Five chapters of all new content on mento, plus the best of every style of reggae!
600 pages of great artists and great songs, telling the complete story of reggae.
Click here for more information. You'll love it!
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10 years in the making, my book,
"The
Ultimate Guide To Great Reggae",
is out! Five chapters of all new content on mento, plus the best of every style of reggae! 600 pages of great artists and great songs, telling the complete story of reggae. Click here for more information. You'll love it! |
| More Resurgence CD and Record Scans |
Page last revised: 6/15/13
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"Me & Massa Joe" by Neville Willoughby on the Dynamic label 1978, produced by Byron Lee. Willoughby, who passed in 2006, was a well known and respected figure in Jamaica primarily for his work as a radio announcer and interviewer on Radio Jamaica and the BBC. (In this capacity, he famously interviewed Bob Marley.) He also acted, wrote a novel and recorded a mento LP. It was released in 1978, a year after releases by The Jolly Boys signaled a resurgent interest in mento recordings. In spite of the rural duo pictured, the LP features a larger band playing in a rural style but also bringing mento-reggae, reggae and calypso rhythms. |
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In early 2008, saxophonist
Cedric "Im" Brooks 1973 LP, "From Mento To Reggae To Third World Music"
received it's overdue release on CD, on VP Records. In addition to
reggae an African music, the following mento songs are included:
"Nobody's Business", "Sly Mongoose", "Salt Lane Girl" (a CD bonus track). There is also "Hop Merry Hop" and "Third World", both Pocomania tracks. |
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In 2004, Respect Records re-released the above Hummingbirds CD. It gains a new title ("Mento A Go-Go") new (inferior) cover art and, sadly, loses the band photos. Besides the music, what remains the same if the difficulty of finding this Japanese only release. |
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"Original Jamaican Music", by the Rod Dennis Mento Band, on the
Penthouse label. |
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I've heard that
this 2001 Jamaican CD can be found at retail shops in
the UK. It may take a trip there or to JA
to acquire this largely instrumental release. The
major on-line retailers don't carry it, nor have I ever seen a copy in NYC. |
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Incidentally, Rod Dennis is not in this or other
line up. The band was actually called "The Red Devils Mento Band". When this
was garbled in an print article
to "The Rod Dennis Mento Band",
the name stuck. The band is lead by
Carlton James. In 2006, the band would record a Bob Marley cover with Jamaican jazz keyboardist Monty Alexander. Band member Carlton James performed live with Monty in a memorable 2006 show in NYC. See the Mento and Jazz page for details and pictures. For much more on this act, visit the Carlton James and The Rod Dennis Mento Band page. described there are two other RDMB CDs that are very difficult to find.
These four scans below, courtesy of Jurjen Borregaard of Amsterdam confirm that mento vinyl continued in Jamaica well into the age of the CD. All also from 2001 and on the Penthouse label is the label from the LP version of the above Rod Dennis release. This is followed by a single drawn from this album: "Brown Skin Gal" backed with "No Body's Business".
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Harder to find than the Rod Dennis CD is "Authentic Mento" a 2001 CD by old-timers Blue Glaze Mento Band. Clarinet is featured on this CD, as played by band leader Vincent Pryce, who also wrote an original track, "The Farmer". |
| Blue Glaze (sometimes called the "Blue Glades Mento Band") were "discovered" after playing mento together for 40 years. Comparisons were drawn between Blue Glaze and The Buena Vista Social Club. Blue Glaze would next record with Stanley Beckford. Sad news was received in October of 2004. Vincent passed on the 4th of that month. |
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Here is a photo
of The Blue Glaze Mento Band, featuring the biggest rumba box
I've ever seen.
Dan Neely
identified this photo as coming from mid-2005 and taken at Devon
House at the Rukumbine show. |
Video of five songs from a
live 2003 performance by The
Blue Glaze Mento Band backing
the late Stanley Beckford can be seen on the
Stanley Beckford
page.
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In June of 2009, Dan
Neely shot this video of Blue Glaze. It's great to see how well
the band bounced back from the death of its leader and clarinet player
Vincent Pryce in 2004. As you will see in this rendition of
Toots And The Maytals' "Sweet And Dandy", a fife
player, Ferdie, has been added to the lineup.
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Blue Glaze (sometimes called
the "Blue Glades Mento Band") were "discovered" after playing mento together
for 40 years. Comparisons were drawn between Blue Glaze and
The Buena Vista Social Club.
Blue Glaze would next record with Stanley Beckford.
Sad news was received in October of 2004. Vincent passed on
the 4th of that month. In April of 2010 I heard from P. Béchard, of Gwened, Brittany who alerted me to the a French web page about Blue Glaze that includes video. It can be seen at http://www.chartres.tw/2010_04_08_BGMB.html
In November of 2010, I heard from Bill Monsted with news exciting and sad:
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In mid-2011, Blue Glaze released a new CD, called "We Will Wait". It features guest appearances from names familiar to ska & reggae fans, including Toots, Bunny Wailer, Stranger Cole, Sticky Thompson, Dean Fraser & Lee Jaffe. |
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Good performances by all are matched by good packing with informative notes and photos. Courtesy of Bill are these two clips of the making of this album. First is Blue Glaze recording the basic tracks of "Sly Mongoose": |
| Second is Toots voicing his delightful gospel-mento track, "Great Jehovah": |
 Another group of rediscovered old-timers: "Dance Music and Working Songs From Jamaica" by The Lititz Mento Band. This CD was released in Germany in 1993 on GEMA. Their sound is interesting, as there is no percussion, banjo becomes strictly a rhythm instrument, and fiddle is a featured instrument. Two video clips featuring Lititz fiddler Theodore Miller can be seen on the Mento Video page. |
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Here is another photo of The Lititz Mento Band. This shot is from the 1980s and was taken at the Upper Deck in Montego Bay. |
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The Jamaica Cultural Development
Commission’s 2000 release, "Mento Music In Jamaica, Volume 1",
features four bands. These groups have been together as long as long as
a quarter of a century!
The last two followed with CDs of their own. Three of the bands have regular hotel gigs, and this CD is a good indicator of the type of sound you may hear if you should travel to Jamaica and a mento band is playing at your hotel. (Although there are no ribald songs here. These are usually part of a mento band's live repertoire, but the groups may have felt inhibited recording under the aegis of the JCDC.) This CD can be purchased directly from the JCDC at http://www.jcdc.org.jm/, but be prepared to handle the currency conversion to Jamaican dollars. |
 
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This CD by was released in 2002 on INKLIGNed Records and can be readily purchased at www.cdbaby.com.Though somewhat amateurishly constructed, in addition to 8 longish tracks, this CD also contains video content: a full song, a shorter jam, and the band giving a brief definition of mento. The music is upbeat, in the style of today's Hotel Bands and features playful banjo. Most of the songs are predictable selections from the mento repertoire, with less unfamiliar songs: "Two Banjan" and "Miss Sweety Mae Lulu".
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This
1995 CD contains 7 mento tracks by Chris Welch and his group. |
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Toots Hibbert adds raucous mento harmonica (and some backing vocals) to a cover of Sweet And Dandy. Notable band members include lead singer Lanford Gilzene, who had a short lived career recording rasta reggae in the mid-1970s, banjo player Wesley Balds, who, at 80 years of age is old even for a mento musician, and backing and sometime lead vocalist and shaker player Donnett Clarke, who has the distinction of being the rare woman in a rural mento band. Balds previously played with the Sunshine Mento Band, as did rumba box player Courtney Clarke. Two YouTube videos of Gilzene and The Blue Light Mento Band can be seen on Mento Videos page here.
The band is led by banjo player Colin Smith, formerly the band director of The Jamaica Folk Singers. In addition to the hoped for mento instruments, banjo, acoustic guitar, flute, rumba box, shakers, hand drum and harmonica (all well played), so is one that is less expected, accordion, not to mention a guest trombone, both blending in fine This makes for a big sound ("tallawah" meaning substantial) compared to most others, some songs nicely jamming out nicely. It also includes male choral singing reminiscent of The Frats Quintet. The result is something of a nicely old-fashioned sound. Songs are mostly familiar from mento, ska, rock steady and reggae. There's a few instrumentals mixed in. "Stylish Girls" ("Salt Lane Gal"), "Iron Bar", "Rebecca" (sort of Chin's Calypso Sextets' "Uniform Madness"), "Kysilo" (a cover of a Stanley Beckford song that was a cover of a Count Lasher song) are especially good. And besting the previously described CD, Tallawah boasts two female band members!
In 2013 Larry And The Mento Boys released an 18 song CD entitled "Jamaica Farewell".
For more more label and jacket scans and song clips also see this site's:
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