Issue 09
THE LEGENDS OF SKA
By Joey AltrudaPhotography By David Jiro
Illustration By Kristian Henson
Desmond Dekker
When ska was in its infancy, Desmond Dekker was a teenage welder in Kingston, his spirited voice filling the workshop and catching the attention of his fellow workers. With their encouragement, he decided in 1961 to audition for Sir Coxsone Dodd and Duke Reid, but was met with rejection. Undaunted, Dekker next tried his luck with producer Leslie Kong, auditioning before Derrick Morgan and wowing the singer. Two years later, Dekker released his first single, “Honour Your Father and Mother,” and the track went straight to the top of Jamaica’s charts. He followed it with a string of similarly respectful and morally upright releases, all of them hits.
In 1967, Dekker broadened his appeal and gained icon status on the mean streets of Kingston, thanks to his chart-topper “007 (Shanty Town),” later featured on the epic soundtrack to the Jimmy Cliff film The Harder They Come. The song quickly became an anthem for “rudeboy” gangsters, decades before N.W.A. similarly thugged out hip-hop. It was also Dekker’s first major success in the U.K., where it found a home within the mod revolution that was driving the nation’s youth culture.
The following year, Dekker released the soulful lament “Israelites,” which eventually rose to the top of the U.K. charts—the first Jamaican record ever to do so. “Israelites” also reached the Top Ten in the U.S., where audiences were just starting to discover the island sound. Dekker never had another song reach the same heights, but thanks to the legacy of “Israelites” and the string of solid releases before and after it, he maintained a strong fan following over the course of his four-decade career.
Dekker passed away in May 2006 of a heart attack at the age of 64 at his home in London, where he had lived for over 20 years. Though he is now departed, Dekker remains a legend to fans of Jamaican music, surpassed in fame only by Bob Marley
Desmond Dekker
Derrick Morgan
Alton Ellis
Owen Gray
Rico Rodriguez