Little Roy revisits roots, revives claim to reggae’s name

Veteran reggae singer Little Roy was recently in Jamaica to re-record his song Fight for Jah Love and is looking forward to reintroducing audiences to his discography and story.

“Coming home was good, as some things got to be known to the wider public about my original songs,” the Tribal War and Prophecy entertainer told The Gleaner, adding that he is currently working on a new album and finally receiving some of what he is due.

“Currently, I’m putting an EP together. I will master and release them as I’ve learned my lesson in terms of the business of music. Though I haven’t gotten most of what is due to me in terms of royalties, some are slowly trickling in, so I am good and determined to continue to live my life without any regrets,” Little Roy, born Earl Alexander Lowe, shared.

Now 73 years old and living in England, Little Roy said he still has a knack for writing good songs. He settled in the United Kingdom in the early 1990s after spending a few years in America, but Jamaica, he said, is still where the heart is. “After I toured with Gregory Isaacs and Glen Browne in the late ‘80s, I decided to make London my home.”

CHILD SINGER

Getting his start as a child singer, Little Roy found himself in several of Kingston’s biggest studios in the 1960s, making music but not really understanding the future impact these songs would have.

“Prince Buster gave me the name ‘Little Roy’, though Roy is nowhere in my name. I guess he looked at me and thought I was royal. The first song I did when I was 12 years old was for Coxsone Dodd. I was going to St Francis Primary then. By the time I started high school, I sang for Prince Buster and by 1969, I was working with a producer named Lloyd Matador who had an [electronics] shop on Waltham Park Road. So I would walk from school to his place in the evenings after school,” he recalled.

At 17, he achieved one of his biggest hits with a song called Bongo Nyah. “I sang that in the summer of 1969, and it stayed on the RJR charts at number one for seven weeks. It was a hit all over Jamaica, and most studios like Coxsone, Dynamic and Federal made it over and had their version. Then I would say in terms of popularity, Tribal War was a very big song. I counted over 200 people singing over Tribal War, with most people being familiar with George Nooks’ rendition, but Buju Banton and Damian Marley both have their own versions. Another popular one from me is Prophecy, which Freddie McGregor sang over.”

Though he has achieved this level of success, Little Roy insists that as a youngster, music was the furthest thing from his mind. “I didn’t have any interest in recording. None a tall. I had a brother who could sing, and when I compared myself to him, I told myself that I couldn’t sing. However, I got into music by accident as I was simply following two of my classmates to the studio one day. One was Barrington Daley, who eventually became a trombonist who worked with Bunny Wailer. I followed him and Harold Burgess to Studio One. I sang a song for Jackie Mittoo, and when I was finished, he told me to come back and record.”

Beyond his catalogue, Little Roy is also staking a claim in one of reggae’s most debated origin stories. “Is me pen the word ‘reggae’ ennuh. In 1967, during my first week at St Andrew Technical, Prince Buster picked me up and carried me to a studio named Dynamic and me sing a song named Reggae Soul. The spelling is R-E-G-G-A-E. Toots (Hibbert) was in prison at the time, and when he came out, he started telling people that it was his, but he spelled his ‘R-E-G-G-A-Y’. All these things can be proven,” he told The Gleaner.

The word he said was coined from the term ‘Streggae’, which did not have a pleasant connotation when used in reference to women. “I took off the ‘ST’ from the word ‘Streggae’ because I couldn’t use that since me come from a home with five sisters. I couldn’t sing a song about a ‘streggae’ based on the home I came from.”

Little Roy is not the only veteran touted as naming the genre. Late reggae and ska artiste, Frederick ‘Toots’ Hibbert, the late lead singer of Toots and the Maytals, is also credited with coining the word ‘reggae’ with his 1968 song, Do the Reggay.

Weighing in on the issue, cultural expert, Professor Donna Hope, noted that the genre’s naming remains one of Jamaica’s most contested cultural stories.

“I have heard of the statement that they took the word ‘Streggae’ and took the ‘ST’ from it, but I’ve never heard a name associated with it, and still no one has been given the credit for it. We have about five origin stories of reggae, as everybody wants to claim the word. The thing with origin stories is that nobody has ever been able to solidly say who owns the word ‘reggae’,” said Hope.

“Remember, Bunny Lee also claimed that it was him who coined it, and then Toots with the song Do the Reggay, so there are a lot of different versions. To date, no one has been able to own the actual word ‘reggae’. So when you hear the version that they took off the ‘st’ from ‘streggae’, I asked why were they calling the music ‘a dirty girl’? A lot of what happens in the music at the time, they use women’s body parts, etc, so it could have been possible. So, as Little Roy comes in with his story, all we can do now is add it to the history. I would say that to strengthen his case, he would need to produce the actual vinyl record from 1967.”

nicola.cunningham@gleanerjm.com