CHAPTER 53

 

#48: DAVE & ANSELL COLLINS

“Double Barrel”

from the single “Double Barrel”

Released: August 1970

 

 

"This is evil music!," roared my father as she watched Dave and Ansell Collins - some labels say "Ansil," yet others "Ansel," and Dave "Collins" was actually Dave Barker - performing "Double Barrel" on Top Of The Pops. Saturnine would be their most apposite description; the dark-suited duo prowled around a darkly-lit stage, Ansell impenetrable and sinister behind this organ (and doubtless the young Jerry Dammers must have taken note), Barker barking out nearly incomprehensible instructions: "Hit me one time!" "Push your lips out!" "I'm backed by the shack of a soul boss! Most turnin'! Stormin'! Sound of soul!" - and of course the recurring leitmotif, Jamaica's answer to "I am the god of hellfire": "I am the magnificent W-000!" It meant as little and as much as "Awopbopaloobopalopbamboom."

 

"Double Barrel" is my favourite of the reggae number ones (300,000 sales with only thirty-three plays on national radio before it went top); co-produced in canyons of echo by Winston Riley and Prince Buster, with Barker essentially toasting over Collins' already recorded backing track, it is the bridge which spans '60s ska and '70s militant dub - the title prolongs the line of Al Capone, Django, the Liquidator (note the parallels with contemporary hip hop) but the sound seems to be striving for something else. Although other key reggae tunes of the period were arguably darker (Niney's "Blood And Fire," Delroy Wilson's "Better Must Come") or stranger (Hopeton Lewis' "Cool Cool Collie"), "Double Barrel" was about as strange and dark as the 1971 charts could get - and Barker's grunts also illustrate the important northerly link to James Brown. The solemn, reedy organ chords of the chorus many listeners found actively frightening at the time, whereas to my ears it was simply another example of unexpected, delicious newness. And this isn't the last bit of dreary music criticism-by-numbers you’ll find in this book. I wasn't making a point.