Contents - Beth Lesser

But the owner ran into some problems. Mr. Brown owned a tow truck
and ended up with a government contract after a new law was put in place
that cars parked in no-parking zone would be towed. In the over-heated atmosphere
of the mid ‘70s, even that was enough to arouse suspicions that the
sound was affiliated with one of the two political parties.
“We had a nice era playing all over the place,” Trevor recalls. “But them
start class it as politics sound and they say we play for one party and we don’t
play for the other.” Although they attempted to play “neutral boarders”, the
incidence of violence increased. The owner wasn’t involved in politics, but
the area they were in was getting hotter as the ‘76 election drew near. “They
used to shoot up King Attorney so much,” Trevor continues. “When them
shoot up the dance, they took all the records, all the dubplates. They did it in
Greenwhich Farm, and they come back and do it in Barbicon. The politicians
on the other side. This set of guys decide that we are not playing for them,
so they want to kill the sound. And that’s the time my brother-in-law [Mr
Brown] sell the sound”.
Mr. Brown decided to give up the sound and retire from entertainment.
“After Rupert, this political activist from Trenchtown, the top part of Trenchtown,
they call it Concrete Jungle, by the name of Tony Welch, he bought the
sound,” U Brown explains. “And when he bought the sound, he played the
sound for the first two or three years under the name of King Attorney, same
way. And then after that, the People’s National Party wins the election [in
1976], they changed the name to Socialist Roots because Tony Welch, he was
a member of the People’s National Party which is a socialist party”
Once the sound was sold and officially re-christened Socialist Roots, the
violence stopped. “When those guys get to own the sound nobody didn’t
bother it,” Adds Trevor. “Cause they know those type of guy. It’s only when it
was King Attorney, it used to get problems.”
With the change, Danny Dread and Trevor remained and were joined by
Nicodemus * and Jah Mikey. Even singers came, as Jah Mikey recalls. “Barry
Brown used to sing on Papa Roots all the while. Linval Thompson and dem
man deh have fe pass through and sing out, [even] Little Roy.” U Roy had
gone off to start his own Stur-Gav sound and was replaced by U Brown who
was a carryover from the U Roy School of deejaying.
u Brown
During his increasingly frequent flights overseas for concerts and record promotion,
U Roy needed an understudy to fill in for him on King Tubby’s
sound. U Brown just happened to live in the neighborhood and could sound
identical to the teacher himself.
“In the ‘60s, U Roy was living in Kingston 11, which he still does, but he
was living a little further up from where his house is now. I wasn’t living far
* Even the legendary Nicodemus had to start out on the sound as a box man
38 | RUB A DUB STYLE – The Roots of Modern Dancehall