only singers. Although we always thought it would be better if we could do our own rhythm tracks. Our ideas were always a bit different to what everyone else was into. It’s a totally different sound concept. Furthermore if we put how minds together we would always come up with different creations. So far none of that is on the market, but it’s difficult getting this album completed with all of us involved in different things.”

“Anyway I took up drums in nineteen, whatever it was when I was fourteen years old. Steelie used to come by my house. My mother had a little pump organ he came by and we would work out chords, from a chord book. My mother showed him a few things. We found we had similar musical tastes. We used to listen to old Studio One, and every song I liked he liked. Today we have put that sort of feeling into the music. I actually worked at Studio One for several years, from about 1978. It was like a school to me, I had a chance to listen to the tracks directly from the master tapes. I did overdubs on many of the old Studio One rhythms, some of the Skatalites stuff, we added like percussion stuff on it. It sort of embedded that feel of the music then in my mind. Steelie also did some work at Studio One.”

Steely & Clevie

“ I have found now that I have been able to transfer that to the drum machines. This is what maybe makes how music feel so different, it’s different from the mechanical programmings of the other musicians. I also learned to read music. A year or two after I started, when I went to High School, I started to play Tuba. I learned to read bass clef music. That also improved my reading of music. Having this knowledge as made me able to transform anything that I hear into a rhythm pattern, into drum machine form, giving it the feel and everything.Cause at first you have to be able to analyse what is being played. Or what you want to play, and then having the musical knowledge to put that into a drum machine.”

Steelie did some work for Studio One, he’s also a member of the Roots Radics, an organist.

“Steelie, had been a member of Roots Radics as far as I can remember, he joined them when he was about fourteen years old. He went on his first tour with Gregory Isaacs. He was a member right up until about 1984/5 when we started this Steely And Clevie thing.”

Did you start with your own production, or did you start working for other producers?

“We started working with King Jammys, he was the first producer who we worked with that Steely And Clevie sound. Way back we had been doing recording sessions together, but not as Steely And Clevie. Those days I played acoustic drums, and Steely played piano, on a lot of ‘Rockers International’ productions with Augustus Pablo. We started doing the computer thing on dub plates at first. There was a sound system called Black Star in Jamaica, that we did some dub plates for, with Tiger. The sound was so good that Steely and myself thought that it could be marketed, but no producer was interested in this thing. It was an innovation, drum machine and synth bass. They was still accustomed to the ten peice band, in the studio.”

“ Then ‘Sleng Teng’ came out of King Jammys. He was the man that had the vision. of the new direction. So we took some demo tapes down to him. He said it “Sound Alright.” Later years down the road. He told that he thought it was quiet good, but he didn’t want to get us swell headed. So he played as if it was ‘alright’, nothing to great. The first song that we actually did for him went straight into the British charts, ‘Sweet Reggae Music’ by Nitty Gritty. It went into the top eighty or something, and that without the help of any major company. Which is a great achivement, for any reggae song. We recorded hit after hit, but no one knew it was drum machines. I think basically King Jammys accepted it also because his studio was very small, it was an eight track studio, in one room the size of a small bedroom. He converted a bedroom in the recording studio, and he couldn’t fit a ten piece band in there anyway.  I think that combination was just right for all of us involved.”

“Then we found we had been doing the work for all of the hit making producers, and the term in Jamaica ‘Producer’ had been misunderstood. Many times the excutive producers were getting credits for, musical production, when we were doing the work, and they weren’t even around. Most of the songs we worked on actually produced by Steely & Clevie. So we thought it was time we branched out, and went on our own as producers.”

When was this?

“1988, we started doing our own productions. At first it was a bit difficult, we found it difficult recording recording good songs for ourselves. We was a bit tense, and we was trying to hard. Then we relaxed and we started to work like we was working for any producer. Then we stated getting hit after hit. The label today is an household name in Jamaica.”

Your biggest hit so far?

“The biggest so far on the Steely & Clevie label as been Foxy Brown’s ‘Sorry’. We titled it ‘Sorry’ but’s actually ‘Baby Can I Hold You Tonight’ by Tracy Chapman. It went to about 51 on the ‘Billboard’ chart in the U.S.  Which I think is the best any reggae song from Jamaica had done for many years. Once again this was without the help of a major company. It was released in the States on Pow Wow records which is a small independent company. At first we put it  out on the Steely & Clevie label, when it sold about thirty thousand copies, then we handed it over to Pow Wow who took it to where it went. Although I think the song could have gone much further, but after the song took off the artist was signed by a company out of Washington - RAS. Which I think was a great mistake on her part, sometimes you just can’t rush into things like that. She just took a offer, the first offer, being signed up Pow Wow could not get her to do any publicity, which we needed to do to promote the song. Videos and all that, was going through her new company who was working on a album of their own. It wasn’t in their interest to promote someone else’s product. Anyway she has found out her mistakes now, she’s shown willingness to work with us in the future.”

She has three albums out now.

“Three albums!”

Two for RAS Records and one for Fatis.

“Um, but I know if Pow Wow had the promotion material, they were willing to make a video, and they have the contact to get it aired on MTV. They are a small company but they have the contacts in the business to get songs properly promoted. The song could have gone much further.”

It was a good cut of the ‘Taxi’ rhythm.

“That was a misconception also, a lot of people regard it as the ‘Taxi’ rhythm. I think ‘Taxi’ popularised it to the younger generation. Origianally the rhyhtm that we made it from was ‘Peanut Vendor’, but Sly used a similar drum pattern on ‘Taxi’. Being a funky kind of beat. I would have a played a similar drum pattern even if I had not heard Sly’s drum pattern. It is a feeling that comes naturally from the funky reggae fusion. This is how the American’s see it. “

The original comes from South America in about the 1920’s. It’s a big band sound. It was a melody line that was turned into a bass line. Tommy McCook have a version of it, a melody version of it from 1971. It was recorded also by Joe White as ‘Victory Song’. That was the first Jamaican cut with the bass line, then Little Roy’s ‘Prophecy’.

“Little Roy’s ‘Prophecy’ was on the ‘Peanut Vendor’ rhythm. This is the one that we made it from, because we actually recorded ‘Prophecy’ with Freddie McGregor. I think it’s a very strong rhythm for the U.S. market and the reggae market.”

Some people find it hard to play an album of one rhythm, what do you think of that concept?

“I myself as a record buyer would rather have more than one rhythm. but it is something is acceptable in Jamaica now for years. I think it stems from the whole sound system thing. We saw sound clash’s way back in the sixties with Duke Reid and Coxsone used to clash. The sound system that would be declared the best, would be the one that could find a version that you cannot find. Go into his box, and draw a version of ‘Satta’, and you can’t answer him. By playing another version. Basically where the music is now evolved from those sound system clash’s. Even the mixes where you would put a reverb on the snare. So we actually put a sound system dance clash into the recording, similarly versions of one rhythm  The rhythms that are used to make an entire album out of are usually so strong that the artists that are on them, request that particular rhythm. It might be a waste only using it once.”

“Although it doesn’t only happen in Jamaica. Many of the old Motown songs sometimes you can pinpoint rhythms that have been reused. Similary the way we approach production is not something that as originated in Jamaica. We make rhythm tracks first, then get the artists to write songs on the rhythm tracks. Motown also used that method of production, this how some of the rhythm tracks ended up being resued. You might have five writers, writing songs for one rhythm track. You might end up with five brilliant songs. You put them all out!”

What is your favourite one rhythm album that you have released?

“They are all my favourites actually, but lately the ‘Poco In The East’ album, I like these because we have reintroduced traditional rhythm forms, which had been lost over the years like Pocamania rhythms. For years Jamaicans have been fusing external rhythm forms, fuse it with funk. fuse it with rock, why not fuse it with our own native rhythms. Or African rhythm forms, the Poco rhythm is one of our old rhythm forms that had been lost. In reggae we had never fused anything like that.”

“I have had experience with Pocomania in a church setting, I myself growing up went to a Pentecostal church in Jamaica, where we used drums and a full band in the church, and the drum rhythms were in that vein. I wasn’t the main drummer, there was another drummer who was really brilliant. I filled in sometimes, but I learned a lot from that experience. It’s not just beats that you can copy, it’s a feeling. Similarly with Steelie he didn’t have that experience, but he plays a freestyle bass, there isn’t any set pattern, it’s just vibes, as the vibes comes he...”

“This is one reason why we never, never sequence. A lot of people regarded Steely & Clevie as just computer music, but that is also false. It should not be regarded as computer music. We do not use a computer for sequencing. It’s a drum machine, and everything else is live. It’s not real bass, it’s synth bass, but in our productions we go for whatever we think is necessary. If we need live horns, we will go for live horns. Many of the producers today have been leaving out live horns, because there budget doesn’t allow it, or they think that synthesizer’s can do the work, but if we want to capture a certain feel. The feeling is most important to us, the feeling we get from the music. It’s not just to make some money.”

“I have found that we have left such a mark on the music industry, that we are being imitated and copied, I would that maybe up to eighty per cent of the sound concept coming out of Jamaica is a copy or a take off of Steely and Clevie’s style. If it’s not played by us, it’s a copy of us. I would advise younger musicians now to try and create their own styles. They could come up with something new, just from experimenting, something that could create a whole new market.”

My best selling album on the Steely & Clevie label is the ‘21st Century Sound Clash’.

“Like I said, all how album are favourites of mine.”

Yesterday at Mixing Lab, you was working on a oldies album.

“Yes, basically when we do rerecord old tracks, it’s not for commercial reasons. Our main aim is not to make a bag of money out of the thing. We do want to earn from it, we are in it for a living also, playing music is not just an hobby for us, it’s also a job. We think being amongest the most popular musicians today, we have a commitment to preserve the feeling in the music. I don’t think we should ever lose the liveness that is is known to exist within reggae. Reggae is a feeling music, it’s not just buff boff beats. There is a feel behind it, and in recording or rerecording those old tracks we are actually doing our part in preserving those old songs, and presenting it to the youths today. To many of the teenage record buyers, those are new songs, they have never heard them before. Even the young engineers working in the studio, they thought all of those songs are new songs. They had never heard them before, and I don’t think that Studio One records are available to everybody as they should be. I really would like to see those songs preserved as long as the record business exists.”

Who are the artists on this new album?

“Well you have Dobby Dobson, Alton Ellis, The Clarendonians, Marcia Griffiths, Delroy Wilson, The Cables, The Flames, Silvertones and Ken Boothe.”

Are all the groups the originals members?

“Yes, all the songs we have rerecorded or resung are done over by the original aritists. We are just presenting it as a better recording. To some, the old records are better, because they are more realistic, because you are picking up the live sound. Nowadays we have isolated each instrument a bit more. Having 24 tracks, or whatever. Some of those songs were originally recorded on 2 or 4 tracks. It was like one time, done. If you miss or make a mistake you can’t go over it .”

I noticed that you had Bagga Walker sitting in on your session?

“Bagga, is a close friend of ours. I worked with him in The Studio One band. He has also been a bass player at Studio One for years. He is there for the vibe, he’s nice person to have around. Sometimes what you think is being played on those old tracks, sometimes a note might be created from harmonics, it’s not actually what you think you’re hearing is being played. Bagga is a person who would. He is a person who would be able to correct little things things that your ears might fool you with. Although at times we cannot recreate the harmonics because of the new recording techniques.

If the double bass was in the corner, you would get a bounce off a wall that changes the pitch of the note or something. What you think is being played is not actually that.  So sometimes we have to go for what we are hearing, rather than what is being played.”

Like yesterday when Steely pointed out that there is a bass line with only two notes, that sounds like it’s got three notes.

“It’s where you place the chords around a bass line, say if you place the chords around a two note bass line, it would create an illusion that  there was more than two notes, when there was only actually two.  For years, I can’t remember which song it was, but for years we thought this song was a three note bass line. Then Bagga pointed it out that it was not. About three years ago I had the opportunity to back Jackie Mittoo at Sunsplash, with the Studio One band. In the rehearsal he disclosed that many of the bass lines that Bagga thought were three note bass lines were in fact only two notes. I found out that Jackie Mittoo was quite instrumental in arranging a lot of those songs even down to the bass line. Jackie Mittoo’s passing was a great loss to the music industry. He was very important to the evolving of the Jamaican music industry to the stage that it is. Today the only other musician that I see that as that sort of feeling, that drive to make changes in the music, is Steely. Steely as a similar vibe to that of Jackie Mittoo, and the feeling of his keyboard riffs, having worked with both of them is...”

I saw Steely work with the Roots Radics it was at a session back in 1983 at Channel One, he was really running the session.

“This is how Steely is, I mean he’s like another Jackie Mittoo. Many of the hits with Junjo Lawes, I would say that Steely more than any other musician in Jamaica, has played on the most hit songs ever, Jamaican reggae hit songs. He went through that era in the seventies, then the Junjo Lawes productions right into the Jammys’s era. During that time when we worked with King Jammys we also worked on Redman International productions, Techniques, Gussie Clarke, Penthouse, all the popular producers, the hitmaking producers. We were the musicians on their products and many times the actual producers, but not credited as producers.”

That’s how it’s always been in reggae.

“You see now we are responsible for making that change, making it, redefining the term ‘producer’, in Jamaica. Many producers in Jamaica at the end of the day are still broke in Jamaica, when they should be retired. If proper credit was given to them, they could be getting a pension, publishing is our pension in the music business. They have created a lot of things, and have not been given any credit for it.”

Yesterday I saw you playing live drums!

“Laughs, well we have been doing that for a long time, if the studio has been big enough. At King Jammys also I used to do some live Simmonds work. I mean we couldn’t set up an acoustic kit in there, it was too small, but many of the songs had drum machine combined with some natural play. Sometimes I would use an Octopad. Which is a pad that enables you to play the drum machines sounds via MIDI, but it actually trigger’s the sounds. I did that occasionally. We actually did that on the ‘Poca Man Jam’ rhythm also - the ‘Poco In The East’ album, all those fills are live. I don’t think there is any other way to get that feeling out of it, it as to be spontaneous live playing.”

So yesterday you played live first, then play keyboards?

“No, everything was live from top to finish, on the ‘Pocoman Jam’ it was played also from top to finish. It’s not just in reggae music that this happens. I found out that many American productions are done that way. It’s programmed, partially, then there are live things placed on top of it. Like the hi-hat and drum fills. It creates a liveness, which is good for the music. Reggae music is a music that should be kept partially live.”

A lot of people have complained about the computer sound.

“I think the music is evolving, it is passing through a stage. I think now though the  music is more rhythm than it’s ever been. It’s gone through the one drop stage, with the emphasis on the third beat, it’s gone through the Roots Radics era, and Sly & Robbie. You know the buff boff, buff boff. Now there are so many rhyhtms involved, it’s much more rhythmic. The rhyhtms are from Mento, or traditional rhythms like Kumina, or African rhythm forms. Many of the rhythm forms came to Jamaica from Africa. Some of the parishes in Jamaica have retained it, even more than the Kingstonians.”

There are a lot of new studios around, a lot of artists, is the market getting bigger or what?

“Well, all the producers now have found it necessary to set up their own recording studios, those that can afford it. The production cost as gone up so high in Jamaica with the increases of living, the electricity, the rates have gone up. The studios have raised their rates also to offset that increase. So most producers have seen it to be better to set up their own studios. Gussie Clarke, Donovan Germain, Roy Francis. You find most of the studios being set up, they are all set up by people in the music business. Junior Reid, but they will never ever use the studio 24 hours. So a number of them have gone into productions, and with so much talent in Jamaica in such a small country, there are many talented youths. So you find that each studio, will have a set of artists that works along with them.”

“Maybe each record don’t sell as much as the sales used to be in the sixties, and the early seventies, but the producers see it as every “Mickle Make A Mockle.” but the most of the artists make their money from stage shows. When a song gets popular, they are usually in demand on stage shows, and many of them end up touring, travelling throughout the U.S. as a result of the songs being popular. The record sales might not be as good they end up on tours.”

And the sales and the shows support each other?

“That’s right, also you find now that the new generation of artists are for the new generation of record buyers, people who they can sing along with, a young voice. It’s like the artist is like the guy next door singing. Sometimes you will find an aritist who as done voice training for years, and they don’t sell as well as the one sounding like the guy next door! 

Garnett Silk

In your productions is there any new names that you could point out as talented people?

“There is an aritist from Mandeville, who we have recently signed his name is Garnett Silk. We are recording an album with him right now. We have completed about nine songs, we have one more to do. It will be on the market quite soon. He’s very good, a very good singer. Young, he has years ahead of him. Which is what any record company looks for when they sign an artist. They don’t want one that will be out of the business in the next year.The younger the better. There are always new DJ’s coming up. There is one called Power Man, who is the brother of the guy who actually played the ‘Sleng Teng’ rhythm. Noel, he recorded the ‘Sleng Teng’ rhythm he discovered it on the Casio keyboard. The ‘Sleng Teng’ rhythm is acutally a rock and roll rhythm on a preset on a Casio keyboard. They just took it down to the reggae tempo, and added on the reggae vamp.”

“It’s these sort of experimentations that I would like to see more of in reggae music. Instead of people copying our style or someone else. When you have too many people doing the same thing the sound will become so monotonous that nobody want to hear it. I actually have a similar Casio years before, and actually did the same thing with it, but I had not recorded it, because I thought there would be some copyrights to it. I have been studying music law, I knew where problems could arise. What the Japanese apparently were more interested in selling the Casio product. Again the rock and roll preset is just a typical rock and roll thing, like anybody could have come up with that. A basic rock and roll groove.”

So it was in the machine?

“Yes, but it didn’t have the reggae vamp on it. it just had the bass line and the drum beat.”

You mention about the price increases, what is life in Jamaica like now?

“What is it like, I would say it is getting harder, but we are a blessed country in that you can go outside and pick a fruit off a tree. So it’s not a country that you would find the population malnurished or anything like that. There are Mango tree’s all over the country, we have so many fruit trees. Many of the poorer people you might find are even healthier, because or our climate, we can grow certain food stuff throughout the year. So life is difficult for those who want imported goods, and can’t get it. The rate of exchange to the US dollar, companies that import US products have to sell the products at such an high cost, to make back their money or even break even. It is a small percentage of the population that can afford it. The government is encouraging Jamaicans to be self sufficent, and manufacture our own products.”

What about all this talk about guns in reggae lyrics?

“Most of it is just talk. The artists don’t actually mean anything, it stems from the competition thing in the sound systems, which as gone over into recording. It is not a literal thing. Musicians don’t really anger, most of the time if you see a man involved in some gun crime, someone else provoke him”

What are your memories of working in the music?

“When we change the music again when we record the ‘Cat Paw’ rhythm. We took back the reggae into a swing. We had not been playing any reggae with a swing feel.The music had gone into a buff boff era. The ‘Cat Paw’ rhythm that Tiger did ‘Young Gal Lyrics’ on, that was the first one. Then we did ‘Lonely Don’t Leave Me Alone’ with Sanchez , which was produced by Winston Riley.”

“We have cut back drastically on playing on other people’s productions. We are trying to keep the sound a little more exclusive. Ocassionally we play on records for others producers, who we have worked with over the years. We played ‘Tempted To Touch’ rhythm for Germain. He had not had a hit song for a while. That put him back on the map again.”

Was it an original song that Berris Hammond sung?

“Yes, but the rhythm was a Studio One rhythm, or I think it was.”

The song ‘A Love I Can Feel’ was originally by The Temptations, it’s called ‘I Want A Love I Can See’ for Motown in 1962.

“Really, I would love to hear that. Many of the Alton Ellis songs were cover songs. Coxsone had the Motown catalogue for Jamaica, and he found that covering those songs with a reggae rhythm would do well. A lot of the older generation, how parents criticized the reggae business, for not writing songs, but many of them did not know it was nothing new. They do not know the original versions of the songs, like Alton Ellis had sung. Growing up I thought they were originals, Even myself, I have said that those artists used to write better songs. As a matter of fact there are more originals now, including DJ’s, considering that DJ’s are writing songs. It’s a matter of opinion whether the composition is better or not. You have to consider the experiences the youths are having today. The record buyer public can relate more now to what the DJ’s are saying.  You cannot say that the writing standards have fallen, it’s what relates to today, in our society, and things that happen in today’s society.”

And today’s society is so different from the sixties.

“Oh yeah, and you find the same thing in America. The youth’s rap about experiences in the ghetto. A lot of the songs are uplifting also, they encourgage you not to do this and that. Shake up certain people, and make them rethink their lifestyles”

Then there is the slackness.

“Yesterday I was playing a tape which I had put together of all the old Jamaican slackness songs. That I would say are much more explicate than todays songs. Prince Buster for instance did a song entitled ‘Wreck A Pum Pum’, which you never hear anything that rude today. Then there is a female answer version, ‘Wreck A Buddy’. Not even Shabba get that lewed with his lyrics.”

How about Lloydie & The Lowbites?

“That is another old time thing, nothing new, nothing new.  The same persons that would criticize the reggae, during carnival time they would dance to the lewd Claypso songs. Even go out on the streets naked, or half naked. You don’t find that in the dance hall. I think the dancehall business is much cleaner than the Soca business. Why criticize the Jamaican slackness. Even in American, there is a song ‘I Want To Sex You Up’.”

Have you cut a version of it?

“We couldn’t be bothered, we have been busy doing other things anyway. We have been busy doing tracks for major labels, with people like Caron Wheeler and Lady Levi. We have also been doing remixes for companies releasing Rap music. We do reggae remixes for them. Which as been interesting.”

How do you see the future of the music?

“I think you will see it go back to a message music. Jamaican artists are quite sensitive to what is happening in their surroundings and things. Changes in the world are going to influence the type of songs that are written, I don’t want to be a prophet here, I won’t say anymore.”

Apart from Steely & Clevie, who else is making music today in Jamaica.

“You have Sly & Robbie, The Firehouse Crew, The One Two Crew, The Turbo Crew, you have Horsemouth & Obeah. You will find many of these Two Person, Three Person Crews that are coming up, have been purchasing similiar equipment to ourselves. With the aim of caputuring the Steely & Clevie sound, but it’s not just the sound of the instrument.  It’s years of experience. The Studio One thing was like a school to us, it’s welded a certain feeling in our minds. One of the closest to us is my brother Danny Brownie, from Blood Fire Posse. He is the only person who I have allowed to use my equipment. We actually own a studio together. He has been doing producing out of it. I have been busy at Mixing Lab. Originally we set up the studio to do Radio and TV commercials. Later we started to work on songs to be released. He’s recently had a number one with Papa San ‘Strange’.”

How many tracks does the studio have?

“16 tracks, half inch, a very small studio, just a little bigger than when Jammys first started.”

What kind of instruments have you been using?

“Well ever since I first started I used an Oberheim Drum Machine, an old Oberheim DX Drum machine. Which I purchased from Willie Stewart from Third World, he bought the DX Oberheim, and later bought a DMX, so he thought he wouldn’t need the DX anymore, and that DX as played on so many hit songs you wouldn’t believe it. Including overdubs on some Studio One stuff, ‘Push Come To Shove’ Freddie McGregor, Blood Fire Posse songs, all of the King Jammys productions, all of them that we worked on. It was that same DX drum machine.”

What does Steely use?

“He’s into Yamaha, a small Yamaha keyboard. A Yamaha DX 100, and a CS 1 Yamaha syntheziser, which I think Steely was the first to use it as a bass. It was originally...we used the DX100 for the bass, it was so small that you wouldn’t expect it to be used for bass. So we used to use for flute sounds, and high pitch sounds. Then one day it was dropped, the circuit board broke inside. He got it fixed by a local technician, and when it came back to him it was playing bass. The deepest, deepest bass sound you have ever heard, and I find it to be the closest thing to that old Studio One double standing bass sound, which is a very good bass sound, which is a very good bass sound. It blends and compliments the Oberheim drum sound very well. I have done sessions with other people, and it is the best sound. The same with DX100, it’s as if it was planned that way be the creator.”

“I have done work with it on ‘Raggamuffin Year’ by Junior Delgado, myself and Augustus Pablo played that. We have used the D.50 keyboard, Roland D.50 and Korg  Poly 61, which we used on the piano sound for Jammys. Basically Steely is brillant at finding the right sound to fit the character of the song. On ‘Si Boops Deh’ you hear this creeping sound.”

“When I play the drum machine I programme it, but I play the rolls manually, via a pad or something. Most of the time there is something live on our productions, there is nothing ever totally seqenced. There is one production that we worked on, well it wasn’t out production, it was Aswad’s album, the one that was produced by Gussie Clarke. They wanted to use a computer so I programmed the drumbeats into the computer. If it was my production it is not how I would have done it.”

“I respect Gussie Clarke, a lot. He’s very business like, he makes things happen. If he has a project to do, he can mobilize people, get people together. He’s a very good co-ordinator. His business is on par with any international company. We have employed the services of Lloyd Stanbury as our manager, he is a laywer also and he as helped us now to set up our business in a similar way. Gussie had an head start in that Now we are currently on par with Gussie Clarke. All artists that record for us, have to sign some form of release before we even put out a record for them.  We found that we had problems with Foxy Brown. There was a company interested in signing her, and we didn’t have a signed agreement from her. So that we could release the product, we found that it was best if we put things into black and white.”

“The Penthouse label is also a very good label, with Donovan Germain. Techniques, Winston Riley. He’s working on his own studio. More of the producers should be credited as the executive producers, you find that most of their work is done by the engineer, and the musicians. King Jammys is good in indentifying a good song. I think he’s main setback now is that he’s lost the Steely & Clevie rhythm sound. He’s rereleasing old rhythm tracks that we built for him.”

“The tracks that we have done in respect of these Studio One recuts, you will find that the arrangement is different. The groups that copy the Steely & Clevie sound, you will find them copying our arrangement of those songs.You’re find Mafia & Fluxy playing the ‘Wild Apache’ rhythm, although that was an original rhythm anyway. We created that.”

What do you think of Fatis?

“Fatis is also a very good producer. Very good at identifying talent, but as I said some of them are not even in the studio. Sometimes they tell you what to do, and then there off, and then they come back and pay you for the job. They have to get some credit though for knowing when the work is done right. When they come back and listen and say yeah. You will find though that with Steely & Clevie as producers we will actually get involved to the extent that if we have to write a song for the artist, we will do it.  Ninety per cent of the songs that come to us, we end up changing the lyrics. Getting involved in getting the sound right, which is the actual work of the producer. When the engineer put a frequnecy on the kick drum that is a nonsense frequency, you must be able to determine if it is right or not. Most producers sit and watch, but that is not the true producer.”

It used to be like that at Studio One, Jackie, would do the work and Coxsone would not

be present.

“They are good A&R people though. For example, a singer like Horace Andy, if he come to me, I probably would not have recorded him. Coxsone saw something in that voice, and it worked. ‘Skylarking’ was an hit song in Jamaica. I have to give him credit for being able to identify a good song and a good aritist. Even Burning Spear, I understand that they ran away Burning Spear when he came to Studio One. I think it was Jackie Mittoo that begged for him, he said “Give him a try.”

Have you ever copied any Treasure Isle rhythms?

“We are planning to make a part two of this tribute album, this time on Treasure Isle.