History of the Thunderballs, Part 3: Meeting Dennis

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NL Dennis performing at the Lighthouse, Negril JA

     

 
A few evenings later, J and I bade good evening to a friend and left her little cottage which was back behind Negril’s Silver Star Restaurant, which was back behind Kirlew’s Hardware and Haberdashery store/yard, and we strolled out into the balmy Caribbean Island night, past the blossoming and fruiting lime trees growing outside the dimly glowing open back door of the restaurant, then onto the dusty dirt/gravel walk between the hardware store and it’s ever-growing piles of lumber, rebar and concrete block; out to Norman Manly Boulevard, where a taxi driver with the right color license plate (don’t get into a blue plate car; it’ll cost you plenty) quickly recognized us as the visitors we were and screeched to a stop.
 
   
     We jumped into an old Toyota piloted by a friendly driver who said “Yeh Mon! Wha’ g’wan sah! Weah yu gwan?” to which I replied “We wanna see the West End Lighthouse…” to which he replied “Yeh mon, no problem.”
 
     As he deftly and confidently avoided the numerous potholes ubiquitous to this part of the Island, we headed down to the West End, also known as The Cliffs because there is no beach – only sharp volcanic rock, not nice to swim near and especially dangerous and unpleasant to be bashed against by a rogue wave and a strong tide – consisting of a seven-mile drive and its many little side roads and a few tiny neighborhoods along the western shore of this tourist town called Negril.
 
     Prior to the late 1950’s Negril was a tiny fishing village accessible primarily by boat, though you could walk there or ride a donkey. Then the roads came, then the hippies came to sleep on the beach and stay with local families; then hotels were built up and down the beach and lots of tourists came and it’s never been the same since.
 
     They didn’t come to the Cliffs at first, but rather to the other stretch to the north – the famous Seven Mile White Sand Beach (which now is eroding because the humans have trashed the barrier reef – but that’s for another episode) and when they ran out of Beach to build hotels on they started building them down the West End.
 
     The Lighthouse sits at the westernmost tip of Westmoreland, the westernmost parish on the island of Jamaica, and directly across the road is a pleasant-looking property with tourist cabins, plus a bar and restaurant which announced itself, to no surprise, as “The Lighthouse Inn”.
 
     Life in Jamaica is mostly lived outdoors, and the air is always filled with sound, and the sound is usually reggae music. You don’t get into a taxi but the radio is on, and wherever you are, somebody has a boom box going. At night from the beach as well as the West End, you hear the sound of live music, sometimes startlingly clear and sharp miles away and then fading into a quiet muffled jumble as the ever-restless breeze shifts. This night was no different, but the most immediate sound, coming from across the road, was not like any we had heard before; it was a sound which would change two lives in a most unexpected and rewarding way.
 

It was a beautiful balmy night in early April – in Jamaica, not Vermont. In Vermont, April is when the snow begins to melt; they call it “Mud Season” (as if mud were a crop). That’s when the snow melts but there is still a layer of frozen ground beneath the surface, so the water doesn’t drain down into the earth and your dirt road becomes a track of mud.

However, such things are unknown in Jamaica. It was a warm and humid night, as most of them are, and the Girlfriend and I were strolling along the West End road when we heard the sounds of reggae music coming on the soft night air.

A brief listen revealed some “scratchy” sounding reggae, the sound coming from a low-fi system. But the rhythm was driving and insistent, and we stopped to listen. That driving rhythm was actually just one guitar, but it had a beat to it, a percussive snap that made you want to dance. That rhythm accompanied a singing voice like no other we had ever heard.

Though the whole sound was lo-fi and distorted, there was something about the voice that made me forget that fact. It had a beautiful clarity, a pitch-perfect-ness that settled on my ears like musical honey, and made me want to stay and listen.

“Let’s go sit down and listen to this guy,” said I to the Girlfriend.

And there was Dennis, skanking out the rhythm on his old Ibanez electric, and singing like an angel through his homemade sound system to an audience of…

Two, as we seemed to be the only people there. Dennis was singing a classic repertoire of reggae favorites. As I settled in to listening, I began to hear his voice more clearly, and quickly became a fan.

The first thing I noticed was the unique and distinctive sound; Dennis does not sound like anybody else and his voice is instantly recognizable. The second thing I noticed was his wide smile… finding joy in what proved to be a very enthusiastic performance. The rhythm of his guitar was hypnotic, insistent, metronomic… suitable for dancing; no need for a band!

And that fine-textured, soulful voice, full of feeling but in a natural style, free of exaggeration or artifice. And such effortlessly perfect pitch. It can be said of the top vocalists that the voice is truly a musical instrument, no less than guitar, piano or saxophone. Dennis’s vocal style is above all supremely musical and a joy to listen to on that basis alone.

As the evening progressed, a few more people came, stayed, drank, and a few danced. The crowd was small, but the applause was warm and genuine.

Dennis announced his last song, delivered, and bade the small but enthusiastic audience good night. As he was packing up, I walked up and introduced myself, and gave him a 5-star review of the show, which compliment he received graciously. I then asked him if he had any type of recording that he could sell at his gigs.

I was not interested buying a tape or CD, but rather wondering if he had any such thing to help increase the profitability of his performances (as is almost universal amongst American musicians.) I was not that surprised when the answer was no…nothing.

So I asked him if he would like a free recording session. I explained that I was a musician, not a recording studio owner, and that I had brought with me a simple but high quality recording setup. We would record in our rental cottage. The idea was to produce a CD, copies of which could be sold to the tourists.

I don’t know exactly what was going through Dennis’s mind at that moment. It’s not every day that a total stranger, a tourist from America, walks up to you and offers a recording session. Maybe he thought I was just another crazy tourist talking typical tourist trash, but he happily accepted the invitation.

The next day, with a microphone taped to a broomstick that was stuck into a plastic step-stool (I had no mic stand with me, and such things were impossible to purchase in Negril at the time), we recorded using a digital stereo tape recorder. The mic was in the left channel and his guitar was plugged into the right, and we recorded 14 songs, 13 covers and one Dennis original. While we were recording, the Girlfriend took some video, some of which footage survives.

Dennis told me that he didn’t use his name for performing, that he called himself “Taurus” after his astrological sign. So I came up with a bull logo

and photoshopped it onto his hat, which originally had the name of a tractor company, and used that for the cover of his first CD which is called, appropriately, ‘Taurus’.

 

It was a few years later, after the third Taurus CD we had made together, that one day I remarked that the sign of the bull, with its reputation for stubbornness, aggression and irascability, seemed especially unfit for a fellow known for gentleness, kindness, a sunny disposition and generally easy-going manner. So I Googled the sign, wondering if there was more to the Taurus sign than we knew about, only to find…

Ummm…Dennis is actually an Aries.

There being no time machine available,we couldn’t go back and change the CD’s, many copies of which were sold to happy visitors to Jamaica. Dennis mentioned that, even if we could change it, he had no vibe for being called ‘Aires’ as a stage name. I don’t blame him; the bull image is much more dynamic. And so, the bull remains; history is what it is.