Lester Sterling

Lester Sterling

Bangarang - Pama

Another great horn player from the Ska era - Lester’s horn was the trumpet. A member of The Skatalites and then Byron Lee’s band. By the time reggae rolled into town reggae along with all the horn players from that era found that horn arrangements were not really the style of the day - only at Treasure Isle. For the rest of producers - if they wanted an horn sound - they just really went for one horn.

Bunny Lee being Bunny Lee - along with a few others could see that this was a way to get those get rhythms that they were building out again. And you could not get much of a bigger rhythm than ’Bangarang’ Stranger Cole’s massive reggae hit. You can actually hear Stranger come and in out of the mix - on this version. The rest of the album is just as good with the rhythms all in the same style - very fast - which sets Bunny’s productions apart from the bulk of others at the time. Scratch and Leslie Kong had already slowed by ’69.

Other big hits on the album the incredible 1,000,000 tons of TNT - and the tune lives up to its powerful reputation. Lester really does a great job in following these wild rhythms - ska was a lot faster!!!