Contents - Beth Lesser

say to me or reject me. They took me serious after a while. Cause I keep going
there. Everywhere they play, I’d be on the truck back with them. Them say,
‘We cyaan get rid of this gal! We cyaan get rid of this gal! Everywhere we go
she follow we’.”
Finally, they gave in. After months of hanging around, Stereophonic gave
her a break. Big John made her one of the crew. “They say, ‘OK, you know
what, you’re on the payroll.’ So, each dance, they would give me $50. By the
time I get $50 – man, I was rich! I was rich! I could buy anything, and everything.
More than three days, I have that $50 spending. Stereophonic [owner
Big John] was the first person who pay me $50.”
Echo really supported his female artists, and they were considered part of
the crew. “Echo was the teacher then,” Lady Anne recalled. “Echo did just
love us. He just love us, me and Nancy. So, I would say Echo is a great inspiration
for both me and Nancy. He took us everywhere he was going and he
would show us how to grab the mic. He was the real big man behind us then.”
While Echo was being chastised for “degrading women” on the microphone,
he was the first one to open up opportunities for them in what was, up to that
point, a totally male dominated field.
At the time, Anne was only working part time, but Nancy never left.
“Nancy used to go every night,” Anne explains. “I never used to go every
night. I had to go to school. So you find I go three or four nights out of the
week, but Nancy go seven days.”
It was her older brother Brigadier that really inspired Nancy. “I used to
listen to him so much. Usually when he used to take a shower, that’s when
you would hear him deejay. For real! Some nights we can’t find him and we’ll
be in the back of the yard and we hear his voice coming from up in the hills
and he is over in the hills on Emperor Marcus [sound]. He’s doing what he
does. And I tell myself, ‘I can do that! I know I can do that’. I start follow
him without his knowledge and I would go to dance. Once in a while, when
I know he’s not there, I may try talk on the mic, and when he comes and he
hear, he is mad! I couldn’t go where my brother was ‘cause he didn’t want me
there. He don’t want me in the dance. When I come, he would tell me, ‘Go
home! Go home!’”
At the time that Echo was killed in 1980, Nancy was pregnant. “I waited
until I had my baby. Then I started with Studio 54 and Aces with Yellowman.”
In 1980 she recorded her first LP with Winston Riley, One Two, with
her Transport Connection lyrics on it She followed it up in 1982 with The
Yellow, The Purple & The Nancy, featuring Yellowman & Fathead along with
Waterhouse deejay Purpleman. Riley also made her the first women to record
over his ‘Stalag 17’ rhythm resulting in the hit, ‘Bam Bam’, a massive hit. A
remix of the song by Krinjah in 2001 created a sensation, and a big revival for
Nancy who went on to voice a fresh version of it for RCola in 2006, leading
to its being sampled and mixed into several hip hop hits.
92 | RUB A DUB STYLE – The Roots of Modern Dancehall