Bamjimba aka Jim Bamber
aka The Fatman is a man with a long history; he has two CDs: 1
Love and Routes, with the latter issued at the end of June 2006.
Here he talks about the background to these two albums:
ND:
Let’s
talk about ‘1 Love’ first?
Bajimba: ‘1
Love’ – yes,
this friend of mine died from sickle cell anaemia trait. Papa
Wade, a Jamaican guy, but he had
gone to live in the Bahamas, he was about my age, in his fifties,
and he died from pleurisy and pneumonia. He was a rasta man, he
had locks right down to his ankles, a true rasta man. He wasn’t
interested in given medical authority and his mum was trying to
get him to cut his locks off, his lion’s mane, and he died
in the end. I’d never heard of sickle cell anaemia… and
then four months later Dennis Brown died. Dennis Brown was a massive
influence with me, he used to come and stay with Eddy Grant down
in Brixton when I lived in Efra Road in Brixton, and they used
to play – I’ve always been into reggae, since ‘My
Boy Lollipop’, that was Chris Blackwell’s, I used to
work for him. Dennis Brown did really my favourite reggae single
of all time, which is “Your Love’s Got A Hold On Me’,
which is the ‘Heavenless’ rhythm, with Sly and Robbie – in
my humble opinion, a finer rhythm section you just will not meet.
So a friend of mine said, “Well, look, Jim, you’ve
been on all these other people’s records, and you’ve
always wanted to play reggae – why don’t you do a 12
inch single, dub a thing on the back of it, put it out and sell
it and try and make some money for the Sickle Cell Society in the
UK?” I couldn’t really say ‘no’ to that,
so I went into the studio with some friends of mine, they’ve
got a 32 track state of the art, digital, all this kind of stuff,
I’m a drummer, I don’t understand. They gave me a young
engineer, and I just laid down the rhythm, he said, “God,
that’s really nice”. So I played the original to him
and then he introduced me to people like Leftfield, Chemical Brothers,
all this kind of new stuff, Afro-Celt Sound System. So he introduced
me to all that and a way of doing stuff in the studio which I’d
never done before – but I couldn’t find anybody to
sing it. I auditioned loads! I went down to London, a guy flew
over from America, a friend of a friend of a friend’s cousin
flew in from Jamaica to try and sing it, and really nobody kind
of hit it. So then we started having fun…
It expanded into a CD just on that rhythm. That’s how that
came about really. I got a few hundred done and it just went bananas.
My grandson taught me how to use a laptop computer – he said, “You
want to sell it on the internet, grandad”, and he introduced
me to all the ways of taking credit cards and so on. He’s
only nine! My grandson taught me how to do all that. I made a terrible
mistake because I put it in all my favourite reggae shops. I took
a week out and I rang up all my favourite reggae shops in Glasgow,
Birmingham, Bristol, Newcastle, and all the ones in London, Dub
Vendor etc. Danger, danger, because they know when I’m coming;
they put all the Sly & Robbie special edition 12 inchers, all
the Augustus Pablo special edition 25 years old rare records are
on the front row, so I waltz in with 30 of my CDs on sale or return
and I come out with £50 worth of vinyl – in every shop!
That’s how I promoted the first one, and that came out in
2003. The first year, 2004, the AGM of the UK Sickle Cell Society
gave me a little award certificate for the best fundraiser of that
year.
This has just taken off. I think the main criticism that I got
from the reggae community as is, for the first album, was that
it was a bit kind of neither here nor there. It was a bit kind
of dance/ acid-jazz, a bit of blues in there. I got a bit of blues
in there because poor old John Lee Hooker died as well – I
love John Lee Hooker, you can’t get away from that. So the
main criticism was that it was neither here nor there.
A really good friend of mine who has been championing my music
is a DJ called Ras Charles Jones. He works on the Iration Vibration
in New York, which goes out on a Sunday. He’s been an absolute
darling, he played it right from the word ‘go’ and
he got really into it. “I’ve been talking to you Jim
and you’ve got a vast knowledge of this music – where’s
that come from?” I said, “’My Boy Lollipop’ – the
fact that I was a drummer playing 4/4 and when I heard this beat,
I couldn’t get my head round it”. I lived in Lewisham
at that time in London, and a friend of mine said “There’s
a great record shop round the corner, Joe Gibbs Records Shop”.
I used to spend hours in there, and that’s where I got most
of my background really. All the old guys – Big Youth, Burning
Spear, and of course the Taxi Gang, Sly & Robbie - being a
drummer, I’ve been into rhythm and the history of rhythm
for years. I used to have lessons from Ginger Baker and he introduced
me to African music, Fela Kuti, etc. etc. That led me into the
nyahbingi side of it.
Charles said, “Take it from there, man, do all your influences”.
So, with the ‘Routes’ CD, there’s a bit of calypso
on there, a bit of mento on there, there’s some ska on there – I
work with Rico Rodriguez on there – and there’s some
dub. I’ve always wanted to do another dub track with Dennis
Bovell because back in the late seventies, early eighties, I met
him for the first time and I did a dub with him. I was the only
white guy in the band and we were all sat round in the control
room waiting for his majesty to turn up. He came in and he had
this massive dread and a great big long beard – he was called ‘Blackbeard’,
Dennis ‘Blackbeard’ Bovell, with a big staff and a
long African gown. The first thing he said was, “Right, who’s
the drummer?” I put my hand up and he started sucking his
teeth. This was at Gooseberry Studio in Soho, which was in a basement
and the drum booth was down there, and they had it through on a
closed circuit TV. So I go down this corridor and sit on these
drums, got my headphones on and I can see Dennis on this desk,
and he’s going “Four to the bar, hi-hat”, and
he had me doing that for ages. “Accent on the third beat”. “Halve
the time”. He took me around that whole drum kit, until he
said, “Yeah, y’all right”. I owe an enormous
debt to him because he taught me speed, he taught me such an enormous
amount. Also, it was also the first time I was ever in a studio
physically with somebody watching them dub something - watching
this guy play a 24 track recording studio desk like an instrument.
I’d never seen anything like it in my life. It was just unbelievable.
So, ‘Train To Seven Sisters’ on the CD is because Dennis
and I were planning to meet up again because I was running some
things up to Fitzroy at Body Music in Seven Sisters, and apparently
Dennis just lives round the corner, so he said, “Oh, I’ll
meet you at the shop”. Seven Sisters, it’s the Victoria
Line, it’s a long journey and there’s only two stops!
I got to the Body Music shop and me and Dennis were waltzing round
like two turnips. I used to have long hair and a goatee beard,
and he of course was a big rasta and a massive black beard. Well,
there was this bald-headed fat guy in the corner talking to Fitzroy.
We started looking at each other, and of course it was Dennis – who
is now not only the same shape as me but has got exactly the same
amount of hair! Nil – we’re both a couple of slap-heads!
He said, “God, Jim, I’ve always wanted to do something
about that train journey, a piece of music that incorporates that
train to Seven Sisters – you swine! I’ve got to play
on it”. He came down to Ariwa Studios with the Mad Professor,
and did play on it. Brilliant! And the Moroccan pipes on there,
that’s kind of African, there’s dub, the Sly and Robbie
influence. I met this Berber guy in Morocco who plays a ghita,
and it’s a kind of desert instrument. It’s the same
one that they use for charming snakes – I can’t find
anyone in this country who can blow the thing! I’ve been
working with some of the best horn players in Manchester and none
of them can get a note out of it. But this guy, I had to stand
him at the other side of this large courtyard and record him just
on my lap-top – or else it was off the scale! It’s
the loudest instrument I’ve ever heard in my life – and
it has to be because they send messages across the desert with
it. So I recorded that. Then of course there’s dub reggae
on it, there’s roots and culture, there’s Papa Wade’s
brother who’s now died from sickle cell complications, Jah
Ducks. He died after he’d done this toasting for me that’s
on there, and General Sensi. I did ‘Sail Away’ there,
all natural instruments, I did that at Compass Point too; there’s
Cecil Dorsett, who is boss of the First Bahamian Steel Orchestra – I
love steel bands. So I had this fantastic track, I got Sensi and
Ducks in to chant on it, as they say, and they did six tracks for
me. Sensi rang me up about three months later to say that Jah Ducks
had died; he just caught something, and like his brother, he wouldn’t
go to the hospital and he wouldn’t take medical treatment – he
just died. So, another casualty… So that’s really an
emotional track for me, ‘Reggae Gone Clear’, and I
clipped all the best bits from the six tracks – these guys,
you just give them a track, they’re “run it again,
man”, and they’re off on something else. I could have
done a whole album actually! So that’s a bit of rough, tough
stuff.
The main guy on this album is called Olawatobe Adeydadji, that’s
his full name. He’s a Nigerian guy. As I was saying, with
the first album I couldn’t get anybody to sing it, which
is why it’s all virtually instrumental apart from a few wailing
ladies in there. So for the new album, Ras Charles said “Yeah,
a history of all your influences, that’ll be really good,
and it will be more roots and culture for the people who say you’re
not reggae enough” – but again, I didn’t have
anybody to sing. Then I got an email from Toby Adeydadji, El Fata
is his stage name. He was over in this country for a year – this
is about three years ago – and I think he thought that I
was a record company, so he sent me an email and he wanted to send
me a demo. So I put him straight on that, I said “I’m
just a sole trader here; Sony-ATV I’m not – but by
all means send me your demo”. So this guy sent me this demo
and the minute I put it on, I thought, “this guy sings like
a linnet”. Thank you Jah, the great spirit, for sending me
this guy. He’s written and sung on quite a few of these tracks.
I think he’s a brilliant songwriter and as I say, he sings
beautifully, a big range. Roger Steffens, John Masouri, they’ve
all said, “This guy can sing”. He can. The other four
tracks, ‘Sail Away’ was written by a friend of mine,
a really good piano player. He absolutely loved reggae to bits,
and he wrote ‘Sail Away’, that’s Harry Bogdanovich.
I just had to do a Bob Dylan song – I know it was quite fashionable
at the time because there was a Bob Dylan reggae album out, with
Toots and everybody, Sizzla did a fantastic one, so I had to do
one – and ‘Licence To Kill’ just speaks for itself – “who’s
gonna take away a man’s licence to kill?” I’ve
always thought Dylan really hits it there, a beautiful lyric writer,
and also the original version of that is on a Bob Dylan album called ‘Infidels’ which
was recorded at Compass Point and who was the rhythm section? Sly
and Robbie! They get everywhere. Jackson Browne is another songwriter
I’ve always loved, a fantastic songwriter, and while we were
doing the tracks with Rico in Ariwa studios in London, Mad Professor’s
place, they found Fats Domino on a roof. I’d been toying
between two Jackson Browne songs, and the one that’s on here
is ‘After The Deluge’, so that kind of fitted. Also,
an interesting point – Rico Rodriguez said that Fats Domino
was one of the first guys he ever heard. We were doing ‘You
Are My Sunshine’ a lot faster than it is on the album until
Rico said, “Listen – why don’t you slow it down
to Fats Domino’s speed” Slow ska – a weird thing
for me to get my head around. Rico was saying that whole ‘Walking
To New Orleans’ type of thing – do you know, it’s
really hard to play. Anything slow and simple is really hard to
play for a drummer, which brings me back to Dennis Bovell who taught
me how to play slow and simple. My favourite drummer is Billy Cobham
and I find it quite easy to paradiddle and five-stroke roll around
the kit, fast as hell, and it impresses people, but to play slow
and simple like Sly Dunbar does so that you can drive a bus through
the gap between one thing and another is an art. I’m still
learning how to do that. That’s just about every track, I
think.
ND:
You also have a track Mad Professor mixed for you, it’s
on Tanty Records?
Bajimba: Tanty?
Yeah, this was through Dennis Bovell as well. I was in touch
with a
guy in Italy
called Daniele Carmosino, who’s
a dub guy, he has a thing called Piano B Outernational. It’s
kind of Italy’s answer to Studio One or King Tubbys. That
was a strange coincidence because there’s another guy, Midnight
Dread in Paris, Prince Thierry who has a radio show who put me
onto Daniel as well. So we swapped tracks and he mixed a few of
mine and I pampered a few of his up. He sent me ‘The Roots
Of DubFunk 4’ which is the one before the one I’m on,
which is the one he was on. He recommended me to Kelvin Richards
who is in charge of Tanty Records, and he said, “Yeah, send
me some dubs”. I had a digital EP for sale online which came
out a couple of years ago called ‘Wake Up’. It was
an anti-war diatribe, and it was based on the Last Poets, “Wake
Up Or We’re All Through” – I used to listen to
them in the sixties. I met a dub poet called Mark May Smith who’s
now down in London, he’s got a book out now, he did a kind
of voiceover on one of the dubs and the Mad Professor got his hands
on it. Then I sent the Mad Professor’s dub to Kelvin, and
he went “Yeah! Nice…” So that’s how that
happened. Whether it was Mad Professor’s part or not, I don’t
know, but I’m proud of it. So that’s come out and that’s
been great promotion. I must big up Kelvin Richards at Tanty Records
because he is a one-man promotion machine. Of course that has got
my name around as well.
1 Love is available in the USA through CD Baby
Check out www.bamjimba.com
- Norman
Darwen |