Roland Alphonso

Saxophonist Roland Alphonso was one of the major figures of early ska and reggae on several fronts: his recordings as a soloist and bandleader, his work as a member of the Skatalites, his prolific log of session appearances on 1960s Jamaican recordings, and his role as arranger for Studio One. Although his roots were in the jazz he played as a teenager and young man, he adapted to the emerging Jamaican popular music so well that he became one of its defining innovators. Certainly he was one of reggae's most accomplished instrumentalists; while many horns on ska and rock steady discs of the 1960s are off-key or whiny, Alphonso's tone was in a league with American jazzmen and R&B players. His versatility allowed for a wide scope of recorded material, from up-tempo ska novelties and ballads that showed his skill at jazz improvisation to numbers with an R&B/soul base. Born in Cuba in 1931 to a Jamaican mother and Cuban father, Alphonso moved to Jamaica with his mother when he was two years old. As a teenager in the late '40s, he began playing professionally with jazz bands on tenor and alto sax, taking Illinois Jacquet as one of his inspirations. By the early '50s, he was already recording as a session man, playing on sides by calypso artists like Young Kitchener. In 1956, he made his first tracks with producer Coxsone Dodd, and although those were lost when they were sent to New York to get mastered, Alphonso soon became a feature of Dodd's sessions at the Federal Records studio. From the late '50s onward he recorded often under his own name, both for Dodd and for other producers, such as Duke Reid. In the early '60s, Alphonso pioneered the ska sound on instrumentals that matched R&B and boogie influences from the States with the clipped, quick rhythms of Jamaica. He...