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| Augustus Pablo | >>Artist Hall of Fame |
“…The music of Augustus Pablo, created for its moment, and somehow, eternally right for each moment since.” Ian McCann Tweet |
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| Date Added: Nov 26, 2011, Date Updated: Feb 14, 2020 Copyright (C) 2024 Dub Store Sound Inc. |
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Jun 21, 1953 ~ May 18, 1999 Real Name: Horace Swaby Place of Birth: Jamaica St. Andrew >> Hit Titles |
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Augustus Pablo A Java Instrumental c/w) A Fool Say Dub Pressure Sounds UK 1990 |
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| ¥1680 |
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| Born Kingston 21st June 1953 Horace Swaby did not come from a musical background but is one of the most influential and important figures in musical history and, as Augustus Pablo, he evolved a style whose reverberations would sound far outside the confines of reggae music. His father was an accountant and one of his clients was Mrs Sonia Pottinger, proprietor of the Gay Feet musical empire, and Pablo recalled her giving him a dub plate of Ken Boothe’s ‘Lady With The Starlight’. “I had it in my house a year before it came out…” He would practise on the family piano in his comfortable, middle class home and also built his own guitar using fishing line for strings. “I just loved the sound of music – all kind of music. Just music was inside me from early days.” He first recorded for Coxsone Dodd(CS Dodd) at Studio One in the early seventies.
“Coxsone never really put them out. Three organ instrumentals… one was ‘Moving Away’. Me have an idea ‘pon it and just play it… and two original rhythms. Sylvan Morris and Larry Marshall supervised the sessions. This was just before Herman… ‘Real Rock’, ‘Swing Easy’ me did love them tune!” Augustus Pablo Herman Chin Roy had been using a name he had found in a Mexican magazine to credit instrumental releases on his Aquarius label believing that the enigmatic ‘Augustus Pablo’ pseudonym gave the records a mysterious feel. In 1971 the young Horace Swaby was in the Aquarius Record Shop with a melodica that had been lent to him by the daughter of a family friend. Herman asked him if he could play the instrument and was so moved by the sounds emanating from Horace’s melodica that he immediately booked studio time at Randy’s(Randys) Studio 17 for the following week. This historic first session produced ‘Iggy Iggy’, a version to The Heptones’ ‘Why Did You Leave’, and on this, and subsequent releases such as ‘The Red Sea’ and ‘East Of The River Nile’, the pair established a sound that would dominate reggae for years to come. Horace Swaby actually became Augustus Pablo and the music that he created would for ever after convey the depth of mystery that Herman had intended the ‘Augustus Pablo’ name to portray. “Pablo using the name was never a problem.” Herman Chin Roy The following year Pablo moved on to work with Clive Chin an old school friend from Kingston College. Clive had gone straight into the family business at Randy’s(Randys) after leaving KC and ‘Java’, a Pablo melodica instrumental with harmonies from The Chosen Few, was a huge hit and was voted ‘Top Instrumental Record’ for 1972. Further versions of the ‘Java’ rhythm ensued and Clive and Pablo then followed these with one of the most accomplished long playing sets ever made: ‘This Is Augustus Pablo’. “Over the past years reggae has generated a trend in and ‘round Jamaica and other parts of the world. Today the type of sound which the younger generation digs is the rebel rock music which is here now.” ‘This Is Augustus Pablo’ It was King Tubby who realised that the melodica was at its most haunting when played in minor keys and it was at Tubby’s prompting that Pablo’s ‘Far East’ signature sound was born. “Tubby’s a my brother! Him buy xylophone for me… him did show me certain things and him come like the man who pass the music… just say in a them type of key there…” Augustus Pablo In 1972 Pablo began to produce records for his Hot Stuff and Rockers labels but his first self production, ‘Kid Ralph’, came out on Panther a Dynamic Sounds’ subsidiary label. The first release on Pablo’s legendary Rockers label was ‘Skanking Easy’ a cut to a tune originally featured in ‘Fiddler On The Roof’ that The Soul Vendors had adapted and adopted a few years previously at Studio One as ‘Swing Easy’. He was to return to Brentford Road rhythms for many of his greatest releases, not out of any lack of inspiration, but as part of his vision of expanding the myriad possibilities inherent in these tunes. “The first records nah sell much. We’d only press 100/100, 200/200 or 300/300 at a time.” Augustus Pablo But reworking or doing over these musical templates became more and more popular as the decade progressed and the direction that Pablo had taken in 1972/73 was later carried to its inevitable conclusion by Bunny Striker Lee, the Hookim brothers(Joseph Hookim) at Channel One and Joe Gibbs(Joel Gibson) and Errol T(Errol Thompson) as The Mighty Two. As well as recording for his own labels Pablo also cut countless classic sides for many other producers including two different versions of Lee ‘Scratch’ Perry(Lee Perry)’s classic ‘Fever’ rhythm entitled ‘Hot And Cold’, ‘Fat Baby’ for Keith Hudson and ‘Bass And Drums Version’ and ‘Bells Of Death’ for Derrick Harriott. Pablo’s name, and the concept of dub, was first introduced to an international audience in 1975 when Jacob Miller sung ‘Baby I Love You So’ (over Pablo’s ‘Cassava Piece’ rhythm from 1973) which Tubby then took apart and rebuilt as ‘King Tubbys Meets Rockers Uptown’ on the B side. The Tubby’s version was promoted to the A side when Island Records released the record in London and the music press belatedly began to sit up and take notice of this starting new phenomenon. Two years later a selection of Tubby’s B sides for Pablo were collected together for the epochal ‘King Tubbys Meets Rockers Uptown’ album. This set has no equal: if you want to know what dub is all about, what it means and, perhaps most importantly of all, what it meant nearly thirty five years ago then there is no better place to start than ‘King Tubbys Meets Rockers Uptown’. Originally released on Brad Osborne’s New York based Clocktower label this faultless collection has never been out of press since 1977… and has never been bettered. “First LP me put out. Me want Tubbys to mix a dub LP in stereo but I see dub different from how everybody else see it. Me nuh invent dub! (That was) a whole class of us together drawing out the rhythm and just echo it. So them call it dub.......but some people give different meanings for dub. Me is a man who try to do something new. Me nuh follow nothing!” Augustus Pablo Over the next two decades, as each successive wave of musical styles and fashions ebbed and flowed, Pablo continued to make music completely unmoved by whatever happened to be this week’s flavour of the month. Fads came and fads went but Pablo’s transcendental releases on his Rockers and Message labels were always timeless and full of a power beyond the here and now that, at times, seemed to stretch into infinity. “I try to create in everything I do. In every move I make. Not only music alone. In everything I do. I’m not in the studio every day. I don’t burn out a lot of energy that way. I turn it into myself and the works… I just lock off playing for other people. Comes a time when you draw in ‘pon producers. Anything they can do we can do better! Most of the producers well… it’s really musicians who make the music. They build up a different vibe. Me name musician and them only name producer! So me just start producing myself.” Augustus Pablo But Augustus Pablo refused to take the credit that rightly belonged to him: “People call it successful. I just doing the works, you know.” He died 18th May 1999 of Myasthenia Gravis, a rare nerve disorder, at a tragically early age and, while his health had visibly deteriorated over the last ten years of his life, his music continued to be an evangelical confession of faith. A deeply religious man many of his records cite Haile Selassie as co-producer but Pablo’s deep knowledge and understanding of Jamaican musical history formed another cornerstone of his work. The spirituality of his music was underpinned at all times by deep, dark rhythms and its intangibility was both unprecedented and unparalleled in popular music. His Rockers International Record Shop on Orange Street continues to this day to supply the Rockers in downtown Kingston and Pablo’s music will live everywhere for evermore. Text by Harry Hawks |
| Hit Titles | >> See More |
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Augustus Pablo Satan Side (Pablo Take) (Colored Vinyl) c/w) Keith Hudson, Chuckles - Satan Version (Satan Side) Mafia 1972 Satan Side |
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| ¥1980 |
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Augustus Pablo Pablo In The Moonlight City c/w) Dub In The City Fatman UK 1979 Pablo In The Moonlight City |
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| ¥1980 |
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Augustus Pablo Hot & Cold c/w) Jah T - Lick The Pipe Peter Black Art UK 1972 Fever |
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| ¥1280 |
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| Related Artist(s) |
| King Tubby |
| Jacob Miller |
| Hugh Mundell |
| Yami Bolo |
| Related Genre |
| Roots Reggae (36) |
| Dub / Instrumental (12) |
| Reggae (2) |
| Ska / Rocksteady (1) |
| “…The music of Augustus Pablo, created for its moment, and somehow, eternally right for each moment since.” Ian McCann Featuring Artist Profile of Augustus Pablo. |
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