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INTRODUCING SUGAR MINOTT THE GHETTO SINGER
This album provides a special kind of entertainment. Explore and research the music talent of Jamaica in combining young upcoming stars and even great unknown talent with today's professional reggae musicians to bring about a sounds as never before - take (Noel Bailey lead GITS) (Michael Ras Star Bass) (Glastone Anderson Piano) (Horsemouth Drums) Four well known prof. teaming up with (Steelie of the Gerneration Gap Organ) (Fish Clark Drum) (Albert Malawie Drum) (Donavan also of the Gap) in bringing out such a swift sound in Jamaican reggae tune. Listen and you will know what I mean.
(Lincoln Sugar Minott)
Sugar Minott rose to prominence as a singer at Studio One, a key element of the label's resurgent popularity in the late 1970s. Yet Sugar had achieved hits years earlier in the African Brothers and has since emerged as an important producer whose Youth Promotion stable ushered local unknowns to fame in the dancehall style.
He was born Lincoln Minott in 1956 in the west Kingston ghetto of Maxfield Park and spent much of his youth in nearby Chisholm Avenue. Sugar notes that his father sold salt beef on the street but "couldn't take the pressure" and returned to a life of farming in the countryside, leaving Sugar's mother to raise alone her eight children. Growing up next door to a dancehall called Champagnie Lawn, Sugar was constantly exposed to music. "We couldn't go in this dancehall legally, so we have to make holes in the fence," Minott recalls. "I remember Delroy Wilson, Derrick Morgan and King Stitt. As small kids we used to imitate the dance with play things like cardboard box and condensed milk can."
When his mother saved enough money to move to a better neighborhood, Minott got the nickname "Sugar" because he was chubby. Circumstances saw the family quickly returning to the ghetto of Kingston 11, where Minott drifted into the African Brothers in the early 1970s. As Minott recalls, "Tony Tuff used to sit on an old car with a guitar at Delamere Avenue in a big yard where all of us used to meet and burn herb, learning to build a spliff in time to go to school. Tony Tuff was like our godfather-he was singing with Bop and the Beltones-and we meet a youth called Derrick Howard from the country, say his group was the African Brothers and he want us to join in it."
The group cut a number of inspiring tunes from 1974 for producers such as Rupie Edwards, Jimmy Radway and Clive Chin, while self-produced sides were issued via Micron Music, but after internal frictions intensified, Sugar made his break as a solo singer at Studio One. As Minott notes, "Coxsone used to pass on Delamere Avenue where we used to meet; there was a big bar in a back yard in the rough ghetto where they used to play sound system. Coxsone used to pass there and take a drink, then one time he came and listened to us and say, 'Yeah, it sound good.' After that, we decided this group's not working out, 'cause we kinda make an impression, but the music not going anywhere."
Minott was the first to suggest that Clement "Sir Coxsone" Dodd resurrect his original Studio One rhythm tracks for new vocal work, since rivals such as Channel One and Joe Gibbs were scoring their biggest hits with Studio One re-cuts; his resulting work for the label was spectacularly successful. "Many people say, 'I start singing at the Church,' but I start singing in the dance," Minott explains. "I've never been singing in the Church, I was a raggamuffin, so sound system was my beginning; I was playing sound system, so that's how we got to be singing on the Studio One records, because we only had to play the version from a Studio One record and make up our own song. When I went to Coxsone I already know what I wanted to sing, so when I went to this audition, it was a long line of people and I was the last. It was Coxsone himself say, 'Man, what you used to do before?' 'I was just in the country, planting some food.' 'I think you should go back there. What you used to do? You, come back next year.' I say, 'Look sir, I know you've got this rhythm, I can make a song for it.' When he heard he had the rhythm all ready, don't have to go and make no music, he said, 'Go home and come back tomorrow,' and that was it: I signed a contract to be at Studio One for one year and I was there for six years without no contract."
With fellow singers Johnny Osbourne and Freddy McGregor, Minott played an influential role in shifting Studio One towards the evolving dancehall genre and he also made a great contribution singing harmony and playing percussion on the work of peers like Jennifer Lara and Myrna Hague; Minott even sang on the gospel music Coxsone issued in this period. But Sugar was too independently minded to remain solely at Studio One, so in 1979 he left Dodd's camp to set up Black Roots, the label and sound system that eventually evolved into Youth Promotion. "Over the years, we're not collecting no royalty," Sugar recalls, "so it's like saying to him, 'Can I make some music for myself while making music for you?' but he wouldn't agree. But then the Soul Syndicate band was there and we have [Studio One bassist] Bagga [Walker] and [keyboardist] Pablove [Black] and we had youth like Steelie who was just learning to play; all these was my friends, so some guy give me $800 and I just beg my friends, the musicians, 'Hey, come play something for me, man,' so they all chipped in and the first songs I put out were all hits-'Man Hungry,' 'River Jordan'-and then we start producing and all the kids start following us, like Barry Brown and Tristan Palmer. It was just awesome: I had my van marked Black Roots maybe a month after leaving Studio One and I was dropping off records at Coxsone, trying to sell them."
The Black Roots album dates from these early days of Sugar's independence and is easily one of his best roots albums; as his only set for Island Records, it was also his first to be given major overseas promotion. Every song on the album is deeply heartfelt and delivered with much feeling and grace. "Mankind" warns that human folly has the potential to destroy the earth, while the enormously popular "Hard Time Pressure" gives a vivid account of ghetto hardship; "River Jordan" adapts a traditional hymn to speak of the need for repatriation and "Jail House" re-works the African Brothers' "Torturing" to lament society's victimization of the poor. "I'm Gonna Hold On" speaks of Sugar's determination to walk upright through life, while "Oppressor Oppression" speaks again of the continuous pressure of ghetto life; "Two Time Loser" tells how Sugar will win his love's desire despite early disappointments and the compelling title track explains Sugar's African lineage. "Clean Runnings" speaks of Sugar's aspirations while the closing "Mr Babylon Man" is a driving protest against the police's enduring antipathy towards Rasfatari.
Sugar subsequently explored lover's rock in London and New York in collaboration with Studio One stalwart Jackie Mittoo and recorded roots music for Lloyd "Bullwackie" Barnes; his successful cover of popular ballad "Good Thing Going" even brought him onto Top of the Pops, before a return to Jamaica saw him delving headlong into dancehall. He's made plenty of wonderful records since then and while he continues to nurture undiscovered talent for Youth Promotion, Black Roots remains a true classic of his roots period, reminding of his supreme skills as a songwriter and the exceptional quality of his vocal delivery during that phase. This is the very black root of Youth Promotion-Sugar Minott at his independent best.
- David Katz
David Katz is author of People Funny Boy: The Genius of Lee 'Scratch' Perry, published by Canongate, and Solid Foundation: An Oral History of Reggae, published by Bloomsbury.
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