Nerlin 'Lynn' Taitt, the Trinidadian guitarist many musicologists credit with the birth of rocksteady music; Mr. Taitt passed on to the great beyond on Wednesday 30th January, 2010 in Montreal, Canada. Rock Steady is considered the base from which reggae music was developed. One can make the comparison to Calypso and Soca with Soca coming from the belly of the Calypso World, as conceived and created by Garfield Blackman aka Lord Shorty. Lynn Taitt is considered the pioneer of Rocksteady music... the cradle of Reggae music!
The following excerpt was sourced from the Jamaican Gleaner Newspaper article that was published on 01/23/2010.
"Taitt, who was born in Trinidad's San Fernando region, emigrated to Canada in 1968. He first came to Jamaica in August 1963 as a musician to play in celebrations to mark Jamaica's first year of Independence from Britain.
He became a regular session player in Jamaica during the ska era, recording with the genre's biggest acts including The Skatalites and Derrick Morgan.
But it was the rocksteady sound that Taitt is most associated. He perfected that beat by playing in influential bands such as The Cavaliers, Comets and The Jets, which was the most prolific.
His band-mates in The Jets included guitarist Lynford 'Hux' Brown, keyboardists Gladstone Anderson and Winston Wright and saxophonist Headley Bennett.
Among the many hits Taitt played on was Take It Easy by Hopeton Lewis, which many argue is the first rocksteady song. He also worked on Girl I've Got a Date by Alton Ellis.
Taitt recorded with Jamaica's biggest producers of the 1960s, including arch-rivals Clement 'Coxsone' Dodd and Arthur 'Duke' Reid, Bunny Lee, Sonia Pottinger and Leslie Kong.
Some of Taitt's most appreciated work was done with Kong, a Chinese-Jamaican who was the first person to record Bob Marley. Taitt played on most hit songs by singer Desmond Dekker, Kong's star act.
His jangly opening riffs helped make Dekker's 007 (Shantytown) a classic.
Taitt also recorded several songs with African-American impresario Danny Sims and singer Johnny Nash.
In the 1970s, Taitt was part of a colony of rocksteady musicians living in Toronto. Others included Leroy Sibbles of The Heptones, and keyboardist Jackie Mittoo who Taitt worked with in The Skatalites."
via http://jamaica-gleaner.com/
The photo presented with this post also came from the article published by the Jamaican Gleaner newspaper. The article was written by Howard Campbell.
The following quote was sourced from Silhouettes Website.
"Taitt credited the jerky rock steady reggae beat to Shango Baptiste African Religious Music he heard in south Trinidad, but his musical adoption was not accepted because calypso was too strong."
