- CONTRIBUTED
The members of Roots Radics Band were drummer Lincoln 'Style' Scott (back, left), guitarist Dwight Pinkney (back, right), guitarist Bingie Bunny (front, left), bassist Erol 'Flabba Holt' Carter (centre) and keyboard player Earl Fitzsimmons.
Mel Cooke, Freelance Writer
LAST WEEK, we left off the Dwight Pinkney story when, as a member of The Sharks, he was heading to The Bahamas to play in a hotel there. Today we complete the tale of a gifted guitarist, from returning to Jamaica to co-founding Zap Pow in the 1970s, then joining Roots Radics in the 1980s, finally doing solo albums in the 1990s and forming the Distinguished Personalities (DP) Band at the turn of the millennium.
It was a few whirlwind weeks between the young Sharks jumping into the big ocean of professional music at the Calabash Club to going off to The Bahamas. It was also a period in which one of the great 'what ifs' of Jamaican music occurred, as The Sharks got involved in recording at Studio One for a tantalisingly brief period.
"One of the first songs we did was 'Put It On' (with The Wailers). We help create the song," Dwight Pinkney said of the track that preceded even 'Simmer Down'. And he helped give it a signature sound.
MOTOWN SOUND
"Bob sey we waan create a Motown sound. My bassie jus' start play. Sonny Bradshaw gave a ol' guitar deh, de string high off the fretboard. It talk pon yu finger. It did have a tremolo bar pon it. We a play roun' an' Bob come wid did 'put it on' ting. Me jus' hol' de tremolo bar an go ...," Pinkney said, indicating a strong, strumming motion. "And they say same way we want it!" "From we do that every artiste roun' Coxsone waan record with we," he said. In the two weeks they were at Studio One, The Sharks recorded with Delroy Wilson, The Gaylads and Ken Boothe, among others. "By the flood come down we gone Bahamas. Up to now when Bunny Wailer see me him say you could have been Wailers band," Pinkney said.
And he notes that not only did Coxsone pay each band member 30 shillings per recording session, but he also provided them with lunch, "which was unusual".
There was no problem with lunch at the Lucayan Beach Hotel in The Bahamas, where The Sharks went first on a one-month contract, which was expanded to three months and then full employment. They ended up playing there for two years, returning home intermittently.
It was on one of the trips home that Dwight Pinkney wrote 'How Could I Live', later to be a Dennis Brown standard, in five minutes. They recorded it at Studio One and it appeared on the flip side of Jeff Dixon and Marcia Griffiths' 'Words'.
While in The Bahamas, they added Trevor Lopez, formerly of the Carlos Malcolm band, as lead guitarist.
Once home full-time, The Sharks did not hang around Kingston, as it was straight to the north coast, where the constant practice and performances in The Bahamas showed. The Sharks played at the Yellow Bird in Montego Bay, St. James, and Pinkney says "all the musicians at all the other places used to even cut their gigs short and come take us in."
"While we were there we were like icons of music. We were in our early 20s," he said.
In some ways Dwight Pinkney went through a reverse of the Kingston to Montego Bay journey, as the band started playing in Ocho Rios, where they broke up in late 1967 to early 1968. "When we go Ocho Rios is like the vibes change," Pinkney said.
He landed on his feet, fingers strumming, playing with Winston Turner in The Untouchables, which played at the Hilton Hotel in Ocho Rios. It was while in that band that he met Mike Williams, who was also a member, with whom Pinkney would form Zap Pow. He also met two other key musicians.
MEETING FRANKIE
"While I was in The Untouchables I was elected parish director of the Sing-Out Movement. That's where I met Frankie Campbell and Grub Cooper, who were in the Kingston chapter," Pinkney said. This was even before The Fabulous Five Incorporated was formed.
After some six to nine months with Winston Turner, Pinkney was ready to complete the reverse journey to Kingston with a band of his own. Williams came up with the name Zap Pow and in 1969 another leaf turned in the history of Jamaican music. The core of the band was Pinkney, Williams, trumpeter David Madden and drummer Danny Mowatt, Madden adding saxophonist Glen DaCosta to the roster. Their first song, 'Mystic Mood', which many people did not believe was done by a Jamaican group at first, was a hit. Pinkney revisited the song on this year's 'Home Grown Jamaican' album.
"Zap Pow grew until we were the highest paid band in the land," Pinkney said. As such, they had their choice of vocalists and "we went through quite a few." Among them were Bunny Rugs, now lead singer for Third World, and the deceased Jacob Miller, former lead singer for Inner Circle. The one who stayed the longest was Beres Hammond, who Pinkney credits with being "our best vocalist too."
"Beres was genuine talent," Pinkney said.
"We were the first show band in Jamaica. Before that all the bands were dance bands. We originate the concept that you can have your own self-contained band that put on a show," he said.
There was an album for Island Records in 1974/75, entitled 'Zap Pow Now', the band doing their own production even when they had external executive producers. Among their recordings was 'Sweet Loving Love' and 'This Is Reggae Music'. "Recording was always priority on our list. We know when you make a hit record you are top of the top," Pinkney said.
HEADY FEELING
It was a heady feeling that he was to experience from a vocalist's point of view when he returned to singing with 'Nenge Nenge' in the 1980s.
Zap Pow made trips to Cayman, Guyana, Suriname (for CARIFESTA), Mexico, Canada, Bermuda and all over the USA. After a decade, though Zap Pow had done its time ("the financial returns were not carrying the band," Pinkney says, plus "Beres had started building a name for himself") and Dwight Pinkney, never one to shrink from handling changes, went back to school.
"I got an invitation to further my music at Edna Manley (then School of Music). I did a course in Afro-American Music and arranging course under the tutelage of Melba Liston, Peter Ashbourne, Camille Lewis and Marjorie Whylie, who taught Jamaican studies."
"It was the first time I was getting formal training. It helped me a lot," Pinkney said, although he "neva got to finish the course 100 per cent." Even then, close to the end of his course he had actually started teaching. "One of the reasons I did not get to finish the paper work was I got a call to go on tour with Roots Radics and the recording thing get hectic," Pinkney said.
That recording had started while he was a student, when he was asked by the band to join in on recording sessions. The pay from teaching simply could not match the returns from touring and recording.
And there was a lot of that recording with Roots Radics, as "apart from Sly and Robbie we were the number one band. We were like the house band at Channel One." And Pinkney was voted band leader of an aggregation that included Bingie Bunny on lead guitar, Errol 'Flabba Holt' Carter on bass, Lincoln 'Style' Scott on drums and Steelie Johnson on keyboards. When Johnson left, Earl Fitzimmons replaced him on keyboards.
Roots Radics worked with the Who's Who of Jamaican music, including Grammy-winning albums for Bunny Wailer, Gregory Isaacs, Barrington Levy, Frankie Paul, Marcia Griffiths, Judy Mowatt and Eeka Mouse, among others, recording extensively for producer Henry 'Junjo' Lawes.
Then Pinkney got a dream from his aunt's dead husband, who said "is long time I see you in the business a struggle. I gwine do something for you." That 'something' was 'Nenge Nenge', Pinkney's hit single, as "the next significant thing I can remember was the song." About a year later he returned to the voice room side of the studio and did 'Bigger Boss' with Shirley McLean. He then got caught up in Roots Radics and did not do any more recording of his own again.
THE EARLY 1990S
Then, in the early 1990s, bassist Keith Francis provided the prod. "He said 'a long time you inna de business an yu no have nothing yet.' I said is like yu read my mind, because is right there so I sit down and a play the guitar and a pick out the songs for an album," Pinkney said, indicating a corner of his home studio.
"Me say you can reach around here tomorrow? He came and the rest is history," Pinkney said.
That first album was Jamaican Memories By The Score, the largely Christmas oriented 'All Occasions' coming in 2001. 'More Jamaican Memories' followed two years later and then this year came 'Home Grown Jamaican'.
The beginning of the end of Roots Radics came while they were on tour with Israel Vibration "gainst a place in Australia" after the first album came out. Since then, Pinkney has formed his own DP (Distinguished Personality) Band in 2004. "Is a band whe rise to the occasion," he said. "The DP band fluctuates according to what is there."
The core is Francis, Pinkney and an old pal from Roots Radics, Earl Fitzsimmons on keyboards.
MOVED TO ANOTHER LEVEL
The singer who became a rhythm guitarist has now moved to another level ("from I did that first album people like my lead work ... I love it too. The leaning is towards a lead guitarist ...") and also personal studio owner, but being solo sometimes does not mean being on his own, as he is a member of the Jamaica Association of Vintage Artistes and Affiliates, on the invitation of Keith Brown. "It is the first musicians/artiste social club in the history of Jamaica," he said.
And the discipline instilled by his mother, who raised him entirely on her own, has stood him in very good stead. "One of the things that my Granny did say to me was you can't spare the rod and spoil the child. I have spoilt many a rod, but I was saved," Dwight Pinkney said.
