Contents - Beth Lesser

ing Ranger to have his greatest success with his next release in 1981 (back
again with Studio One), the rollicking 45, ‘Love Bump’.
The lyrics were inspired by a recent news story about some canned fish that
had gone bad. Ranger explains the story behind ‘Love Bump’, “Bob Marley
was around in those times – well, you know Bob Marley and the dreadlocks-
he was going to foreign countries and the white people were starting to locks. *
Hippies all turn on to Bob Marley music. They were coming to Jamaica a lot.
“During that period of time, we had some problems in Jamaica with the
tin mackerel. Mackerel used to come in tin and some bad batch would come
to Jamaica and you would eat it and get ptomaine poisoning and bumps. ** All
that was going on in Jamaica.”
Somehow, people got it mixed up and thought that the ‘hippies’ (or white
rastas) were bringing the ‘bumps’ in. So, it turned into a big controversy –
some people said it was the food, some blamed the hippies. So, Ranger tied it
all to another ‘bump’, the ‘love bumps’ as Jamaicans would call a teen’s first
pimples. “You know when you’re young and you fall in love, you start to get
pimples on your face, they say, ‘Oh, that’s a love bump. You’re in love. You
have a girl’,” Ranger explains.
Like Echo, Ranger presented the story with humor, imitations, and interjections
– more like a routine than just a song. Done over the Studio One
version of Slim Smith’s rock steady classic ‘Rougher Yet’, ‘Love Bump’ was
upbeat, cheerful, and the lyrics were catchy. Ranger animated the songs by
emphasizing certain words and varying his vocal range. Love Bump became
one of the most well known and well loved songs of the entire decade and
Ranger one of the biggest stars.
“I was so hot on sound system at that time. I was deejaying seven nights a
week all over Jamaica, and tapes *** were going all over the world,” Ranger recalled.
Cassettes of dance with Ranger at the mic where being passed around
at home and abroad like hot potatos. The mark of a good deejays was always
the value placed on cassette recordings of his performances on a sound. Ranger
tapes were in high demand. His friend in New York, deejay Mikey Jarrett ****
got a hold of one and took it to Jojo Hookim at Channel One and told him,
“Listen to this deejay!” It was brilliant marketing. Mikey played Jojo the part
of the dance cassette where Ranger was toasting live over rhythms that had
been made in the Channel One studio, and told Jojo, “You get him to voice
them on an album, that would be a seller!” Ranger continues, “When Jojo
heard it, I got a phone call in Jamaica, ‘I want you to go round by Channel
* Grow dreadlocks
** The song said, “How you get the hippy bump? Through me nyam tin mackerel and feel ill”. “Nyam”
means ‘to eat’.
*** Cassette recordings of the dances
**** Mikey Jarrett was a polular deejay who had emigrated early on to NY. Had an ex-pat hit with Sadat
for Jah Life in 1981 and in 1983, started his own label, What’s Up Doc.
116 | RUB A DUB STYLE – The Roots of Modern Dancehall