Contents - Beth Lesser

guys them refused.” In the end, it was his mother who gave him the capital
required capital to get started.
That’s when things got difficult in the group. “Every guy start get jealous
and want more than what him pay, although I give them enough – more
than anybody what anybody else would give them.” The personnel was changing
frequently, which was especially tricky for a tight harmony group. “Slim
Smith [left], then you have Fredrick Waite. You have a lot of changes in group.
We have Junior Menz, then we have Pat Kelly, then you have Winston Francis
(who do ‘Go Find Yourself a Fool’). When one guy gone, we put in a next guy.
And I have to find a guy what match my sound.”
Despite the constant rotation (the group, at various times, also included
Dave Barker, Lloyd Parkes, and Bruce Ruffin), The Techniques kept putting
out hits. The group had some of the most successful and memorable songs
ever in Jamaican music, songs like ‘You Don’t Care’, ‘Play Girl’, ‘Love is Not a
Gamble’, ‘My Girl’, ‘Queen Majesty’, ‘I Wish it Would Rain’, and ‘Traveling
Man,’ all for Riley’s newly formed Techniques label.
Many singers and deejays came out with a label and jumped into producing,
but most had a couple of records and were never heard from again. Riley,
however, hit it big right off the top. In 1971, Riley had the rare privilege of
scoring a number one on the UK charts. ‘Double Barrel’, by Dave and Ancell
Collins, features Dave Barker’s toasting, with interjections of ‘work!’ and the
repeated phrase, “I am the magnificent, double 0,0,0”, over a funky, upbeat
instrumental. The follow up, Monkey Spanner, went all the way to a respectable
number six.
“How that song [‘Double Barrel’] come about, I said to myself, let me
make something different, like a ‘rapping’. Then the tune hit. It never hit in
Jamaica, but it keep on playing. Then we sell it to England, to Trojan. Then
Trojan put it out and it hit the British charts. Some people hear it and start to
play it and it reach number one and I went on a tour.”
In the late ‘70s, Riley opened his Record Shack, a tiny, closet sized hut on
Chancery Lane, just up a little ways from where Gregory Isaacs was to open
his headquarters, the record shop, African Museum. “That Record Shack on
Chancerly Lane was one of the biggest record establishment, although it is a
very small place,” Riley recalls. From the one room, Riley sold records and
distributed his productions. And that’s where artists came who were new and
looking to break into the business.
One of those artists was General Echo. Riley knew of Echo’s formidable
reputation in the dancehall as the king of slackness but decided to record him
‘clean’, at least at first, and released the now classic, ‘Arlene’ (1979), over Riley’s
most frequently versioned rhythm ever, ‘Stalag 17’. The original version
of the rhythm was an instrumental by Ancel Collins in 1974. “I have one of
the biggest tune in the entire world,” Riley explains confidently, “the ‘Stalag’
sell millions. King Tubbys is the one who launch it out. He was young and
him have him sound, so he was the one who really get it out to the people.”
| 233