Contents - Beth Lesser

friended by Early B who brought him around to sounds like Kilimanjaro.
“Early B was my teacher. He get me international. He start to make me travel
all about with himself… Early come to be a brother of mine. He start to take
me more s erious in the dancehall, tell me I must take the dancehall business
more seriously. It will put me somewhere. It kinda draw me out of the politics
a little bit too, you know. I take the music so serious that, if I [want to] go
anywhere, I have to cut down with the politics.”
His first step towards moving more seriously in music was to change his
name, Junglist, for a more adaptable stage name, one that wouldn’t create serious
misunderstandings. “At one time, I remember when Jaro a play a Backbush,
them time there them call me Junglist [meaning a man from PNP area,
Concrete Jungle] pon the sound. Little Twitch call me round [to the mic] and
say, ‘Come in Junglist! Come lick two shot’. And a juke, the man them juke
down the dance say, ‘Whe’ the Junglist wha’ carry the Bushy [Bushmaster
gun] with him’. Twitch have fe tell them, seh, ‘No, a so we call him pon the
sound.’ And the man them said to Twitch, ‘Unu fe change him name, you
know’. And Twitch gave a name ‘Don Lickshot’ and one night me deh a
Skateland, and Jaro and Scorpio [clash] and Early B call me, and Twitch take
the mic from him and say “Come in, Don Lickshot” and Early B said to him,
“No, that name deh no fit him, a Joe Lickshot him a go name’, and that’s how
Joe Lickshot a stick pon me from 1985.”
Soon, Lickshot was getting recording offers. His first came from his sparring
partner, Jah Thomas, for whom he contributed effects on songs like Early
B’s ‘Cane Man a Fe Bathe’ and ‘New York Party’. He also appeared on ‘Lean
Boot’, sung by Michael Palmer, Early B’s ‘Rambo Mi Rambo’ and Little
Twitch’s ‘All Rounder’.
kilimanjaro afTer The arrival of STur-marS inTernaTional
Sometime after the sound hit its peak in ’85, Jaro began losing ground.
The problem was the new super-sound from Mandeville run by Skeng Man.
Skeng had Tenorsaw and Cocoa Tea on the sound, singing. He had Nicodemus
toasting, and Nicodemus was a great pal of Supercat. So Cat jumped ship
and went to Stur-Mars where he was joined by Burro Banton and, eventually,
selector Ainsley Grey. The last straw for Noel Harper was when singer Puddy
Roots left Jaro to tour Canada with Metromedia.
Noel Harper recalls, “Things actually changed quite a bit when Stur-Mars
came. At that time, Kilimanjaro sound was considered the leading sound.
We had the leading deejays as well. When Stur-Mars came on the scene and
Supercat, Buro Banton and Ainsley went over there, we actually slowed down
a bit. The only good thing is that we had a lot of reservations. In those days,
people usually book dance in advance. So, it’s not like anybody came up and
canceled because they heard these guys were no longer there.”
Things were looking grim, but Jaro wasn’t finished yet. Although the
sound stopped playing for a while, Mr. Harper eventually got a new selector,
230 | RUB A DUB STYLE – The Roots of Modern Dancehall