Today marks 16 years since the death of ska music pioneer Desmond Dekker.
Born Desmond Adolphus Dacres on 16 July 1941, Dekker spent his formative years in Kingston.
In 1961 the budding singer got his start as a vocalist for Leslie Kong’s Beverley’s record label and was awarded his first recording contract.
It was Dekker who first saw the talent of Bob Marley, a fellow welder, and brought him to Kong. Subsequently”Judge Not” and “One Cup Of Coffee” became Marley’s first recordings.
Dekker established his music career with the 1963 Kong classic “Honour Your Mother and Father”.
He quickly followed up with the tracks “Sinners Come Home” and “Labour for Learning”. It was during this period that Desmond Dacres adopted the stage-name of Desmond Dekker. His fourth hit, “King of Ska” made him into one of the Jamaica’s biggest stars. Dekker then recruited four brothers, Carl, Patrick, Clive and Barry Howard, as his permanent backing vocalists to perform with him under the name Desmond Dekker and The Aces.
He is now more known for the era defining rude boy anthem , “007 (Shanty Town)”. The song established Dekker as a rude boy icon in Jamaica and also became a favorite dance track for the young working-class men and women of the UK mod scene.
The original recording of “007” (without the ‘Shanty Town’) was produced by Leslie Kong and originally released as a single on the Pyramid label. The single featured Roland Alphonso‘s “El Torro” on the B-side.
Dekker wrote the song after watching news coverage of a student demonstration against government plans to build an industrial complex on land close to the beach, which descended into violence.
He said,
“The students had a demonstration and it went all the way around to Four Shore Road and down to Shanty Town. You got wildlife and thing like that because it down near the beach. And the higher ones wanted to bulldoze the whole thing down and do their own thing and the students said no way. And it just get out of control…Is just a typical riot ’cause I say – Them a loot, them a shoot, them a wail.”
“007” was Dekker’s first international hit. The single was a number one hit in Jamaica and reached number 14 on the UK Singles Chart, making it the first Jamaican-produced record to reach the UK top 20.
Dekker recorded the song again for his 1980 album Black and Dekker.
In total he has 12 studio albums, and 25 compilations. After many years and hit singles in the music industry, Dekker died of a heart attack on 25 May 2006, at his home in Thornton Heath in the London Borough of Croydon, England, aged 64. He was preparing to headline a world music festival in Prague.
