Byron Lee

小

在雷鬼甚至ska传播到加勒比海之外之前，拜仁里就已经是第一个牙买加音乐的乐队了，并且在牙买加音乐的国际化道路上，承担了一个生死攸关的角色。当鲍勃马利刚刚开始奋斗和他的乐队有一点点名气的时候，拜仁李可能是当时国际上最知名的牙买加乐队的领导

In the years before reggae or even ska was known outside of the Caribean, Byron Lee was the first band leader to achieve an international following playing Jamaican music, and played a vital role in popularizing it around the world. And when Bob Marley was a struggling young musician and of the little-known Wailers, Byron Lee was probably the most well-known Jamaican band leader in the world.

Lee was 20 years old when he formed his band the Dragonaires in 1956. They began making a name for themselves almost immediate, as a kind of big-band equivalent to the solo Calypso singing that Harry Belafonte (and Sir Lancelot before him) brought to enormous popularity in the late 1950s. Touring behind Belafonte, they became internationally famous, and justifiably so-they played Calypso and the ska, but their musicianship was impeccable in any idiom, with a trumpet and sax section that couldve passed muster with any big band, and Lees bass playing itself was extraordinarily distinctive. With Lee leading and manager Ronnie Nasralla co-producing and handling the business arrangements, the Dragonaires made all of the right moves.

They were also lucky enough to be signed to Edward Seagas WIRL (West Indies Recording Limited) label, which was not only a new and powerful label, but notably honest in paying its artists. Lee had a hit in 1959 with his WIRL debut, Dumplings, which also became the first release of the British-based Bluebeat label.

One of their other shrewd moves was getting featured in the debut James Bond movie, Dr. No (1962). Largely shot in and around Kingston, the film was filled with local Jamaican color, right down to the Calypso number that closed the credits and opened the action, but Lee and the Dragonaires had the choicest spot of all as a musical showcase, playing the song Jump Up in the scene at Pussfellers club where Bond and his allies discuss the mystery before them, and confront an agent of the opposition wielding a lively camera. Millions of people saw the movie, either in its initial release or on its re-release to theaters in 1964, after the success of Goldfinger, and they saw and heard Byron Lee and the Dragonaires, who were also all over the Dr. No soundtrack from United Artists, which sold in the hundreds of thousands. (The scene in which Lee and his band appear is doubly interesting from the standpoint of cultural happenstance; among the extras dancing to the bands music is a white Jamaican named Chris Blackwell, who formed Island Records about a year later-in that one scene are two of the biggest and most important entrepreneurs in Jamaican music crossing paths).

One of the first ska bands, the Dragonaires-a 14-piece outfit whose line-up was always changing (and sometimes worked under the name the Ska Kings)—toured throughout the Caribbean and into North America, spreading the ska sound. Lee opened a concert booking and promotion agency in the early 1960s, Lee Enterprises Limited, as well as his own label, Dragons Breath. He brought American acts like the Drifters, Chuck Berry, Sam Cooke, and Fats Domino into Jamaica, booking them into the Carib and Regal Theaters, with local Jamaican acts opening for them.

Lees big year was 1964, when he and the Dragonaires played the New York Worlds Fair, in their own set and backing Prince Buster, Eric Morris, and Peter Tosh. They were all a sensation at the fair, and even managed to work in some major gigs at some of Manhattans best nightclubs. It spread their names into the gossip columns (there werent any music columns as we know them today) and newspaper entertainment sections, and did wonders to boost Jamaicas tourism to even higher levels.

That same year, Lee made his biggest business move, buying WIRL from Edward Seaga (now a government minister, in fact the very one who had booked Lee into the Worlds Fair) and renaming it Dynamic Sounds Recording, Inc. He also began establishing a relationship with Ahmet Ertegun at Atlantic Records, which resulted in his first release on an American label, the multi-artist compilation Jamaican Ska, and a follow-up, Jump Up, that was all Lee and his band, and gave him the distribution rights to Atlantics r&b releases in the Carribean.

Amid all of those business activities, Lee maintained a full performing and recording schedule, cutting singles regularly and albums at least once a year after the mid-1960s. In addition to his own singles, these frequently contained covers of other artists ska hits of the period.

Lee was eminently successful, although in later years, he would incur the editorial wrath of writers who regarded his dance band as a pale, watered down version of ska, compared to outfits like the Skatalites, the Maytals, or the Wailers. Lee and his band, however, did more to popularize ska and Jamaican music than any performer of the 1960s. Coupled with the success in 1964 of Millie Smalls Island Records single My Boy Lollipop, which sold upwards of six million copies worldwide, it was the opening of a booming musical era for Jamaican music.

By 1969, Lee was owner of the best recording studio in Kingston, and Dynamic Sounds became the most popular recording venue in the entire Caribean. By the early 1970s, the biggest American and English rock stars had discovered its appeal, including the Rolling Stones, Paul Simon and Eric Clapton. Paul Simons Mother And Child Reunion, in particular, became a showcase for Lees studio. Meanwhile, he continued making his own music, having evolved from ska to reggae and, by the late 1970s, to the soca style. For all of their supposed watered-down nature, Lee and the Dragonaires have maintained a following right into the end of the twentieth century, their Jamaican dancehall-influenced sound delighting crowds at the annual Carnival celebration. Lee and his band also cut annual collections of covers of the years most popular Carnival hits, an extension of his early- and mid-1960s covers of ska hits.