Desmond Dekker; Singer and Songwriter Took Ska Beyond Jamaica With His ‘Israelites’

The fans who pushed Desmond Dekker’s “Israelites” to the top of the pop charts in 1968 and 1969 had no firsthand experience with the social conditions in Jamaica that gave rise to the lyrics.

They did not quite understand the island patois Dekker used in the song. And the musical style, ska, a precursor of reggae, was foreign to them.

Yet, the song, an ode to the troubles of the poor, sold millions of copies, became the first purely Jamaican song to top the charts in the U.S., and opened the ears of the world to the music of the island.

“I just got lucky,” Dekker told the Boston Globe in 1996. “It was the right song at the right time.... Many people didn’t understand it, but it had a nice vibe.”

Dekker, the revered king of ska, whose international success set the stage for Bob Marley and other artists, died Thursday of a heart attack at his home in London. He was believed to be 63, though accounts of his age vary.

“He was a breakthrough artist,” said Roger Steffens, chairman of the Reggae Grammy committee and former co-host of “Reggae Beat” on KCRW-FM (89.9). “He was one of the very earliest local artists in Jamaica in the ska period and was a pioneer in using patois in his lyrics.”

Writer Laurence Cane-Honeysett called Dekker “reggae music’s first superstar” and described him as a pivotal figure “in the successful globalization of reggae.”

Dekker, born Desmond Adolphus Dacres, grew up in Kingston and loved singing ever since he was “about knee-high.”

He was sent one day to buy something for his father, and on the way he heard Nat King Cole singing “Stardust.”

“It was like I went into a trance or something,” he told a reporter in a 2000 interview. “I forgot all about my dad sending me to the shop. When I got home, I explained to him what happened. I thought I was going to get a whipping, but he understood.”

The influences of his early years read like a who’s who of African American artists: Otis Redding, Ray Charles, Count Basie, James Brown, Curtis Mayfield, Jackie Wilson, Louis Armstrong.

Dekker was working as a welder at a shop in Kingston when his co-workers heard his falsetto singing and convinced him to try out with a record company. Eventually he was signed with Leslie Kong, who was then a music producer in Jamaica.

The music of the day was ska, a genre influenced by American R&B; and jazz. It was dance music, born during a time when Jamaica reeled from political and social upheaval. Protest and social commentary sometimes found a place in the music. Ska would eventually lead to the slower tempo and greater social consciousness of reggae.

In 1963 Dekker had his first hit with “Honour Your Father and Mother,” followed by others such as “Music Like Dirt,” “Rudie Got Soul” and “Sabotage.” He later was backed by a band called the Aces.

Between 1967 and 1970, Dekker produced a series of records that helped introduce the music of Jamaica to an international audience.

Dekker was amazed that “O.O.7 (Shanty Town),” about troubles in Jamaica, became a big hit in Britain.

“There’d been student riots and the police and soldiers had been called in to break them up,” he said in 1999. “But I think people here [in Britain] like the tune even if they didn’t really understand it.”

“Israelites” was the crossover hit, reaching the Top 10 in Britain and the U.S. in 1969, notwithstanding the fact that some fans misheard the lyrics.

Written while he walked through a park in Jamaica, it speaks to the problems of the nation’s poor trying to make ends meet. Like the Biblical Israelites, they are downtrodden and wandering.

Two excerpts:

Get up in the morning, slaving for bread, sir, so that every mouth can be fed. Poor me, the Israelite.

Shirt them a-tear up, trousers are gone. I don’t want to end up like Bonnie and Clyde. Poor me, the Israelite.

As a lyricist, Dekker viewed himself as a “newscaster,” a reporter with an eye for what resonated with everyman, and a good singing voice.

“I like to write songs about what’s happening, what I see around me and what I hear,” he told Cane-Honeysett in 1999.

None of his other songs achieved as much U.S. success as “Israelites,” but he helped open the door for fellow countryman Marley, who had worked with Dekker during his days as a welder. Dekker introduced Marley to the company that produced his first record.

By the 1970s Dekker had moved to Britain, where he was a regular performer at clubs. In the 1980s his music saw a resurgence in what was known as the second wave of the ska movement, Steffens said.

In 2005, a London critic described Dekker’s anthology, “You Can Get It If you Really Want,” as evidence that he was “a master not just of party-friendly ska but also of honey-voiced soul, gospel and calypso.”

Nearly 40 years after Dekker’s first hit, his music still resonates with listeners, even those who weren’t around to hear it the first time.

“Last summer he played at the Knitting Factory in Hollywood to a soldout audience, which was almost completely people under 30,” Steffens said. “They know all the words to his songs, even the most obscure ones.”