Black Solidarity LP 02 by Robert Ffrench Follow

Black Solidarity LP 02 review

“Hear what happen now! We used to punch the juke box lunch time! Me and me friends had a kinda thing like the juke box was our sound system and we’d use our lunch money to play the baddest tunes in the juke box. We were aided and abetted by a kinda dodgy little shop keeper ‘cause we were kids and we were in the rum bar punching the juke box when we weren’t supposed to be allowed! So we were breaking all the rules… punching the juke box and taking turns to play the wickedest tunes in the juke box..” Ossie Thomas

Breaking rules from the outset Ossie Thomas had furthered his childhood fascination with music while still attending Oberlin High School and many more rules would be broken when, together with Phillip Morgan, he set up the Black Solidarity label in 1979 on Delamere Avenue deep in the heart of the Kingston ghetto

“It’s just me and brethren and brethren but through music is a struggle and how reggae music never have the A&R or nothing like that you find it’s the producer. Him have to be the A&R, him have to be the manager, him have to do the distribution, him have to be the everything. Him have to wear all of the caps…” Ossie Thomas Tough and uncompromising the Black Solidarity set up soon established itself as one of Jamaica’s leading dancehall labels and, by the time Ossie was introduced to Robert Ffrench it was riding high on the crest of a musical wave. Robert had already recorded ‘Set Me Free’ for the Black World label when he was just seventeen and still a full-time student at Kingston College but Ossie’s production of ‘Joker Family’, on a tough recut of the perennially popular ‘Tribulation’ rhythm, now catapulted Robert Ffrench high into the dancehall charts. “Robert Ffrench was going to Kingston College with my brethren named Mark and Ffrenchie did a tune for a next brethren named ‘Set Me Free’ but the tune never worked out so Mark tell Ffrenchie: ‘Watch a man … come round to my corner ‘cause my producer brethren can blow you up and get you in the big time’. So Robert Ffrench come round and he was like a disciple and he’d come to the studio with me and Triston Palma and learn everything… learn all of the craft so automatically we just put him out and put him straight into the charts with that tune name ‘Joker Family’.

Every time I hear ‘Joker Family’ I have to laugh, you know, when I listen to the lyrics… “My family them a joker family… when them go abroad them don’t remember me!” Heh, Heh, heh… and the man a call names! ‘Noel and Pearl and the one Patsy’. It’s ironic man! We had a good laugh when him make the song… the man a sing about his personal relatives saying when they gone a foreign. So when Junior Reid heard the tune he sang ‘worry them a worry them foreign mind!’” Ossie Thomas This honest, forthright approach was typical of Ossie’s and Robert’s refusal to conform to stereotypes. Robert would go on to record a number of successful seven-inch hits and a very successful album, ‘The Favourite’, for Black Solidarity followed by a host of hits for a variety of Kingston’s record producers. Robert later emigrated to New York, but Ossie remained on Delamere Avenue where he continued to discover and nurture up and coming raw talent. “So you must know the power that me have at the time… me can spot a seller from a mile off and if a youth sound good! I used to tell people that dance hall was like styles and fashions.