STORY · REGGAE
Basslines that defined reggae
Well supported
Reggae is often called bass music; these are some of the hands that made the bassline the lead instrument.
Session bassists from Studio One's early ska sides through to Channel One's rockers era quietly rewrote what a rhythm section could do - and rarely got billing for it.
The bottom end as lead voice
Ska's walking bass, rocksteady's held notes and reggae's one-drop all handed the bass player an unusually loud vote in how a record actually felt. The names below rarely appeared on a label credit, but their basslines are, in a real sense, the tune.
Jackie Jackson moved between Treasure Isle sessions and a long later membership of Toots and the Maytals; Val Douglas arrived from rural Clarendon to become one of the 1970s' most booked bassists, working behind Bob Marley, Dennis Brown and Burning Spear; and Earl "Bagga" Walker carried a Studio One grounding into decades of work for Augustus Pablo, Half Pint and Sugar Minott.
At Channel One, Bertram "Ranchie" McLean partnered Lloyd Parks and drummer Sly Dunbar first in Skin, Flesh and Bones and then in The Revolutionaries, helping define the mid-1970s "rockers" beat that reset reggae's rhythmic template - work that sits alongside better-known bass careers such as Aston "Family Man" Barrett's at Tuff Gong and Robbie Shakespeare's with Sly and Robbie.
Ask any selector: the bassline is what the body remembers first.
These players moved constantly between studios and producers, which is exactly why their basslines - rather than any one singer's voice - carried reggae's rhythmic signature from one label, one decade, one country to the next.