He was an internationally famous and widely beloved Jamaican Canadian artist who excelled as both a singer and a songwriter. He spent many years living in Toronto, recording and performing original reggae music. His funeral was today in Miami.
He became known professionally as “Ernie” Smith in reference to his guitar skills, which were held to be akin to those of Ernie Ranglin, Jamaica’s foremost guitar player. Smith’s sense of rhythm on the instrument was sublime, and his lead work was bold yet tasteful.
When I was playing guitar with Ernie’s band, Roots Revival, in the late 70s and early 80s, we decided to keep the band as a two-guitar unit, filling in reggae’s convertional keyboard “bubble” with interlocking patterns of rhythm guitar. There was no precedent for this format in professional reggae, nor have I seen anything similar since. Such a configuration is known colloquially by Jamaicans as a “blues jam.”
As a bandleader, Ernie also assumed the authority of his other assigned name, Archangelo, which cast him as a high-ranking angel, overseeing other angels.
Believe me, none of us in Roots Revival were angels, but as messengers of reggae music, we did feel a serious obligation to administer our musical mission with a ritual level of intensity, praying before every show, making liberal use of the herbal sacraments, and boosting audience energies with as much shamanistic gusto as we could rally on any given night.
We pulled this off onstage with a lively mix of Ernie’s barefoot vocal muscularity, the intense energy of the teenage Trinidadian drum dynamo Wadi Daniel, the serene and subliminal thunder and smooth vocalizations of bassist Clive Ross, and the wiry blasts of vigorous melody and movement emanating from superstar trumpeter Jojo Bennett, not to mention my own harmonic and hyperactive responses to the athletic, improvisational goings-on.
The range of repertoire with which we were charged made it necessary for us to be able to alternately summon the philosophical probity of Ernie’s more recent Canadian compositions, featured on our To Behold Jah album, the folky strains of Jamaican tunes like “Ride Your Donkey” and “Hill And Gully,” the nostalgic magic of his early Jamaican pop hits like “Bend Down” and “Pitta Patta,” or to serve up Rasta sentiments with renditions of “Rivers Of Babylon” or cover versions of Bob Marley’s or Burning Spear’s most cultural songs.
Roots Revival 1979: Jojo Bennett, Tony Nicholson, Paul Corby, Clive Ross, Ernie Smith and Wadi Daniel.
The choice of the band’s name came about from a merging of reggae’s status of being a “roots” music, like the blues, and “revival” events in “hot” church that suggested a similarity to the band’s evangelical performance style.
In those late 70s, the word “roots” wasn’t commonly used as a musical modifier. The Canadian outfitters by that name were still in the early stages of marketing reverse-heeled shoes. Dreadlocks were an anomaly, and the use of red gold and green was an underground flagging alert exclusively used amongst Rastas.
The Jamaican movie “Rockers” depicts an exaggerated but vivid view of the confidence and idealism of that era. Reggae culture of the time shared many points in common with the declining hippy movement – peaceful co-existence, ganja use and a communal, non-conformist rejection of “old-fashioned” opinions on race, economics and religion. The long black leather coats and mafia sunglasses uniform of the rude bwoys , dancehall “slackness” (sex talk) and gun culture had yet to arrive.
As a group, we spent months meshing our Christian/ Muslim/ Rastafarian/ Mystic points of view, rehearsing, playing in nature by taking our drums into the natural environments of forests and shorelines, scoping out the peripherally established scenes of our local Caribbean cultural community (Ishan People, Syncona, The Cougars) and preparing for a future that was being foreseen and strategized militantly by Ernie and his manager and Ryerson-educated community activist Olivia Grange-Walker.
Once our vision had been established, we began woodshedding in an isolated sector of the city where our sister band, an art-pop ensemble called The Nukes, had a rehearsal space. For days on end, afternoons and early evenings were spent jamming and recording as we broke down and consolidated the riddims and harmonies of the songs we were working on. As noted, besides the popular reggae hits of Marley, Spear and Toots, we played
Jamaican folk songs, country tunes, radio favourites, soca jams and even a couple of classical melodies, all invigorated by Clive and Wadi’s rumbles and thunderclaps.
When we got a last-minute call to open for Jimmy Cliff at the Queen Elizabeth Theater on Nov. 19, 1978, we realized that all that groundwork had been worthwhile. I had already bought a ticket to the show. When I went outside to the line-up to give mine away, it never occurred to me that “I’m with the band,” would not work as a pass for security to let me back into the venue. Our road man spotted me outside and hauled me in five
minutes before curtain.
In the Globe and Mail the next day, their business editor, Ellen Roseman, wrote, “The choice of Ernie Smith and Roots Revival to open the Cliff concert was inspired. Over the last few months, Smith and his band have knitted together. They have a deep solid sound. Smith’s new songs, especially “Show Me the Way,” take a big step forward, which, in reggae terms, is always measured in terms of the depth of one’s search. The audience demanded an encore. Cliff couldn’t have asked for a more fitting introduction.”
Paul Corby, Ernie Smith and Clive Ross at Squires, Ottawa, December 1978
Weeklong gigs followed soon after, with overflow attendance in Ottawa and Kingston drawing, amongst others, David Wilcox, Amos Garrett, Geoff Muldaur and Bruce Cockburn and his wife Kitty. They showed up to listen and dance at Squires Tavern on our final Saturday night. I have been told by a True North insider that Bruce went home and wrote his hit Wondering Where the Lions Are after hearing us that night.
Further exposure came via a spot on Peter Goddard’s short-lived TV series about Toronto club bands, where we appeared alongside Rough Trade, plus profiles in newspaper columns by Wilder Penfield and Dick Beddoes and in the SOCAN newsletter, as well as public appearances at benefits, concerts, festivals, dances, and even one symposium.
During this period, we were recording our debut album, To Behold Jah, at R.C.A. Studios downtown and at Phase One in Scarborough, overseen by “Babsy” Grange-Walker and Ernie, with Chalawa’s John Forbes and Alex King as producers, and the legendary Toronto engineer George Semkiw adding his signature sheen. Extra horns and voices were also provided by members of Jamaica’s Zap Pow band.
Radio was remarkably receptive to the two singles, “To Behold Jah,” a minor key dance rocker about mystical insights and “Don’t Down Me Now,” a plain talking but romantic relationship leveller, with an extended 45 RPM mix popular in the dance halls, adding the voices of Clive, Jojo, and “Crack of Dawn” crooner Glen Ricketts.
Although the media was unsure of what to do with a niche commodity like Canadian reggae, the need for exotic content that would fulfill the demands of that new and nefarious buzzword “multiculturalism”, powered much of the interest and curiosity that came our way.
Most audiences we confronted were experiencing their first taste of live reggae, and with all of its unfamiliar vigour, vocabulary and values, they were often unsure of how to respond. Fortunately, Ernie’s gregarious stage manner and our musicianship always won them over, along with reggae’s natural dance magnetism.
On our first night in Kingston, dating couples and whole families arrived and sat still as church mice, observing us like we were on TV.
At the end of the night, we were startled when they suddenly rose up into a standing ovation. We were back up in our rooms when the bartender knocked on the door and said, “You’d better get back downstairs. They’re still applauding.”
And that’s the way that my old boss, the great Ernie Smith, brought the tropical fire of reggae music to warm up our frozen north.
“Jah music speaks the freedom / Jah people never ready for yet…” – Freedom by Ernie Smith.
