He was a very quiet, a very quiet man, yunno, quiet man an’ really into studying music and writing. But he was a very… quiet, quiet person, him never used to play football or anyt’ing like that. Me used to play football, maybe he look at football as too rough a game he don’t play, y’know.
He didn’t have a family up there to take care of?
Who, Don? No, no. Don had his mother. But he was one of the best players in the country, so everybody was interested in him very much. Sometimes he plays with different bands, but when I catch him up in Wareika Hills he was just a regular man stayin’ in Wareika Hills, playing music.
How come you ended up in Alpha Boys School, why your mother sent you there?
Well, maybe I was giving her a hard time really to get into school, so eventually she send me there. Kingston is a rough place, yunno.
It is.
So really, my mother didn’t feel good that I was in Kingston, y’know, so it would be better if I would be there, at Alpha.
What was your impression of Alpha?
Eh? It was a bit rough, yunno. Many fights. You fight, you’d have a lot of fights, people don’t like you so you fight all the time.
OK, so you were a bad boy in…
Well, yes, yes. You’d have to fight.
But in those days it was either fists or a knife, not guns, thankfully.
Yeah, well, we no have guns yet, jus’ fistfight them, yunno. Yeah.
Right. So Alpha in general was a pretty strict place. You had Iggy there, Sister Iggy.
Yeah. Because Alpha was a place like, in the morning you get up an’ you’d get a lot of drillin’, yunno, in the mornings. Then you’d do music in the morning, and then they have breakfast time. But Alpha was always a place where you’d have to get up early in the morning and excercise. A kinda drillin’ like, in the early mornin’ until breakfast time, as well as music.
So you had to learn a trade there, that was part of the schedule.
Well, I was learnin’ printin’ and bookbinding, and sometimes they used to have an agricultural section. So we used to do… for the eight hours a day, we used to go an’ do a bit of gardenin’ in the morning, or school in the morning, and music in the afternoon. So you only get half-day of each, the t’ing you’re doing, yunno. It wasn’t a whole day education or nutten, jus’ half-day.
What was the cause that you chose the ‘blowing in the wind’ instrument, it was only because of Don’s influence?
Well, Drummond was me friend, like. Me always strive fe get inna the band, yunno, but it never happen so easy to… it took a long time. But when them tek me in the band, I never even get to play a trombone, they used to give me cornette to play, and euphonium. Miscellaneous instruments I used to play.
What type of music did you listen to in those days?
We used to listen a lot of Cuban, Cuban music used to come on the Jamaican radio all the time, it was Cuban music and…
Things like merengue.
Yes, and American music as well. What we used to play in school was directly classical, European classical music. So that’s all we used to do, we study scales an’ hearing and classical music. That’s all.
How do you look back on those days at Alpha now, are you thankful for the opportunity you got and the education itself, or there’s not too fond memories of being there, as the institution it was?
Yeah, well, I’m very thankful for what I got from Alpha. There were times when I really wasn’t happy in Alpha, but…
Because of…?
Well, different t’ings, yunno, punishments and whatever, because maybe I used to go out a street every day, and I used to go by the seaside every day and go swim, an’ sometime when I come back in me head wet so they thought I was there, so…
Discipline.
Yeah, yeah – discipline, strong. The kinda discipline with dem people fe learn music really good, yunno. So I’m happy for that trainin’ I got in Alpha, studyin’ for life in other words.
I learned somewhere that when you used to practice with Don, if you hit the wrong note or whatever, didn’t stay focused enough, he would sometimes slap you in the face.
He was very… the way I woulda call it, Don Drummond is a perfectionist, yeah?
Yes.
And I was so young at that time I wasn’t even sure if I even could get 7th position on my trombone, y’know. So I woulda say he was a stric’, stric’ teacher, a strict teacher. Because, he have to teach me, and if I don’t show enough results to the bandleader, the bandmaster, the bandmaster would go at him, so I have to be forward with what he’s showing me. So when the bandmaster aks me I’m on my feet and tell him the right t’ing, yunno.
But Don never got into teaching at Alpha, wasn’t a ‘teacher’ as such, he was just a student there as well, wasn’t he?
No, him was a student as the rest of us, but he was very bright. He used to play… he also play the euphonium very good. As I say, he was one of the best players in school.