The Gladiators: Naturality

A delivery man arrived the other afternoon with a box full of whole-foods from the UK. I congratulated him on finding us. He said that he'd had to ask around, but I was known around these parts – a creator of BDs, wasn't I? Bandes dessinées, or strip cartoons. I laughed and told him 'nothing so glamorous; just a plain-old writer'. Chinese whispers at work even in the heart of the countryside.

If I were a creator of BDs, and weirdly it was my first creative flowering (as a very young child, I used to draw strip cartoons of Western characters I dreamt up), The Gladiators would make rather a good subject for a cartoon book for adults. This strange genre is popular in France and Belgium), and The Glads were popular in France well into this century.

Apparently, the future reggae vocal trio met up as masons on a building site – perhaps even a government yard in Trenchtown – and they would harmonise songs over their sandwiches. What a lovely place to start that would be: lead singer, Albert Griffiths, trying out his self-penned songs on acoustic guitars with future bass player, Clinton Fearon, and future rhythm guitarist, Gallimore Sutherland. Later, Griffiths takes his songs to the legendary Studio One and records them with an early version of The Gladiators. When one of the original members leaves soon after 'Hello Carol' tops the Jamaican charts, Griffiths remembers the singing masons and recruits Clinton Fearon. Then, when the other original member also leaves, along comes Mr. Sutherland, sans hard hat and sandwiches.

Soon after, the new Gladiators are discovered by Virgin, as reggae fever breaks out in the British Isles. Which is where I, the author, come into it. I'd caricature myself, R. Crumb style, drooling over a copy of the Virgin Front Line sampler, with a thought bubble from my head as I greedily read the sticker, An album for the price of a single. (This'll be the best 69p I've spent in ages!). I fall in love with the two tracks from Trenchtown Mix Up, 'Looks Is Deceiving' and 'Know Yourself Mankind', and go to see them twice in quick succession in different venues in Brighton, each time dancing holes in my shoes to the stream of simple, irresistibly catchy reggae. Along with the Bhundu Boys from Zimbabwe, a decade or so later, the two concerts will prove possibly the most joyful, infectious music ever witnessed on stage.

After four great albums for Virgin, the boys make the mistake of recording a fifth with Eddie Grant and Aswad in London. The label decides that the magic has gone and cuts them from their roster. But does that stop them? No, it does not. They find another label and cut Back To Roots. My first wife and I change the song 'We are the warriors' to 'We are the worriers' and adopt it as our theme song. They go on producing easy-skanking 'reggaemusic' all through the '80s and '90s, but while my first marriage goes down the pan, I have weightier concerns than the steadily waning career of The Gladiators.

I catch up with them again in Cash Express, Brive, around 25 years later – in the form of a defective boxed set of three-rather-than-four of their 21^st century releases, plus a DVD of a live set in Montmartre, Paris. It's good solid stuff that lacks the memorable quality of the Virgin albums. And the live concert has rather too much audience participation. Clinton Fearon has left, never to return, in the mid '90s to record a succession of fine solo albums, but Griffiths, Sutherland and a core of brilliant reggae musicians – including Ansel Collins and 'Wire' Lindo – have continued to tour in Europe ever since. When Griffiths' health packs up, along with his distinctive lead voice, he hands the baton on to two sons, Al and Anthony. Gallimore's son Vernon joins sometime later and, in 2013, this almost unrecognisable gladiatorial group records an album featuring Droop Lion, whose uncle is... David Webber, the first of the original, original Gladiators to leave back in their Studio One days. Whereupon, I could wind things up in a final drawing – with old man Sutherland looking like the wreck of the Hesperus – headlined by the Jamaica Observer, 'The Gladiators back in arena'.

Naturality has only just entered the family fold, courtesy of the local junk shop. But I've been dancing with a wide grin on my face for longer than I care to remember to the title track on an indispensable compilation CD, Dreadlocks The Time Is Now. Ever since consulting my friend and junkiest vinyl junkie, a leading expert on Jamaican phonetics, I've heard 'Naturality' as 'Naturally tea' (slightly elided to 'Nat'r'lly tea') – which probably explains why Griffiths sings 'Nat'r'lly tea makes me the man that I am'. Certainly something there for the Tea Marketing Board to consider using as a strap line.

It's already fast becoming a reggae favourite high up on Mount Zion with the likes of the Mighty Diamonds' Right Time, Burning Spear's Man In The Hills and Culture's Two Sevens Clash. Powered by a band that includes one of the greatest drummers on the planet, Sly Dunbar, the first side is concentrated riddimical nourishment, while the second side is only slightly diluted by comparison. Clinton Fearon contributes 'Get Ready', which featured on the third Virgin Front Line sampler, an evident victim of '70s inflation as 69p rocketed to £2.15. The final track of the album continues the gladiatorial tradition of covering Bob Marley songs: a lolloping six-minute version of 'Exodus' gets a slight lyrical make-over as 'Africa, the country of Jah people'. Otherwise, the songs are all Albert Griffiths'. This was the man who once wrote a song called 'Mr. Baldwin'. I've never heard it, but love to think of it as a reggae homage to that most inert of British prime ministers, Stanley Baldwin. Well, his 'Counting My Blessing' contains the wonderful quirky couplet, 'I'm counting my blessing/I'm counting it one by one'. Figure that.

Griffiths also takes the lion's share of the vocals, his slightly pinched timbre a little akin to that of Lee 'Scratch' Perry. Fearon and Sutherland contribute what the former described as 'an answering kind of choir harmony'. Their falsetto answers to the musical questions posed by Griffiths is indeed 'a sort of trademark there' – as are the relentless rhythmical drive, the heart-stopping key changes and the catchy melodies. They add up to something musically very special. 

The dedication in my BD of the mighty Gladiators might be Griffiths' delicious words of admonishment from Trenchtown Mix Up, 'Chatty chatty mouth, be wise and know your culture'.