Sledgehammer

Sledgehammer Oral History 23rd April 2023 

Location – Dalston 

“I started Sledgehammer sound system in the 1970’s. Saxon sound system was the party sound of the time. It all started from school. We used to play out eight times a week. Monday Kingsmead Estate, Tuesday Cubies, Wednesday Four Aces, Thursday All Nations, Friday back to Cubies, Saturday Hackney Wick, a blues dance on Sunday... then count the money.”

“People would come from Jamaica and give us tapes and records and we would play them exclusively and get a reaction from the crowd. The tunes would get popular and then the producer would release it. Or we would phone Jamaica and say put that artist on the rhythm and only we would have it exclusively, this side of London. Sound systems were mobile radio stations. Music is a hustle. Artists boosting the sounds and hustling. The pop stations never used to play reggae. Tony Blackburn used to call it rubbish and the only one who would play reggae was John Peel. The Soundsystem’s then were quality and crystal clear, and every sound system had its own style and tempo.”

“Four Aces was my favourite club and Shelly, Metro, Count Wally, Sir Frey, Cockson, Shaka, Bronson, Sir Beeks, Sufferer, Gemini Magic, Unity, Stereo Classic, played there. Plus, the big names went there. Ben E King, Desmond Decker and the Aces and Derek Morgan. Mostly Reggae artists is what I remember of the Four Aces. It was all Newton Dunbars doing. Everybody went there, black, white, you get me. You had bands playing there as well, Square Deals that was managed by Sir Collins who made a massive impact on the scene as well.”

“Dalston was vibrant going back. You had all the youth clubs like Richmond Road. That’s where everybody went. Then up the road the Friday Club and then back to Dalston to watch all the late night films, Seven Warriors and One Armed Bandit.. all the Kung Fu films at the Rio. There were a few cinemas in Dalston in the 1970’s. The ABC, The Coliseum and The Dalston Odeon. We used to have dances and blues in the picture houses sometimes, as we had very few clubs back then.”

“My dad used to run St Marks Rise which was a shebeen, where there would be blues music and Lucky Strike, Count Harvey, Ralph Johnson used to play there. Johnsons café was always packed and you could get dumplings for 50p. I went to school with the Johnson kids, Lennox and Michael.. We all went to Shaklewell primary school and then secondary school as well. Later, I used to run a shebeen on Greenwood Road. We used to kick off the door, change the locks and put on the electric. We had freedom and were original squatters and had a double bay house. But I didn’t really know about squatting, but just wanted somewhere to put the sound. I had the sound system in a garage originally, but they knocked them down to build houses. There were a lot of empty houses in Hackney in them times. You could go anywhere you wanted to live. We didn’t even call it squatting, we were just living. The police used to harass us back then as well. Half of them from Stoke Newington Police Station who I went to school with. They were skinheads first and then they joined the police. The wicked one was Paul Green aka Ginger. When we were kids, I would go to his house and help him with his homework. So, if he was out on the streets later on, when he joined the police, he would leave me alone.”

“It was difficult times for our parents when they first came here. The men came first and then they would send for their wives and over time the kids would be sent over too. They would have kids here and the kids left in Jamaica would be sent for later. There was conflict, as the kids who were from here would not always get on with their siblings because they didn’t know them. When my big brother came from Jamaica, I didn’t know him.”

“When the men first came here and were working in the factories like Fords or doing a labouring job, or the gasworks or on the train lines. They were lonely. Housing was a massive issue. You couldn’t get no house. No dogs, No Blacks, No Irish. They used to call the Irish ‘white niggers’. The single black men would often date and marry Irish women. There was segregation back then and mixing was frowned upon. But the black community and the Irish were both outcasts, so they mixed. The Irish tarmacked the roads and were just poor as us. We weren’t allowed in the pubs unless they were Black or Irish pubs. The Colveston Arms on the corner of Ridley Road was somewhere we could go. Or if the guvnor was Irish, he would know where you were coming from. They would strip black people naked and say, ‘monkey where’s your tail’. Sometimes they would throw black kids out of the windows. But we were one and we stuck together. There was proper Skinhead war. Yeah, there were some real rednecks back then, crusaders. Our parents knew what was going on, but they kept quiet because they did not want to lose their jobs. They had to make sacrifices. I think it was the music that kept us going and the camaraderie of the sound system’s that kept us sane and positive.”