Amadou..@..Songs for A Reason..Interviews, Earl Sixteen ...The Flaming Phonics consisted of Paul Powell, second from me, he did baritone. Then there was Kenneth Hamilton, who did a semi-baritone, and then there was a brethren called Alan Polack who is the spitting image of Roy Cousins, he's got thick lensed glasses and all that, he was a brilliant falsetto. His falsetto was much higher than mine, a bit like Derrick Lara, really high pitched and good. We had that group really sowed up, we were doing a lot of shows. We ended up working with Big Youth, because these were the top groups at the time, Mighty Diamonds, Burning Spear before he had locks, and Dennis Brown. We used to do a lot of shows around the country. What happened now, we didn't really actually get into recording, we couldn't get it right, the recording stuff. I was going to school, Kenneth was going to school as well, and Polak was working, and Paul is like the odd one out. After doing a couple of shows and that, I dropped out of high school, because this was it, I wanted to be a star. My mum kicked me out, so I was on my own. I goes, let's go and try to get a recording done. I remember us going to work with Duke Reid in the early stages, before I left school. We tried, Sundays was audition days at Treasure Isle, we went down there, Duke kind of liked one of the songs. We tried to start recording, and Duke started letting off gun shots, and me and the rest of the guys got kind of worried. We laid the rhythm track, but we didn't get 'round to voicing it, because we didn't want to go back to voice it.
We ended up working with Herman Chin-Loy from Aquarius Records. We did that "Hey Baby" track I think that was the first recording that I actually did as a solo, as an individual; that was like one of the first recordings I did with a group and then. Jamaica wasn't really ready for that, they wasn't really ready for four guys like a Four Tops kind of thing, they were into U Roy stuff and King Stitt. We kind of split up, Paul went away, Polak went to America, so I went solo. But just before I went solo, we did a show once, Flaming Phonics, Tyrone Taylor was on the package, Burning Spear, and Boris Gardiner, we did a show in Spanish Town. Boris Gardiner kind of wanted, he was looking for a lead singer for the band, because Tinga Stewart won the festival that year, which was '74, and he was planning to leave to do some shows in Canada for the Jamaican Culture Department, they had festivals they had to go away to. Boris was really impressed with my lead singing with the group, so after that show, he said to me, "Would you be interested in..." The group was kind of faltering at that time anyway, we were getting a bit on each other's nerves, so I jumped at the idea of getting involved in working with a road band, getting on the road, I really wanted to do that. With Boris now, I started going up to Boris, to do my little auditions, Tinga Stewart gave me a few tips, and it was really strenuous. You had to do all the current songs in the charts. You had to do the Calypsos, the Soul, the Reggae, because a road band is like cabaret stuff. I really like it though because Boris was a proper musician who could write the lyrics, write the music for the piano the drums, the bass, the guitar... I was really impressed with him, and I kind of fell in love with the whole scene, the instruments, equipment, and I suppose he kind of liked the way I ...
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♫♫Gregory Isaacs - Beres Hammond - Bunny Wailer - Toots & the Maytals - Kingston 12♫♫by boykimse1,775 views
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