Contents - Beth Lesser

General Echo &
Stereophonic
A fter bubbling underground in the dancehall for years, slackness suddenly
leapt forward in the late ‘70s to become the most popular drawing card
in the session, the required style for a rising deejay who wanted to attract attention.
While the peace treaty had been in effect, deejays had begun to hear
slackness in session in other neighborhoods and began to bring it back to their
individual communities. By 1980, deejays who couldn’t contribute their own
little slack talk got left behind.
The king for slackness at the time was the legendary General Echo, aka
Ranking Slackness. A humble man with a wicked sense of humor, General
Echo (Earl Robinson) was born in 1955 and grew up on Maiden Lane, Kingston,
Jamaica. An only child, he was doted on by his mother after his father
died leaving the two of them alone. Although she was a devout Christian,
(“a real church going woman”, according to Sister Nancy), who toiled long
and hard to support her son, Echo’s mother never interfered with his musical
career. And, he in turn, always lived with her and supported her with his
earnings. Echo’s mother also wisely stayed out of the way when Echo was
practicing on his little component set around the back of the house. Out of
deference, Echo used to keep the sound turned low while he rehearsed.
In 1975, Echo was just starting out. He ran a little sound system of his
own, Echotone Hifi, playing mainly soul records. But when he heard Ranking
Joe deejaying his slackness, Echo was moved to take up talking.
The various peace treaties freed the people in Kingston to travel out of
their own districts to dances and allowed the slackness style to spread. Deejay
Sassafrass recalls, “That was when things really open up. Because, previous to
that, you couldn’t move around, leave from one area to another to another. So,
that really opened it up and that’s when Echo really get to shine now. Cause
he could go places, both in Laborite area and Socialist area. So, he was really
in demand – on both sides.”
Deejay Welton Irie agreed, “In 1978, when all the warring political gangs
made peace, that’s when dancehall exploded, ‘cause everybody could go anywhere.
People, who normally couldn’t go somewhere, could go. So, the crowd
was big, thick! Echotone now was a very small sound and the dances would
be so packed you could hardly hear the sound – they would be blocking it.”
Because of his wide appeal, Echo began to come under pressure from local
bosses. Typically, political meetings were wrapped up with a dance running
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