Contents - Beth Lesser

Chaka Demus on ‘One Scotch, One Bourbon’ * , also for Jammy. But the singer
– deejay combo soon conquered the territory.
The riSe of GuSSie Clarke
Slowly, in small steps, the music began to become more commercial, more
North American. It began to acquire that sophisticated, urban feel of post-
disco pop and soul. The man who helped guide music in this international
direction was producer Augustus ‘Gussie’ Clarke.
“Gussie had a superb team of song writers and musicians around him for a
few years at the end of the ‘80s – Hopeton Lindo, Mikey Bennet – really good
people, and he produced some really classic work then,” Tony McDemott of
Greensleeves Records explains. “He took the whole digital thing to a diffident
level. The digital thing had started a year or two earlier but he brought it to a
much more professional level.”
From 1988 until 1990, Gussie ruled. The veteran producer now manned
a slick operation matching singers to songs and songs to rhythms. Deejay
Shabba Ranks, with his deep, resonant bass vocals, was his star performer,
and Gussie cleverly exploited his strong, rumbling voice by recording him in
a series of duets with various softer, gentler sounding female vocalists. With
Krystal, he had ‘Steady Man’ and ‘Don’t Test Me’. With Deborah Glasgow,
he had ‘Mr. Lover Man’. And with J.C. Lodge, he had ‘Hard Core Living’
and the mega hit, ‘Deh Pon Me Mind /Telephone Love’ which gave Shabba
his first big overseas success. Gussie had found a way to appeal both to the
uptown crowd and the ragamuffins by mixing two genres onto one new one
12 inch 45, the best of both lover’s rock and dancehall combined in a savory
new mix. The format worked well because each member of the pair accentuated
the sensuality of the other. Shabba’s sandpaper vocals made J.C. Lodge,
or Krystal, sound even more tender and vulnerable. And the singer’s soothing
tones highlighted the strength of the hard edged talkers.
“Some of [Gussie’s] biggest hits were combination tunes and that became
another kind of phase [in reggae]… putting deejays and singers on the same
tunes,” Greensleeves’ Chris Sedgwick recalls. “That certainly did carry the
swing for quite a while and obviously lead to Chaka Demus and Pliers huge
international success. Even Shaggy would often have singers on the massive
hits he had. The international market liked that. They can’t take a deejay
through an entire tune. With a singer in between, they seem to like it. The
deejay then comes through to punctuate it.”
Gussie had been producing reggae music since the ‘70s. He started out
in the business by acquiring a dub cutting machine second hand and having
Tubby fix it up for him. He used to keep it at his home on Church Street and
cut dubplates for sound systems like Emperor Faith and Arrows.
His first big producing success was the influential and celebrated 45,
* Original by Amos Milburn
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