Skatalites trumpeter Dizzy Johnny blows his final breath
Sunday, August 17, 2008
Internationally recognised trumpeter 'Dizzy' Johnny Moore, a founding member of the Skatalites and ska innovator died yesterday afternoon at his home in Kingston. For the past seven months the 70-year-old Moore had been bravely battling colon cancer, but finally gave up the fight.
John Arlington Moore was born in Kingston on October 5, 1938 to a family that did not consider music a favourable or viable career. But when young Johnny noticed a neighborhood lad playing the drums, he asked, "Bwoy, where did you learn to do that?"
"Alpha," said the lad.
Dizzy... had been bravely battling colon cancer, but finally gave up the fight
"Whoa, I got to go to that place," was Moore's response.
The problem with Johnny's desire was: only wayward youths were admitted to Alpha. To qualify, he purposely caused enough mischief for his mother to take him and enroll him there. As he put it, "I had to pull a couple of pranks so that they figured I was going haywire."
At Alpha, Johnny Moore studied alongside other future luminaries such as Don Drummond, Lester Sterling and Rico Rodriguez. Under the tutelage of the nuns, he exhibited a sound academic aptitude, and with bandmaster Ruben Delgado's guidance, young Moore discovered his musical voice in the trumpet. He also displayed a keen interest in the harmonic refinement of musical composition, studied printing and excelled at electronics, for which he won a prize as the school's outstanding technician. On graduation, Moore went on to join the Jamaica Military Band where he earned the nickname "Johnny Blow Blow" because of his insistent practice of Dizzy Gillespie and Charlie Parker's music, instead of Beethoven and Bach's, which was favoured by the military band. He was discharged after three years for "not [being] amenable to military discipline, though a good musician".
Moore next worked with the Mapletoft Poulle Orchestra, but was soon forced to quit because of his Rastafari beliefs. According to Dizzy, Poulle "was a lawyer and leader of one of society's top bands. I stayed with his band until my hair grew too long and he figured it was time for me to get a haircut". Away from the social scene, Dizzy grew his locks, adorned himself in burlap cloth and spent his time between the Dungle in West Kingston and Count Ossie's Camp on Wareika Hill in Rockfort.
Jazz sensibilities, Rastafari concepts and the drums of Count Ossie shaped Johnny Moore's mature musical personality and inspired bandleader and camp companion Tommy McCook to reason with him, encouraging him to cut his locks and join the Skatalites.
It was his dazzling solos that earned Johnny his moniker "Dizzy," and it was the Skatalites through which he established himself as the leading trumpeter of the idiom. Arguably the most recorded soloist of the era, among the hundreds of recordings on which "Dizzy" Johnny is featured are Something Special, Ringo, Man in the Street, Schooling the Duke, the Wailers' Love and Affection, Lonesome Feeling, and Nice Time.
Funeral arrangements will be announced.
He is survived by his mother, children, grandchildren and great grandchildren.
RIP Johnny "Dizzy" Moore
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