The Aggrovators

Bunny Lee, the Jamaican producer, applied the name Aggrovators to whatever group of session players he assembled for a given project. In the late 1960s he had already opened a reggae shop and launched the Agro Sounds label after learning that British skinheads used “aggro” to denote trouble or conflict, and he extended that same name to the musicians. Although the roster featured performers of mixed ability, the handful of long-playing records credited to the Aggrovators showcased Robbie Shakespeare on bass, Carlton ‘Santa’ Davis on drums, Earl ‘Chinna’ Smith (b. 6 August 1955, Greenwich Farm, Kingston, Jamaica, West Indies) on lead guitar, Ansell Collins on piano, Bernard ‘Touter’ Harvey on organ, Tony Chin on guitar, Bobby Ellis on trumpet, Vin Gordon on trombone, Tommy McCook on tenor saxophone and Lennox Brown on alto saxophone. Lee’s productions had surfaced during the rocksteady era, yet they reached their greatest impact in the mid-1970s once his “flying cymbals” rhythm, devised as a counter to the prevailing American disco pulse, dominated the scene. The instrumental “versions” that occupied the b-sides of those flying-cymbal singles, mixed by King Tubby and released under the Aggrovators name on the Jackpot and Justice labels, proved nearly as popular as the vocal sides and thereby established the group’s reputation.