It took bassist and bandleader Byron Lee over a decade to score his first hit. Lee signed his ever fluctuating, many legged the Dragonaires to the West Indies Recording Limited (WIRL) in 1959, proving popular on the elite theatre circuit with his full-bodied take on calypso, punctuated by a rousing brass section and hyped-up MCs. As the Jamaican independence movement gained momentum, Lee shifted his dial to ska’s revolutionary R&B/calypso hybrid on the advice of WIRL boss Edward Seaga, chancing his arm as both the Dragonaires and the Ska Kings. It paid off when they was scouted to perform Jump Up as Pussfeller’s Club house band in 1962’s first Bond flick Dr No. It resulted in to a major deal with Atlantic, yet the world wasn’t quite ready. Despite exercising much marketing muscle, the super-skanking cha-cha-cha and shrill horns of ‘Jamaica Ska’ barely dented the Billboard charts (98 for one week only, although it did graze the Canadian top 30). A flip of the disc might have reversed its lowly fate. Based on an old Christian hymn, the upfront Hammond organ burn of ‘Oil In My Lamp’ proved it could withstand a no holds barred party-oriented reinvention, as cheer-led by Eric ‘Monty’ Morris’s sweet vocals. Five years later a very different version made up the B-side of Byrds single ‘The Ballad Of Easy Rider’, detailed by Clarence’s White’s arch Telecaster string-bending.