Bread & Pipe of the Wailing Souls tell us about the producers they have worked with, publishing rights, Lucky Dube, and Buddy
“We have worked with some of the best producers”
Jamworld876: Is there any producer you’d like to work with in the future?
Bread: Well, you never know what the future is going to bring. You what I mean. We have worked with some of the best producers like Junjo Laws, who is gone. Mr. Dodd, who is gone, you know what I mean. We have worked with Prince Jammys.
We worked with the Channel One, Hoo Kim. We worked with Sly & Robbie, you know. So we worked with a lot of different guys. If we can’t help it, we would work with ourselves because we start producing our music years ago.
As a matter of fact, one of our three Grammy nominated albums, we produced it ourselves. We would just love to be producing ourselves, not to be produced by any other producers but ourselves. Because we know the business now. But you never know the future. You never know.
Jamworld876: Have you heard the work of Roberto Sanchez, who produced the last album of Keith & Tex?
Bread: As a matter of fact, I met Keith & Tex recently in California Dub Club. As a matter of fact, me and Tex went to the same high school. Saint Andrew Technical, in Jamaica. So me and them talk, you know.
Jamworld876: I met them too last year, they performed in France.
Bread: Yeah, it was last year too. The Dub Club, in California.
Jamworld876: They were promoting their latest album.
Bread: They gave me a copy too. And it still have that “Stop That Train,” it was on it same way. They did a new version of it.
Jamworld876: It was produced by Roberto Sanchez. He’s a Spanish producer. He’s trying to produce Jamaican music with the sound of the 60’s.
Bread: Oh so that’s him we’re talking about. It’s nice, it’s nice.
“We actually get paid for most of our works…”
Jamworld876: Some of your records are being sold for a 100 of US dollars on the Internet today.
Bread: I know! I know! Ebay, and all them type of things.
Jamworld876: What do you think about that? Because at the times you recorded those songs you didn’t make that much money.
Bread: That’s true. But you know what happen? Most of our works are published by certain organisations like PRS (Performing Right Society) or ASCAP (American Society of Composers, Authors and Publishers). We have agreements.
So we actually get paid for those things. You know what I mean. The more our records sell is the more money we get. Or the more it’s downloaded. Because we have agreements with a number of downloading companies like SoundExchange, and so on, and so forth. We still, eventually, get paid for those things, you know.
Tan so, a man name Joe Higgs. That’s a man who I’m sorry that he’s dead too. Because you know Joe, he was one of our mentors.
Jamworld876: He was a mentor to many artists back then…
Bread: Especially us, because we were close with it. Because, we came from the same community, Trench Town. That’s where we from. We used to see him daily. You know what I mean.
Africa
Bread: Where you from?
Jamworld876: I’m from Reunion island. A French island, in the Indian Ocean, near Madagascar, South Africa.
Bread: I’ve never been to Madagascar. The further I’ve been is Indonesia. Is that close to it?
Jamworld876: It’s on the other side, it’s closer to Asia.
Bread: Last year, we were in Kenya.
Jamworld876: Right now, Reggae music is big in Africa.
Bread: I know, I know. It’s big in Kenya. We had like 8 000 people at our concert last year there.
Jamworld876: I’ve heard it’s also big in Zimbabwe, and South Africa. But it was already big in South Africa at the time there was Lucky Dube.
Bread: As a matter of fact, we were talking to him. And somebody ask him, his manager, somebody ask him “which artist you would love to tour with?” And he said “Wailing Souls.” Then, we and him talked. We and him met, and we talked. We were going to go on tour with him in South Africa. And then he got killed. Yeah. Lucky Dube…
“Buddy left the group in 1985…”
Jamworld876: Buddy left the group years ago…
Bread: Buddy left the group nuff years ago. He left the group in 1985, and it’s me and Pipe ever since.
Jamworld876: You were in conflict with him because he wanted to use the name Wailing Souls…
Bread: Yeah! He’s tried to use it for wrong reasons. Making dubplates, ripping off people. He can’t use our name, because he wasn’t even an original member of the Wailing Souls. The original group of Wailing Souls is Me and Pipe as the founding members of the group. Then we had Normann Davis, and Oswald Downer as the original quartet as Wailing Souls.
Buddy didn’t join the until 1976, when we did “Things and Time.” He wasn’t an original member of the band. But we had a school boy group called Renegades, which he was a member of. That was me, and him, and Pipe.
He also left that group, because he is not true to the music. He’s always going away from it. You know what I mean. Because he went away from that group, that’s why he wasn’t into Wailing Souls. Because Renegades, and then he left the Renegades, and went and did his other things. Then, he came back to the group, probably ten years later to the Wailing Souls. We bring him back to the group. So you know. But you know, a one love still.
So we just want him to leave the name alone. Because he’s ripping off people really. He has this guy with him, and them do dubplates as Wailing Souls. We see people, travellers, when they found out that this is not the real Wailing Souls that they got the dubplate from, they want back their money. They wouldn’t give back the people their money, and then they keep complain to us. Sometimes, me and Pipe fascinated those people by doing back the dubplate for them for free. Buck up some bredren in Hawaii, and it’s the same thing. Them say “Man, we pay them 400 US dollars for the dub”
Pipe: 700!
Bread: A 700 man!? Then they realized say it wasn’t Wailing Souls, and they tried to get back their money from the people them. They didn’t give them back their money. And they couldn’t even find them with the number that they had for them. It wasn’t working no more.
Pipe: They also did it to some people in France. This guy keep calling us, and saying that we rob him. We say “no, it’s not us!” You know what I mean. And we were here, we kind of work it out to them. Then him send 250 euro. We did it and send it.
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