Contents - Beth Lesser

produCinG
At this point, with so much going for him, Ranger, like so many other
deejays and singers, began to feel the need to control his own product. So, he
got together with Clive Jarrett and formed the Dynamite label with the support
of Sly and Robbie who played on the tracks. The first release was Ranger’s
‘Johnny Make You Bad So’ 45, followed by the album, Hi Yo Silver Away
which was released by Greensleeves in 1981. The producing team followed up
with several releases with Carlton Livingston including the classics, ‘Marie,
Confusion’ and ‘Rumors’. Dynamite also released Welton Irie’s LP, Army Life.
Meanwhile, Ranger developed his own label called Silver Bullet.
Around this time, Ranger left Jamaica, like so many other artists, and took
up residence in New York. Chester explains the move, “His mother and brothers
had gone. He was the only one here [in Jamaica] after his old man died. So
him do some show and him start tour with a bredder name Sam [Selkridge]
and then, one of the times, him never bother come back. Get himself straight,
and get him green card and stay up there.” When he abandoned his homeland,
Ranger left the job of maintaining slackness in the dancehall to his east
side buddies, Welton Irie and Ringo, who carried it on with conviction.
Once in New York, Ranger did the rounds of appearances on stage shows
and sound systems. Then came the missing years during which nobody heard
very much from him. As happened to so many other artists who left promising
careers in Jamaica, New York seemed to swallow him whole. There were
some Silver Bullet releases out of New York, like the disco 45 of ‘Four Season
Lover’ with Ranger back into singing mode, proving himself a competent
balladeer, as well as some combo tunes with Carlton Livingston and Sammy
Dread. In 1984, Ranger recorded the LP, D.J. Daddy for Winston Riley, and
1985 also saw the release of ‘Learn fe Drive’, for Clive Jarrett. Then, nothing
much until the 1994 LP Collections was released. Still, Collections was basically
a sampler containing work from his previous releases, not new material
Coming to New York proved the downfall of many Jamaican artists. Lone
Ranger was one of the fortunate ones who went through the worst and had
the strength and courage to come out of it alive. “In 1984-85, when the cocaine
was the ‘in’ thing in New York, if you didn’t have a dollar bill filled with
cocaine, you weren’t partying. Remember those days? That was the ‘in’ thing.
You go to Reggae Lounge, you go to Manhattan, you go to Brooklyn, you go
to Bronx session – everywhere. Some of them get in the game and can’t come
out. Some of them get dead in the game. Some of us go through the struggle
and manage to get out of it.”
The result was almost a decade of silence. Apart from a handful of 45s,
Ranger recorded nothing until 2002 when his loyal friend of so many years,
Coxsone Dodd, released the LP Top of the Class. That gave him the boost he
needed to jump back in and start working again in earnest.
Like many of the founding dancehallers, Ranger found his niche as a producer
and began working once again, choosing artists he really respected,
120 | RUB A DUB STYLE – The Roots of Modern Dancehall