amunda, Oct. 12, 2009
THIS IS SKA 'Sammy Dead-O' - Eric 'Monty' Morris ****
This pancocojams post presents information about the Jamaican Mento (folk song) "Sammy Dead-O".
Ska examples of "Sammy Dead-O" are showcased in this post along with the lyrics for that song and commentary about that song. Information about some of the artists who recorded "Sammy Dead-O" is also included in this pancocojams post.
The content of this post is presented for folkloric, cultural, entertainment, and aesthetic purposes.
All copyrights remain with their owners.
"SAMMY DEAD O" LYRICS AND COMMENTARY
From https://jamaicajamaicawi.wordpress.com/2017/05/21/sammy-dead/
Posted on May 21, 2017 by suz in Jamaican Folk Songs
"A Jamaican folk song describing the fate of a man called Sammy.
Verse 1
Sammy plant piece a corn down a gully; (mhm-mhm)
An it bear till it kill poor Sammy. (mhm-mhm)
Sammy dead, Sammy dead, Sammy dead-o. (mhm-mhm)
Sammy dead, Sammy dead, Sammy dead-o. (mhm-mhm)
Verse 2
A no tief Sammy tief mek dem kill him; (mhm-mhm)
A no lie Sammy tell mek him dead-o. (mhm-mhm)
But a grudgeful, yes dem grudgeful mek dem kill him. (mhm-mhm)
But a grudgeful, yes dem grudgeful mek dem kill him. (mhm-mhm)
Verse 3
Neighbour kyaan bear fi see neighbour flourish; (mhm-mhm)
Neighbour kyaan bear fi see neighbour flourish. (mhm-mhm)
Sammy dead, Sammy dead, Sammy dead-o. (mhm-mhm)
Sammy dead, Sammy dead, Sammy dead-o. (mhm-mhm)
-snip-
Comment by Glen Warren says:June 23, 2019
"It is PIECE A CAWN (corn), NOT peas and corn (or variants of it). That is how Jamaican farmers describe a farm plot. Check out the name of any place with “piece” in the name; it is always an agricultural or other plant object – Cassava Piece, cane piece, grass piece. Just recently my mother-in-law, with whom I had this very argument, was passing a plot and commented “what a niece piece a dasheen” – which I used to prove my point. A piece can simply refer to a plot (usually a “good looking” one) or a large plot (like acres of it).
Sammy propably had both a large “piece” that was truly a piece because of how bountiful it was."
****
EXCERPT ABOUT ERIC MONTY MORRIS
From https://skabook.com/2016/11/11/name-that-tune/
" “Sammy plant piece a corn dung a gully, an ’ it bear till it kill poor ole Sammy. Sammy dead, Sammy dead, Sammy dead oh. Sammy dead, Sammy dead, Sammy dead oh.”
Eric Monty Morris sang the now-classic “Sammy Dead” at the 1964 World’s Fair in New York backed by Byron Lee & the Dragonaires, thereby helping to introduce audiences outside of Jamaica to the sounds of ska. Morris attended with others like Jimmy Cliff, Prince Buster, Millie Small, and an entourage of dancers.
[…]
In addition to “Sammy Dead,” Eric Monty Morris is known for his songs “Oil In My Lamp,” “Penny Reel,” “Into This Beautiful Garden,” “Live As A Man,” “What You Gonna Do,” and one of my personal favorites, “Solomon Gundy.”
milan82ca, Sept.17, 2010 The version I grew up with... -snip-
The Ska versions of "Sammy Dead-O" are remakes of that old Jamaican folk song with the same title. Here's some information about Ska from https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ska "Ska (/skɑː/; Jamaican: [skjæ]) is a music genre that originated in Jamaica in the late 1950s and was the precursor to rocksteady and reggae.[1] It combined elements of Caribbean mento and calypso with American jazz and rhythm and blues. Ska is characterized by a walking bass line accented with rhythms on the off beat. It was developed in Jamaica in the 1960s when Stranger Cole, Prince Buster, Clement "Coxsone" Dodd, and Duke Reid formed sound systems to play American rhythm and blues and then began recording their own songs.[2] In the early 1960s, ska was the dominant music genre of Jamaica and was popular with British mods and with many skinheads.[3][4][5][6]
Music historians typically divide the history of ska into three periods: the original Jamaican scene of the 1960s; the 2 Tone ska revival of the late 1970s in Britain, which fused Jamaican ska rhythms and melodies with the faster tempos and harder edge of punk rock forming ska-punk; and third wave ska, which involved bands from a wide range of countries around the world, in the late 1980s and 1990s.[7]"... -snip- Here's some information about Byron Lee and the Dragonaires from https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Byron_Lee_and_the_Dragonaires
"Byron Lee and the Dragonaires (known as Byron Lee's Dragonaires after Lee's death and now The Dragonaires) are a Jamaican ska, calypso and soca band. The band played a crucial pioneering role in bringing Caribbean music to the world.
The band was originally formed around 1950 by Byron Lee and
his friend Carl Brady, taking its name from the St. George's College football
team for which they played.[1][2] The band originally played mento, and
performed their first shows in the college common room to celebrate the team's
victories.[1]
After a few years of playing at parties, birthdays and weddings, Lee decided to turn professional. By 1956, the Dragonaires had become a fixture on Jamaica's hotel circuit, playing under their own name and also providing backing to visiting American stars including Harry Belafonte, Chuck Berry, The Drifters, Sam Cooke, and Fats Domino.[1] The Dragonaires prided themselves on being able to play any style of music, their repertoire including covers of American pop and R&B hits, and they soon adapted to include ska when that became popular.[1]"...
JABLESPANOL, Dec. 12, 2013
género: Ska
origen : Jamaica
-snip-
Here's some information about Delroy Wilson from https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Delroy_Wilson
"Delroy George Wilson CD (5 October 1948 – 6 March 1995)[1] was a Jamaican ska, rocksteady and reggae singer. Wilson is often regarded as Jamaica's first child star,[2] having first found success as a teenager"...
****
ARTICLE ABOUT THE SONG "SAMMY DEAD-O"
From
https://joan-myviews.blogspot.com/2021/08/dont-dilute-our-culture.html?utm_source=feedburner&utm_medium=feed&utm_campaign=Feed:+blogspot/uypf+(my+views)&m=1 "DON'T DILUTE OUR CULTURE!" published by Talk Jamaica, August 14, 2021
"I couldn’t agree more with the late great Marcus Garvey more, when he said, “A people without the knowledge of their past history, origin and culture is like a tree without roots."
One’s culture is the sum of the customs, arts, social institutions, and achievements and cannot be revised or changed willy nilly.
A lot of our Jamaican culture has been solidified and expressed through Mento/folk music.
Mento is Jamaica's first recorded music and it evolved from the musical traditions brought by enslaved West African people. The lyrics of mento songs often deal with aspects of everyday life in a light-hearted and humorous way. They were put to catchy tunes and sung by the slaves or those who did backbreaking labour in the fields during the brutal Colonial British colonial period, to make their chores feel less onerous.
I am on this topic, as I noticed recently that some Facebook users are determined to dilute and change one aspect of our culture. That is, how land was obtained and farmed immediately after slavery was abolished. This they are trying to do by changing some words of a popular mento song "Sammy Dead."
This song begins; “Sammy plant piece a corn dung a gully, an it bear till it kill poor Sammy.” However, modern-day the revisionists have been changing it to “Sammy plant peas an corn dung a gully…….”
They almost had me convinced too, until I fact-checked it with an expert in the field of Jamaican culture. That is Colin Smith, a foundation member of Jamaica Folk Singers and currently leader of Tallawah Mento band.
Smith, spent many years at the feet of the late, great social anthropologist, Dr. Olive Lewin, OD OM, studying Jamaica folk music and literature. She died in 2013.
Wikipedia describes her thus; "Lewin was the author of several books and has made numerous recordings of folk music, performed by the Jamaican Folk Singers, which she founded. She was honoured by the Government of Jamaica, the United Nations, the Organization of American States, the Government of France and by academia for her outstanding lifelong contribution to the arts. In 2001 she was awarded the Jamaican Order of Distinction."
Regarding whether Sammy planted piece a corn or peas and corn, Smith was emphatic. “It was piece a corn.”
He then went on to explain the conditions that prevailed when that song was written. In those days, freed slaves who wanted to farm, had no land of their own, so they had to rent/lease piece a land from their former slave/colonial masters. On this small holding, they would plant, piece a cane, piece a pumpkin, piece a cane, piece a yam, etc. (In some areas small yam holdings are known as yam grung) Those who planted tree crops described their holdings as walk. Hence you have walk mango walk, orange walk etc.
On the other hand, large land barons planted fields or plantations, so their holdings were called cane plantations, banana plantations etc."...
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