Category: "reggae"
ALTON ELLIS: ROCKSTEADY SOUL
Tags: in memoriam
Alton Ellis: Get Ready (for Rocksteady)
Alton Ellis: I'm Still In Love With You
From Sings Rock and Soul (Studio One, 1967). Also on I'm Still In Love With You.
Alton Ellis: What Does It Take To Win Your Love
From Sunday Coming (Trojan, 1970)
Alton Ellis: Ain't No Music
From Many Moods of Alton Ellis (Tele-Tech, 1980)
My introduction to Alton Ellis came a few years back when a friend played me "Ain't No Music," Ellis flip on the Four Tops' "Ain't No Woman." I didn't know anything about Ellis at the time, except as the "Godfather of Rocksteady" but as I began to dig more into his catalog, the more enamored I became with it.
Ellis is widely considered the Jamaican singer prior to Bob Marley's ascendence. That's a tough shadow to sit in and Ellisr rarely enjoyed the kind of international recognition of some of his later peers. Despite that, he was one of the pivotal figures in the evolution of reggae, especially as an artist who understood how to transform American soul music with the ska and rocksteady rhythms he was so familiar with.
Remember that Jamaica's close proximity to the U.S. meant that a constant flow of American music came via radio and tourism. For a generation of Jamaican youth, the R&B hits of the '60s would become part of their musical heritage as well as a template to influence the growing ska movement. Ellis may or may not have "invented" rocksteady but as the first to give the style its name, he intuitively understood how to adapt the "rhythm and blues" of "R&B" and distill it into powerful, distinct bassline rhythms, upon which he sang his own version of the blues with a rich, sweet tenor.
The result is some of the best soul music ever recorded south of the border and a predictor of what would follow as rocksteady eventually morphed into reggae. What I've selected above is a teeny sampling from Ellis' overall catalog but they're amongst my very favorite reggae soul tunes.
The first three are taken from Ellis' early years experimenting with rocksteady, including the inaugural song to the genre - "Get Ready (For Rocksteady)" - and his sublime ballad, "I'm Still In Love With You." Ellis was equally adept with covers, as evinced with his incredible version of Jr. Walker and the All Stars' "What Does It Take to Win Your Love?" (Also check out his cover of Laura Nyro's "Gonna Take a Miracle").
RIP to the Original Rude Boy!
