MUSIC: Jamaica Mourns Death of Legendary Sax Player

By IPS Correspondents Reprint | | Print |

Howard Campbell

KINGSTON, May 12 1998 (IPS) - Caribbean musicians are mourning the death this month of Tommy McCook, the Jamaican saxophonist who died at his home in Atlanta, Georgia after his distinct tunes blazed a trail across three generations.

McCook, who died of pneumonia aged 71, was strongly influenced by the jazz explosion that took place in the United States during the 1930s. The jazz he first heard while growing up in a boysa’ home in Kingston remained a main ingredient in his sound, but McCook was to play a major role in the advent of ska, the Jamaican form of jazz, and its offshoots, rocksteady and reggae.

“We have lost one of our finest musicians,” said trumpeter and bandleader Sonny Bradshaw who played alongside McCook in several bands dating back to the late 1940s. “He could read music and could play any style.”

McCook’s death on May 5 came three weeks after the Skatalites, the group he led to immortality in the 1960s, were honoured by the organisers of the Jamaica Carnival festival.

The lanky horn player had been suffering for some time from an heart ailment that had restricted his movement and which prevented him from touring with the resurgent Skatalites, the band he helped form back in 1964.

Prior to joining the Skatalites, McCook played in the leading jazz bands in Kingston such as the All Star Big Band and the Eric Deans Band. Bradshaw, his band mate in both aggregations, remembers the lanky McCook as someone special.

“He was a jazz player, one of the early be-bop players in Jamaica,” said Bradshaw. “He was from the cool school of tenor sax: easygoing, never problematic.”

Born in Havana, Cuba, McCook was a product of the Alpha Boys Home in Jamaica, the institution that produced several great horn players including future Skatalites, Don Drummond and Johnny “Dizzy” Moore.

Alongside fellow tenor Roland Alphonso and alto sax player, Lester Sterling, McCook led a legendary horn section that has no equal in the annals of Jamaican music.

“He was in the top bracket,” says musicologist Bunny Goodison, an intimate friend of McCook. “Essentially, he was a tenor sax player who could also play the flute; he was also a great composer.”

McCook’s talents were spotted early by foreign scouts. He played on The Bahamas hotel circuit during the 1950s and by the time he helped get the Skatalites going in the mid 1960s, he was one of Jamaica’s leading session musicians at the rival Studio One and Treasure Isle studios.

McCook embraced the horn-hooked ska beat that was taking shape in Jamaica in the early 1960s. Although this move unsettled several jazz purists, Bradshaw was not one of those who felt McCook sold out.

“He never turned his back on jazz,” says Bradshaw. ‘ “He just fitted in to whatever was going on.”

The Skatalites lasted only one year, disbanding because of bad blood between its members. McCook had a well-publicized falling out with Moore, with whom he remained bitter enemies for nearly three decades, and who has consistently blamed him for the band’s breakup.

“He refused to work with me and Jackie (Mittoo, the band’s keyboardist),” recalls Moore. “He said I was too feisty and Jackie was a thief.”

After the Skatalites disbanded, McCook went on to form the just- as successful Supersonics band which became the resident band at the prolific Treasure Isle studio of producer Duke Reid. McCook’s sound can be heard on most of the studio’s biggest hits.When the Treasure Isle and Studio One party sound gave way to the more rebellious movement of the 1970s, McCook was no longer an in- demand session musician, though his opening lines on the Mighty Diamonds’ 1976 smash hit, “Roof Over My Head,” remains a classic.

But as technology made studios more computer-driven, the horn player, who had played such a major role in the development of Jamaican music, became almost obsolete. McCook reformed the Skatalites in New York in the early 1980s shortly after migrating to the United States. As Lloyd Knibbs, the band’s drummer tells it, McCook was adamant that as much of the original members were recruited.

“He got a visa for myself and (Lloyd) Brevette (bass player) to come to the States, he wanted the genuine rhythm sound,” Knibbs explains. Since then, the Skatalites have built a fan base of cult standards throughout Europe and the United States, touring with second generation groups like No Doubt and the Toasters.

McCook, who underwent double bypass surgery in 1995, had been unable to tour with the band due to ill health. According to Bradshaw, his death brings to a a close the era when the “hornsman” ruled Jamaica’s dancehalls.

“He was one of our great musicians, he was the last of Jamaica’s great tenor sax players,” says Bradshaw. (end) .