via MiamiNewTimes: RIP Noel King Sporty Williams, Miami Reggae Pioneer and Buffalo Soldier Writer When King Sporty died, Rihanna cried. The man who wrote Buffalo Soldier with Bob Marley in a smoke-filled studio in Hialeah flew to the other side on Monday, January 5 in a Miami hospital at the age of 71. With roots in Jamaicas Trenchtown music scene that wholly informed hip-hop, pioneering forays into electronic dance music, and an indomitable funk, the man born Noel G. Williams led a life in music that affected millions. And he did much of it from his longtime home in Allapattah, where he was also a mini real estate tycoon. King Sporty started out as a DJ and producer at Clement Coxsone Dodds groundbreaking Studio One label in Kingston, Jamaica. During the first-wave ska music heyday of the 1950s, soundclashes of mobile DJ systems would occur in areas like Trenchtown, where slick-suited rudeboys and gyals would meet to dance to the newest records and cheer on rival systems to see who could play better, newer, more danceable records at the loudest possible volume. Soundclashes were proto-hip-hop dance parties held on the street and produced by similar social conditions as in South Bronx, New York, where rap was eventually born. Massive speaker walls were often loaded into old ice cream trucks painted with label slogans and colors. These events were serious business for the label owners who sponsored each crew as a means to sell more of their artists records. They were sometimes dangerous, as when gang fights erupted into straight-blade ratchet melees. The music was a mix of American R&B hits and Caribbean rhythms, such as the mento and calypso beats. Jamaica was heavily influenced by jazz and other black American music played on Miami radio stations, whose waves were propelled by tradewinds over Cuba, Hispaniola, and the Lesser Antilles. A young King Sporty would have only had to throw up an antenna to hear Milton Butterball Smith playing hits by Louis Jordan, Wynonie Harris, or Wilbert Harrison on WMBM. Many of those records were placed on radio at the behest of Florida music distributor Henry Stone, who was in the business of popularizing them in order to sell them. That Henry Stone would one day pay King Sporty $75,000 for the rights to Timmy Thomas Why Cant We Live Together in 1972 was set in motion by a chain of events leading back to Sportys youth. Click the link to read the whole story... blogs.miaminewtimes/crossfade/2015/01/king-sporty_noel-williams_dead_reggae_miami_2015.php
Posted on: Sat, 10 Jan 2015 18:02:11 +0000
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