Reggae in the UK has been sporadic to say the least. Originating from ska in the late 50s it has had various spin-off names like bluebeat, lovers rock and, in more recent times, dancehall. Bob Marley is the undisputed king of reggae, but it’s always been there in the background. Occasionally it’s popped its head out to the fore, notably in the late 60s with Max Romeo, Johnny Nash and Desmond Dekker, then again in the 70s with, apart from Marley, Dave & Ansil Collins, John Holt and Janet Kay. In the 21st century, it’s Beenie Man, Sean Paul and Vybz Kartel who fly the flag. In 1993, along came Shaggy with a revival of the 50s track and it made reggae more fun and bigger than ever for a few years.
When you hear the name Shaggy, you’ll immediately think of the character from the Scooby Doo cartoon, well that’s exactly where he got his nickname. He was born Orville Richard Burrell in Jamaica in 1968, and given his nickname by school friends not only from the cartoon, but because of his shaggy hair. At 18 his family moved to Brooklyn, New York where Shaggy began performing with a group of Jamaican friends who called themselves Sting International. Among that group was Shaun Pizzonia who later became Shaggy’s sole producer.
At 20 he joined the Marines and was stationed in North Carolina. In his spare time he continued performing, occasionally driving back to New York for a recording session. He released his first single, Man In Mi Yard which didn’t sell well. The follow-ups, Mampie and Big Up went to number one on the New York reggae chart. He also met Brooklyn singer Rayvon, with whom he would record a cover of Mungo Jerry’s In The Summertime in 1995.
When he had completed a four-year stint in the Marines, in which he was involved in the Gulf War’s ‘Operation Desert Storm’, he continued recording. He heard an old ska track from 1959 called Carolina which was written by John Folkes and recorded by him with his brothers, Mico and Eric ‘Junior’ Folkes and released in Jamaica on Prince Buster’s own label but on Blue Beat in the UK. It was also produced by Prince Buster, who, at the time, was working as a DJ and bouncer for the reggae producer Duke Reid. Shaggy’s version incorporated a sample from Henry Mancini’s version of Peter Gunn. Initially it was only a hit locally until it gained some international promotion.
The song, which was the only song the Folkes Brothers recorded, and actually just called Carolina, was laid down at Prince Buster’s studio with Owen Gray on piano, a backing singer called Skitter and Count Ossie on drums. There have been claims that Prince Buster never got paid, but I doubt that we’ll ever get to the bottom of that story.
So, who were the Folkes Brothers? In a lengthy, but fascinating, interview with Roger Steffens in 1994, John Folkes revealed, “I was born in Trench Town, the bedrock of Jamaican music. My father was a minister of religion in the Church of God, a Pentecostal Church. You had problems in terms of just surviving, finding food on the table and so forth, but there was always the music, there was the religion, the sports, and the sense of belonging in a community. I actually composed it with a pencil in my hand on my doorsteps in 1953. The other details of the composition itself I want to remain as an Arcanum at this stage. But I will say this much: A variety of interesting elements conjoined in my creation of the song,” he continued, “I knew it was going to be a hit. In the yard first, they just say ‘Whoa!’ and this was before the drumming or the background or anything , just the tune itself with the backup with my brothers. When I sang in those days I always got a gathering, and people would do a kind of dip dance to it, not ska, and I realised it was a different kind of song. It was that well received then, before I met Count Ossie.”
Greensleeves Records, which was formed in 1978, was a specialist reggae label. Despite releasing over 300 records, they had never had a UK hit until they issued Shaggy’s remake of Oh Carolina. It was released in the UK in January 1993 and failed to make an impact for six weeks. It was then included in the Sharon Stone film Sliver, which helped it rocket to number one. the film also featured UB40’s sub-standard cover of Can’t Help Falling In Love.
In March 1993, Oh Carolina spent two weeks at number one and on its second week it was reggae’s greatest resurgence because Snow, a white rapper from Canada, was at number two with Informer and Shabba Ranks’ Mr Loverman was at number three, an achievement Bob Marley would have been proud of.
In the UK, a new craze was taking hold. Ragga, a dancehall variation of reggae, was characterised by its use of computerised beats and involves the singer ‘toasting’, which itself is a more frenzied style of talking over the backing track and first used by Jamaican disc jockeys. The patois often referred to guns, homophobia and misogyny.
In 1994 the UK female ragga duo, Louchie Lou and Michie One released a cover of the Isley Brothers’ Shout, which sampled the rhythm of Oh Carolina.
The original is often referred to as the first reggae record, but what did John Folkes think of it? “It’s not really true. It did influence the reggae movement but I think of Carolina the way I do Emily Bronte’s Wuthering Heights. It stands there in literature by itself refusing to be analysed in traditional terms. Yet it’s a powerful thing, not written with any kind of formal tradition, but just powerful feral writing. Carolina has a heavy drum sound: primal, atavistic, infectious, going back to your roots, but at the same time not making any threatening statement. The ideal combination. And what happened – once the Rastafarians got the respectability, it was now possible to invoke the philosophy. It paved the way for Bob Marley and others.”