Jerry Dammers

From HitStory, the pop encyclopedia of School of Rock · Artist

Jerry Dammers is a British keyboard player, songwriter and DJ, born in 1955 in Ootacamund in southern India, the son of a clergyman. When he was two the family moved to England, and via Sheffield he ended up in Coventry at the age of ten. He was successively a mod, a hippie and a skinhead, and drew inspiration from bands such as The Who and The Kinks and from soul. At the art college in Coventry he met the bassist Horace Panter.

Music and breakthrough

In 1977 Dammers started a band that was meant to bring reggae and punk together: first the Coventry Automatics, later The Specials. He deliberately chose a group of Black and white musicians, at a time when that was rare. To release the debut single Gangsters he founded 2 Tone Records, a kind of Motown for ska. The label also launched Madness, The Selecter and The Beat, and had its own visual language of black-and-white checks and the little man in a suit. After the albums The Specials and More Specials, Ghost Town became a number 1 hit in 1981. Three members then left, and Dammers continued as The Special AKA, with the song Free Nelson Mandela.

Influence

Dammers was at the cradle of the ska revival: he combined Jamaican rhythms with the energy of punk, political lyrics and the clothing of 1960s mods and rude boys. His music was also a statement against racism. Free Nelson Mandela grew into a song of the anti-apartheid movement, and in 1988 Dammers helped set up the big concert for Mandela's seventieth birthday.

Listening

In School of Rock

The chapters, maps and magazine stories of School of Rock are currently available in Dutch only.

• Mixtape 2: Youth Cultures 1950-1980^NL Reader

Mentioned in other articles

• 2 Tone GenreIn 1979 Jerry Dammers founded the label 2 Tone in Coventry, with deliberately mixed bands that played ska with the energy of punk: The Specials, The Selecter and The Beat.