Toppa Top 10: Top Gunslinger-Inspired Deejays

Words by Jesse Serwer

The Wild West has been a major influence on reggae music since its beginnings in the late ’60s, when Spaghetti Westerns like The Good, The Bad and the Ugly were all the rage in Jamaica’s moviehouses. Initially this took the shape of reinterpreted theme music or one-off novelty tributes. By the late ’70s and early ’80s, dancehall artists were modeling themselves after gunslingers both real (John Wayne, Clint Eastwood) and fictional (Josey Wales, Lone Ranger). Many of today’s deejays have likely never seen a Western, but the influence still persists in the form of the badman, the antihero asserting himself against Babylon by any means necessary–the Jamaican answer to the gunslinger. For an illustration of this connection that’s more rooted in fact than many realize, look no further than Jamaica’s greatest movie, The Harder They Come. It is only after watching 1966’s Django in a rowdy theater that Jimmy Cliff’s aspiring reggae singer Ivanhoe goes from naive country boy to rogue cop-killer. In case the connection isn’t clear, the final scene where Ivan meets his demise in a police shootout is intercut with flashbacks to the crowd watching Django. Here’s a look at how shoot-em-up flicks inspired some of reggae/dancehall’s real-life anti-heroes.

10. Apache Indian

One could probably write an entire dissertation on the cross-cultural implications of Steven Kapur, the British-born East Indian who made Jamaican dancehall music under the moniker Apache Indian. Clearly indebted to Super Cat and Shaggy, Kapur also referred to himself as Don Raja and incorporated East Indian influences into a style some have called “bhangramuffin.” Although he has said himself that his name was inspired by Super Cat’s “Wild Apache” nickname and Indo-Caribbean heritage, if there was any question whether Kapur was aware of the shoot-em-ups that inspired his Jamaican forefathers, they are settled by his gunslinger stance (and the title) emblazoned on his 1993 LP No Reservations.

9/8. King Stitt aka Lee Van Cleef/Lee Van Cleef aka Lee Van Cliff

As stated above, it was King Stitt’s pioneering deejay tune “Van Cleef” that inspired Lee Perry to make his own tribute to “Clint Eastwood,” Lee (“The Bad”) Van Cleef’s “Good” rival in The Good, The Bad & the Ugly. (We’re still waiting for Uglyman to cut a tribute to Eli Wallach). Years later in the early ’80s, another deejay took on the New Jersey-born Van Cleef’s persona, issuing a handful of singles and two 1982 albums (often under the alternate spelling “Lee Van Cliff”) before disappearing into the great blue yonder.

7. Johnny Ringo

Folklore has been good to the real-life, 19th-century Johnny Ringo, whose actual badman credentials have been called into question. Wyatt Earp’s nemesis was lionized as a key figure in 1957’s The Gunfight at the OK Corral, although historians believe he was not actually present for the fight, and a CBS television show bearing his name and the hit 1964 single “Ringo” by Bonanza star Lorne Greene are based more on legend than fact. The opposite is true for Bradley “Johnny Ringo” Miller, a somewhat overlooked figure in slack dancehall history. For better or worse, Ringo’s legacy includes “Two Lesbians Hitch,” one of the earliest deejay commentaries on the topic of homosexuality. Sadly Ringo, who once warned of the dangers of cocaine, died as a result of his crack addiction in 2005.

6. John Wayne

The real John Wayne was a bigot who once told Playboy he believed in White supremacy and that Blacks should be thankful for getting shipped to America as slaves. Presumably this information had not yet traveled to Jamaica in the 1980s, when deejay Norval Headley of “Call the Police” fame adopted the name. It’s possible such knowledge may not have affected his decision, though: with Clint Eastwood, the Lone Ranger, Josey Wales and even Lee Van Cleef taken, the Duke was the most recognizable Western icon left. With gunman tunes like “Brinks Can Rob,” Headley certainly lived up to the image.

5. Clint Eastwood

Another deejay who borrowed his name, but not necessarily his image, from a popular gunslinger was Robert Brammer, aka Clint Eastwood. Beginning his career as a solo artist for producer Bunny Lee in the late ’70s, Eastwood found his greatest fame teamed up with fellow deejay General Saint in the 1980s. Together the duo, known for their matching outfits and lively, lighthearted stage shows, scored a string of hits including “Stop That Train,” an update of Scotty’s “Draw Your Brakes” and the Queen-referencing “Another One Bites The Dust.” Despite their typically comical presentation, the pair were responsible for “I Can’t Take Another World War,” among the most haunting of all dancehall-issued armagideon warnings:

4. Josey Wales

Big-bearded Joseph Sterling took his stage name from the 1976 Clint Eastwood movie The Outlaw Josey Wales and traded off that image with the title of his 1983 debut The Outlaw. Lyrically, though, sex and weed were his preferred pursuits, as evidenced by the imagery on his classic 1984 album Undercover Lover.

3. Super Cat aka Wild Apache

While most of his predecessors identified with the Westerns’ white heroes, Super Cat took up the other side of the Cowboys & Indians equation. Early in his career he took on the moniker Wild Apache, partly in reference to his East Indian blood, and later used that name for his record label, Wild Apache Productions. Cat explores this aspect of his persona on “Scalp Dem,” the classic single from The Good, the Bad, the Ugly and the Crazy, a 1994 joint summit LP with younger brother Junior Cat, Nicodemus and Junior Demus (which also produced Nicodemus’ “Wild Wild West”). In what is a candidate for greatest, high-concept dancehall video of all-time and a clear homage to The Harder They Come and the deejay-as-gunslinger motif, Cat falls asleep while watching a Western on TV and finds himself in the movie.

2. Lone Ranger

One of the most influential and successful deejays of the late ’70s and early ’80s, Anthony “Lone Ranger” Waldron took his name not from the movies but the masked Texas ranger of radio, TV and comic books fame. Raised partly in England (where he had a major hit with the Dark Shadows tribute “Barnabas Collins”) Ranger tapped into the West as source material for 1982’s Hi-Yo, Silver, Away!, an album that also featured cautionary tales about the gunslinger-inspired badman lifestyle like “Johnny Make You Bad So”:

1.Lee “Scratch” Perry aka Django

Those who only know Lee Perry as a mad genius dub pioneer may be surprised to find him at the top of this list but it was Perry who almost singlehandedly initiated the Western-themed reggae phenomenon in the ’60s. While his “Clint Eastwood” was a response to “Van Cleef,” King Stitt and Clancy Eccles’ tribute to Eastwood’s Good, the Bad and the Ugly rival Lee Van Cleef (“Clint Eastwood is boss for Lee Van Cleef. Clint Eastwood tuffer than Lee Van Cleef”), Perry and his Upsetters went on to record tributes to virtually every notable Spaghetti Western movie, from The Good, the Bad and the Ugly to the comparatively obscure Taste of Killing. The biggest hit of Perry’s early career, at least in the UK where it was even used in a Cadbury’s commercial, was “Return of Django”, the second of two Upsetters tunes inspired by Sergio Corbucci’s film. For more Western-inspired material from Perry’s early days, check the Trojan compilaton The Big Gundown: Reggae Inspired by Spaghetti Westerns.