Contents - Beth Lesser

When the shop closed, Junie saw Nancy come. “That’s the first time I
met Nancy. And when she came, Mr. Riley said to her, this is Junie Ranks.
She’s from old Harbour and we gonna take her to the studio and record her
tonight’. Nancy was like, ‘Oh please!’ She never say that in words to me but,
you know, you see somebody come and feel like that’s a threat to you now. If
you talk to Nancy, she will tell you all of that. We just laugh.”
They all went to Channel One and Junie was placed in the big voicing
room with the earphones on and the air conditioner blasting, getting progressively
more nervous by the minute. The first take was a disaster. “I was all over
the rhythm”. Nancy was in the control room with the engineer, trying to tell
her, through the glass, to get back on key. Finally, with enough coaching, she
recorded the final take of her first 45.
But when it came time to go home, Mr. Riley had to explain that there
weren’t any buses going back to Old Harbour that time of night. Junie had
nowhere to go, until Nancy offered to let her sleep at her house. Nancy was
living with deejay Bruk Back at the time, and the two were sharing the one
bed in the house. “So, she told me I could sleep at the end of the bed. But the
mattress, it was like go down in a hole. So I lay down and I hold on to the
bed. The whole time I hold onto the bed, cause if I let it go, I might just roll
down on both of them.”
Junie’s first recording was ‘Counteraction’, followed by a series of 45s
including ‘Gimme Di Buddy’, ‘Cry Fe Me Boops’, ‘Big and Ready’, ‘Bruk
Pocket Man’, ‘Tell Them’, and ‘Shirley Duppy’. Now that Junie had become
part of the Techniques crew, alongside artists like Nancy, Supercat, Johnny P,
Admiral Tibet and Red Dragon, she was taken care of. “I was just fortunate to
be on Techniques label so that anything I did at that time, I never go wrong,
cause I was on a big label.” Mr. Riley actively promoted his artists and Junie
eventually was able to branch out and work with other labels including Kangol,
Penthouse and King Tubby’s labels, Taurus and Firehouse.
Third wave: women in Their own wriTe – lady G
Although female deejays’ big breakthrough came in the mid eighties, the
dancehall life still wasn’t as easy for a woman. Women artists struggled on
many fronts. Pregnancy and child bearing, for example, put many a career on
hold. Sexual harassment appeared in the Jamaican recording industry much
as it did in other parts of Jamaica, in a society that gave men power over reproductive
choices but with little of the responsibility.
Janice Fyffe (Lady G) had a few things to say to the men, and she said them
in many popular recordings. To the Casanovas looking to use women, Lady
G said, ‘Breeze Off!’ “It’s just a little female harassment thing,” She explained.
“Me just tell the man them fe ease off.”
No bother come ya with you gally-gally trend
Just ease off, breeze off
278 | RUB A DUB STYLE – The Roots of Modern Dancehall