A Catholic school for wayward boys run by the Sisters of Mercy would not be the first place coming to most people's minds as the birthplace of Reggae and Ska music. But in one of those mysterious quirks of fate the Universe delights in, if it hadn't been for Sister Ignatius and the Alpha Boys School in Jamaica who knows if that whole music scene would have developed as quickly as it did.
Formed back in the 1800s, the Alpha Boys School instituted a music program as early as the 1890s. This wasn't just some half-baked music program either; the Big Bands that played the island dance halls in the 1940s and '50s would attend senior concerts in an attempt to sign students to play for them. They would make arrangements with the nuns for them to perform in gigs at bars and dancehalls giving them valuable professional experience.
The sisters knew that there was a good living to be made by being a musician in those days, as the three biggest bands of Jamaica would come to the school and recruit boys for a career with them. The Military Band, The Regimental Band, and the Constabulary Band were frequent visitors to the school and competed with the dance bands for boys by being able to offer them permanent employment.
Tommy McCook, one of the original members of the The Skatalites was in the band at Alpha school from 1938 to 1942 and a full dozen graduates of the school are either currently still members or passed through the ranks of the band. To this day the Skatalites and other prominent Jamaican musicians take part in a benefit concert for the Alpha school as a mark of their appreciation for its contribution to developing the country's second most popular export – music. (You can figure out the most popular on your own)
The Skatalites were officially formed in 1964, although they had been playing together in various formations for a while before that, and immediately became the house band for Studio One and backed up the biggest names in Reggae. Bob Marley, Peter Tosh, Jimmy Cliff, Toots and The Maytals, Delroy Wilson, and The Wailers themselves all benefited from having them play behind them at the start of their careers.
The Skatalites themselves weren't as fortunate with their career as a group as those they backed in the studio. Just as things were starting to take off for them, their major creative force, Don Drummond, succumbed to mental illness and was confined to a sanatorium for killing his wife in 1965. He committed suicide a year latter.
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