Contents - Beth Lesser

to day runnings. Not just anyone, but someone skilled in the art of musical
warfare, who could lead Jaro into battle and emerge triumphant. With deejay
Jim Kelly up front, the sound had been making a name, so the time was right
to make the big push.
Whether he was aware of it at the time or not, Mr. Harper had come upon
a true warrior in selector Ainsley Grey, a man able to focus on winning with
his entire being. Ainsley’s arrival, in 1982, gave Jaro the force and the stamina
needed to annihilate every sound it encountered on its way to the top. With
Ainsley on board now, Jaro discontinued the soul music and became a pure
rub-a-dub sound. “It was a perfect match,” recounts Ainsley. “What happened
now, I turned Jaro into a killer sound, a killing machine.”
With Ainsley, the sound had a new, aggressive style that hadn’t been seen
before on the ‘80s dancehall circuit. Competitions between sounds had always
been serious business, but there was an element of driven pursuit that
marked Jaro’s style as something new. “In this business, the way I select, I
don’t take any prisoners,” Ainsley warns. “I just have one aim – to kill and
destroy.”
ainSley
At the time, Ainsley Grey had been working in Herman Chin Loy’s Aquarius
Recording studio as an apprentice engineer. But he wasn’t satisfied. “I’m a
kinda rebel guy, so I always like the hard core stuff. So, I just spent a year there
and someone introduced me to Skateland, to Jingles and we became very good
friends, and I used to hang out there with Jingles, play music there for a time.
There always be skating there, so you always have the in-house sound playing.
So, I always there playing all the time – day and night.”
A mutual friend named Ted (who later became the sound’s van driver) told
Mr. Harper about Ainsley and Mr. Harper had him come and play the sound
for an office party around Christmas time. “I guess he liked me and liked how
I play. He introduced me to his wife, Mrs. Pauline Harper, and he told his
wife, he got the right man.”
He did have the right man, the man with the ambition to take Jaro all the
way. “Jaro is a rub-a-dub sound and rub-a-dub is in my blood. I don’t like
play nothing else but rub-a-dub. I’m capable of playing everything, but I’m
an aggressive person and Jaro is a rub-a-dub sound. When I met [Papa] Jaro,
he had everything. He got all those musics – that is one thing that kept me
there. He got all these musics – these Studio Ones, hard core music. And that
is what I wanted.”
Ainsley attributes this forceful approach to the alliance between himself
and Papa Jaro. “It was a combination, cause Jaro, he’s the chief of staff of this
rub-a-dub sound business and I was like the field commander. We moved this
rub-a-dub thing to a different level. If I’m playing against another sound, my
aim was to destroy that sound and never let it come back and play. I was like
a destructive force.”
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