Two Colors for Ernie, Dean
JAMAICA’S musical time traveller Ernie Ranglin’s career has impacted every genre the country has produced since the early 1960s.
Two Colors, an album he recorded with Dean Fraser, is scheduled for release in May by Tad’s International Record. That is one month before the legendary guitarist celebrates his 90th birthday.
The album has 12 songs produced by Fraser, the respected saxophonist whose career started in the mid1970s when Ranglin was touring with Jimmy Cliff.
De Ranglin, which features Big Youth, is the lead single from Two Colors on which production started one year ago.
“We both did tracks in our own space; I recorded in Kingston and he recorded in Ochi [Ocho Rios]. But all tracks were laid at Tad’s studio in Kingston then the leads were recorded in Ochi,” Fraser told the Jamaica Observer.
Some of the musicians who worked on Two Colors are bassists Mikey Fletcher and Dale Haslam, keyboardists Bowie Mclaughlin and
Andre Marsh, drummer Desi Jones and guitarist Lamont “Monty” Savory.
Fraser has recorded and performed with Ranglin before but doing an album with the man who arranged and played on classics like Millie Small’s My Boy Lollipop and The Wailers’ It Hurts to be Alone “is a dream come through”.
He added that, “This project shows how much reggae is a force to reckon with. Our music has no limits.”
Ranglin, who was critical to the success of Island Records, was among the company’s first employees when it launched in Kingston in 1959. He has played on ska, rocksteady, roots-reggae and dancehall songs, as well as jazz, his favoured genre.
Ernie Ranglin was awarded the Order of Jamaica by the Jamaican Government last year.