Brass Trax

It was just over twenty years ago when dancehall superstar Tenor Saw died in a patch of roadside bushes in Houston, Texas. His career, which had begun with the single “Roll Call” in 1984, lasted only four years, and he had released little more than a handful of singles and one full-length album. Nonetheless, the singularity and haunting simplicity of his voice has assured him a reggae immortality.

Tenor Saw was born Clive Bright in West Kingston, during the relatively peaceful years of the late 60s when Jamaican independence was fresh and political parties had yet to arm themselves against each other. By the time Bright was in his teens, however, the scene had changed.

Between 1976 and 1982, waves of political violence swept Jamaica, concentrating on the urban area of Kingston. In the advent of the 1980 presidential election alone, 900 people were killed as armed gangs affiliated alternatively with the conservative Jamaican Labour Party (JLP) or the more radical People’s National Party (PNP), and arranged almost uniformly by housing project, squared off, putting the young democracy in jeopardy.

By the mid-eighties, however, the political violence had declined as ghetto bosses, known as “dons,” shifted their focus from the ballot to the baggie. Marijuana and cocaine smuggling filled the dons’ coffers with cash and their soldiers’ clips with bullets. The dons had the money and the clout to establish semi-autonomous regions where police feared to tread and where a don’s word was law.

In this climate, reggae soundclashes, the battles between rival DJ crews, served as both an escape from violence and an occasion for it. In 1984, Bright, then 18, was kicking it with Nitty Gritty, a budding dancehall phenom. The two friends infiltrated the orbit of Sugar Minott, by then already a legendary reggae singer. Minott was impressed by their tenacity and invited them to join Youthman Productions, his dancehall crew. There, they made waves at local sound clashes and Bright became Tenor Saw.

Eventually, Nitty Gritty introduced Tenor Saw to George Phang, a former PNP party flunky who had parlayed his political clout into a successful sound system, and, eventually, a roll as a major don. Phang’s Powerhouse label wasn’t exactly a hit factory, and when he invited Tenor Saw to voice a cut on the Queen Majesty rhythm, the resulting plate, “Roll Call” didn’t have much legs in the dancehall. Listening to the recording with his later output in mind, one is struck both by the remarkable assuredness of his voice—Tenor Saw knew he could sing—and by the banality of his performance. It is so predictably mannered, “Roll Call” could have come out of the throat of any ghetto singjay in Jamaica.

Listen to “Roll Call” by Tenor Saw

By 1985, however, Tenor Saw’s position in the reggae pantheon had been certified. That was the year of a legendary four-way clash between Minott’s Youthman Productions, Prince Jammy’s crew, the Black Scorpio sound system, and the Arrows crew. Tenor Saw conquered the crowd with “Ring the Alarm,” a bragging tune that he voiced over the “Stalag 17″ rhythm. The refrain, “Ring the alarm, another sound is dying” was meant as taunt, but, in retrospect, it sounds like Tenor Saw’s epitaph.

If you wanted to tell off an opponent, you could do worse than to have Tenor Saw put some words into your mouth. He transforms a children’s rhyme into a dramatization of his soundclash opponents (”Tic Tac Toe, we beat them all in a row”) who wind up in a horse’s trough, like the villains in a B-movie Western. Before acknowledging the collocation between his melodious voice and the violence of his lyrics, (”Sweet reggae music gwan pon the attack,”) Tenor Saw makes sure that his intentions are clear:

Four big sound in a one big land.
The don sound’ll play, the other three teams come
Four big sound in a one big land.
The boom sound’ll play, the other three teams gone.

Whether it’s the swagger of his performance or the crazy way he rolls his tongue around the word “ring,” the song still makes waves in the dancehall; it’s many people’s introduction to the widely versioned “Stalag” rhythm.

Listen to “Ring the Alarm” by Tenor Saw

On the strength of “Ring the Alarm,” Tenor Saw made it into Prince Jammy’s studio during the first round of recordings on Jammy’s new digital rhythm, “Under Mi Sleng Teng,” which would be versioned nearly 300 times in the ensuing year. Thus, Tenor Saw’s “Pumpkin Belly” became, along with Wayne Smith’s original “Sleng Teng” and Johnny Osbourne’s “Budy Bye,” one of the first digital dancehall hits.

“Pumpkin Belly” has a mysterious playfulness. It’s a song “of an old time proverb” about a woman who walks around with a “pumpkin belly,” or a visible pregnancy. The proverb is a riddle posed by the singer’s “old time granny.” Is she asking how the woman got pregnant? About the difficulties about carrying a child to term? The singer has no better idea than you or I do. After his granny accuses him of “selling gow” (bullshitting), he begs her mercy and suggests that she would do better to ask ask his mom to answer the question.

“Golden Hen,” Tenor Saw’s third hit from 1985 was so successful that the name of his version supplanted the name of the original tune (”Diseases”) to become what everybody calls the rhythm. Tenor Saw’s voice wholly inhabits this tune, bringing the listener into a rare immediacy with its roiling bassline and with the singer’s lamented loss of his “golden hen,” a woman who has been “laying eggs for the gentlemen.” As enduring as “Ring the Alarm” remains, “Golden Hen” is easily as essential a listening experience.

Listen to “Golden Hen” by Tenor Saw

Listen to “Diseases” by Michigan & Smiley

Tenor Saw’s album, Fever came out the following year, 1986. Anchored by “Pumpkin Belly,” and the title track, which he had voiced over a digital remake of the “Real Rock” riddim, the album is a rare specimen: a dancehall LP without filler. The extent of Tenor Saw’s vocal development can be heard on tracks like “Run Come Call Me,” which brings to mind the smooth melodies of Minott, his mentor. “Lots of Sign,” the opening track, is a burner that you could easily imagine played late on the floor of a 1980s New York City disco.

Success sent Tenor Saw to the United States, where he was followed by rumors of excessive drug use. He played with ensembles stateside, notably with Freddie McGregor, and toured extensively across the burgeoning U.S. reggae circuit with his old friend Nitty Gritty and their new acquaintance King Kong.

Reggae joints in the eighties had the same word-of-mouth, ad hoc character of hip-hop or punk rock clubs, and the same shady business practices. They were a place to score drugs, get shot, or both. It was a climate that seemed familiar to a singer from the world of dons and soundclashes.

So, it shouldn’t have come as a surprise when Tenor Saw was found dead on the side of the road in Houston after a performance he put on in August of 1988. The official cause of death was hit-and-run, not a rare occurrence in Houston to be sure, but the sudden murder of a superstar certainly warranted more scrutiny than the Houston police afforded Tenor Saw’s.

Suspicions among reggae listeners immediately fell on Nitty Gritty—the story was a drug deal gone bad—but the friends' closest confreres deny that there was any animosity between the two. Nitty Gritty and King Kong both recorded tribute tracks in the years following, in part to protest their innocence in the murder. (Nitty Gritty was himself murdered a couple of years later in a Brooklyn record shop. The NYPD unsuccessfully pinned his shooting on his dancehall rival, SuperCat.) Sugar Minott, for his part, has insisted in interviews that the Houston club promoters beat Tenor Saw to death, to avoid paying him.

Listen to “Who Killed Tenor Saw?” by Nitty Gritty

The circumstances of Tenor Saw’s death will probably never be known in their entirety. Chalk it up to another celebrity mystery, like the Black Dahlia murder or the deaths of Tupac and Biggie. But chalk it up all the same. Tenor Saw’s snuffed genius harbored a clutch of hits that the world will never hear. It’s the tragedy of music born of desperate circumstances that it dies too soon.

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