Chewing Pine

The Skatalites – Stretching Out (ROIR, 2008)

“We’re down to business.”

Even if you have a never-ending penchant for a true ska, two plus hours of mostly instrumentals might do more than just satisfy you. In direct opposition to their work as the backing band for various vocalists, partially collected on At Randy’s, the Skatalites here work with mostly instrumental numbers. Occasionally, Doreen Shaffer joins the group on stage – as she does to this day. What’s remarkable about this 1983 session though is that the group of musicians on Stretching Out had not re-convened since their mid-60’s break up. Of course, for the most part, each member continued to record – Jackie Mittoo perhaps being the most prolific even after moving to Canada. Seemingly, none of this matters and even the ostentatious absence of Don Drummond eventually vacates one’s consciousness after about two minutes of the lead off “Freedom Sounds.”

Given the extended break that these players had from each other, there are musical interactions that seem tenuous at best. This group though, in its initial few years of existence ostensibly created the standards that instrumental ska groups refer to until the present. Quickly these minor blemishes disappear as the list of familiar tunes grew. Turning in a performance of twenty plus songs seems no simple accomplishment, but the vitality of the music, the pulse of the stylistic singularity, invigorated all involved.

Subsequently, Return of the Big Guns gets recorded within a calendar year of this performance. But perusing the tracklist of both Stretching Out and Return of the Big Guns, there are no apparent overlaps. The re-immergence of the Skatalites, which can date to this very performance, served to prefigure the genre’s renaissance less than a decade later. But even in the throngs of commercial viability, the Skatalites, refusing to assimilate its ska to what was being broadcast on the radio and television, churned out Ska Voovee (1993), Hi-Bop Ska (1994) and their last recording of the 20^th century, Ball of Fire (1998).