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Jul 05

The Blue Beat

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In the cold and dark days following the end of the second world war, Britain was a nation full of optimism, and re-building after the devastation that five years of bitter struggle had wreaked on London and other cities was of paramount importance. Of course, re-building needed thousands of people to work in all the services and industries, and the British colonies contained an ideal source of labour. The late forties would see an unprecedented influx of workers from what was then the British West Indies, which continued right through the following decade. Work hard, play hard is a well-worn cliché, but it illustrates the point that along with employment, people also need entertainment, and one source of affordable entertainment in those days was the gramophone record.

Along with most other entertainment media, the record industry was pretty much put on hold during the war years, and was monopolised by two major companies; EMI and Decca. But there was a great demand for more diversity within the industry. This demand was met by the formation of one of the first independent record companies; Melodisc. Founded in 1947, Melodisc records was the brainchild of Emil Shallit, a London based businessman, originally of eastern European Jewish descent. The story goes that he was pensioned off from the army after being wounded behind enemy lines on a parachuting mission, and he used the money to found his record company.

Shallit was later joined in the operation by Siggy Jackson

The Melodisc label was originally dedicated to releasing Jazz and Blues imported from the US featuring artists such as Charlie Parker and Woody Guthrie, as well as UK recorded Jazz from early Jamaican artists such as Joe Harriotts

The surge of popularity in Jamaican R&B in the late fifties was to see the foundation of three new subsidiary labels, each of which would specialise in releasing Jamaican and UK recorded R&B marketed primarily at the UKs growing West Indian population; Dice, Rainbow, and most influentially; the Blue Beat label.

Siggy Jackson set up the Blue Beat label in 1960 and released Jamaican Blues records by budding artists like Keith and Enid, The Jivin’ Juniors (featuring a young Derrick Harriot), Duke Ried, Laurel Aitken, and Derrick Morgan among others. These early releases were largely uptempo Boogie Shuffle rhythms or the slower Doo-Wop inspired R&B songs which were popular at that time, in fact the first record to be released on Blue Beat was Laurel Aitkens “Boogie Rock”(B1), a title which speaks for itself.

Back then the people used to call the music ‘Blue Beat’, they never realised it was just a label…

text supplied by Blue Beat Website

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written by stevie fae cranhill \\ tags: , ,

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