Chapter 39: Blankety Skank
In which I turn to the secret reggae history of Terry Wogan as an antidote to the rotten secrets unearthed in the Epstein files.
Is it February already!? Where did January get to? Why am I always so hideously behind schedule, and why on earth is speed garage mentioned in the Epstein files?
Before I answer any of these questions, I’ve made another unsanctioned dub which you can preview below, and my beloved full subscribers can download it from the link at the bottom.
We’re just over a month into 2026 and I’m already pretty exasperated thanks to endless revelations and bizarre entries in the latest batch of files released by the FBI in the tawdry case of Jeffrey Epstein. The most absurd was an email which the dead financier felon received in 2009 from an unidentified individual recommending he check out a few tracks from various twitch-house labels and “UK speed garage from around 1998” including the banger ‘Rip Groove’ and ‘Spin Spin Sugar’. The latter I presume is the Dark Garage mix of Sneaker Pimps which, if it wasn’t shameful enough to be emailing a convicted paedophile at 8pm on New Years Eve, I hope they’re now crushed by the embarrassment of citing Boston native Armand Van Helden as UK garage. Paedantic, I know.
As distracting as this all might seem, I’ve had a lot on the boil since my previous chapter. First up, let me remind you that I released an EP of dub versions of a rhythm I made based around Massive Attack’s ‘Five Man Army’, I am donating 50% of proceeds to Doctors Without Borders, so head over to Bandcamp if you haven’t grabbed it already, and preview it here…
Over the past few weeks I’ve also turned in a couple of articles including an in depth piece about bhangra pioneer and master percussionist Kuljit Bhamra whose long lost Punjabi Disco album was reissued on Naya Beat a few of months back, so keep an eye out for that one over at Bandcamp Daily later this month. I also wrote an obituary about legendary drummer Sly Dunbar for The Quietus, which you can read here.
Moments after I sent off the latter article, I gathered my tracks for January’s episode of The Rough Guide To Rongorongoland, only to find out my guest wasn’t coming. This is the stuff of nightmares for me. I’d spent a few days putting a show together, themed around my guest, and I suddenly had just half an hour to find an alternative. So, with Sly's story fresh in my mind, I frantically threw as many of his records in a bag, loaded a few more tracks onto a USB, and headed to Soho Radio HQ for an impromptu tribute set. It went pretty well, all things considered, and you can listen back here.
As mentioned on the show, I’ve been listening back through some old tapes because I realised it’s been 30 years since the second recording session by my teenage band Three Bean Salad. A year or so back I went in search of the original multitrack tapes, and though I unearthed a couple, we couldn’t find any from this session, so in lieu of any decent audio, I used a bit of EQ trickery and a stem splitter on a 3rd generation copy of a cassette, just so I could share what we were up to back in January ‘96 in a makeshift studio cobbled together amongst the furniture in my friend Sarah Wayne’s living room. Here’s the unfortunately titled ‘Bill Cosby’s Easy Listening Utensil’.
Aside playing percussion, I also rapped in the band, but for the sake of my own fragile ego, I’ve stripped my vocals out of the next one which was a half finished track that we jammed to fill the last couple of minutes of Ampex tape. I also removed myself because I name-checked Bill Cosby in one of the verses too. It really hadn’t aged well, lyrically at least, but I love the rhythm track. I just wish we could find the original tapes for a proper mixdown and release.
Does Bill’s sullied name appear in the Epstein files, you ask? Of course, though only to decline an invite to dinner at Chez Jeff.
One name you definitely won’t find in there is Terry Wogan, the genial Irish broadcaster who popped his clogs a decade ago on January 31st 2016. Most will remember Wogan as the long suffering presenter of the Eurovision Song Contest whose dry commentary became increasingly irreverent as the show dragged on, and presumably his glass was repeatedly refilled. Older readers will recall his titular chat show on a Thursday night on which he interviewed everyone from Chevy Chase (refused to say a word) to David Ike (claimed he was the son of God) to Nicolas Cage who somersaulted into the studio in leathers, performing high kicks and tossing money into the audience.
Older readers, still, may have enjoyed Wogan’s turn on Blankety Blank, and while many coveted the hallowed Blankety Blank chequebook and pen, recently I’ve been thinking about getting my hands on the iconic wand mic he wielded; I have some video content planned, and I’d sooner do it like Wogan rather than awkwardly holding a little fluffy mic, as is de jour in various Tik Tok and Instagram reels.
Some of you might not know that, amongst his many other accolades, Wogan was also the first person to play reggae on mainstream UK radio when, in 1968, Trojan Records proprietor Lee Gopthal bet his mate Clive Crawley £10 that he couldn’t get one of his releases played on the BBC. Crawley grabbed a copy of Gopthal’s latest single — the softly skanking soul of ‘Kansas City’ by Joya Landis — and made his way to Broadcasting house, eager to score that tenner which was around a week’s wages at the time. Crawley cornered the first producer he spotted and gave it his best salesman spiel, describing the single as “a new kind of music from the West Indies.” A couple of days later, Wogan dropped the needle on ‘Kansas City’ and quoted Crawley, verbatim.
The upright skank of Ska had its moment in the UK pop charts with Millie’s ‘My Boy Lollipop’ reaching number 2, but that was back in ‘64. As far as mainstream radio in Britain was concerned, Blue Beat had been a fad, and rocksteady didn’t get a look in, but here was a new thing with a new name, or at least it was to the BBC who hadn’t been paying attention to the quickly evolving sounds from Jamaica. Curious as it may now seem, Wogan becoming the UK reggae ambassador says a lot about his broad taste.
Stranger still, Joya Landis wasn’t even West Indian, she was born Wanda Vann in the one horse American town of Mound City back in 1936, about an hour or so south of Kansas City. In the 60s she moved with her husband and kids to Queens, NY where she sang in church and dabbled in song writing, co-penning a soul single which came out on the short-lived Sanfris label, barely known for a handful of funk, psych and garage 45s in the late 1960s.
While Vann was visiting Jamaica, Duke Reid invited her into Treasure Isle to record a succession of singles, including a cover of Evie Sands’ ‘Angel Of The Morning’, a couple of duets with John Holt and Hopeton Lewis, and the aforementioned ‘Kansas City’ which was a surprise hit in England, thanks in part to the tenacity of Clive Crawley, and not forgetting Wogan for taking the plunge and playing it on Radio 1.
The UK was instrumental in the success of a number of Jamaican artists, from Dave & Ansell Collins to Bob Marley, and most capitalised on their success with UK tours, while some even settled here. But Vann wasn’t Jamaican, she was just passing through, and she soon returned to family life back in New York, and her singing career remained in church where she’d honed her craft as a kid back in Kansas. Vann took her final trip to the great city in the sky on April 17th 2013.
Meanwhile Trojan scored a UK number 1 in ‘71 with ‘Double Barrel’ featuring Sly Dunbar on drums, and Wogan would just miss the top 20 in the spring of ‘78 with a version of Cornish folk song ‘The Floral Dance’. ‘Rip Groove’ by Double 99 reached the top 50 in 2004.
(My dub mixes of Tim Deluxe from Double 99’s Indo-jazz project A Uniting Of Opposites are still yet to see light of day).
