Next Up: Soundclash 5.25 | Taking The Piss 6.22 | The Champion Superior Soundsystem 10.15 Click event to check mix

I first saw The Skatalites play in the mid-'80s. At that point Lloyd Brevett was in his mid-fifties, and his bravura energy gave me my first notice that life forces last well beyond youthful phases. A friend and I were specifically impressed with the pounding energy his bass playing seemed to tirelessly revel in. Next to the eyes-closed Brevett sat Knibb, the rock and subtle genius. Up front were McCook and Alphonso, the jazzified ambassadors of ska, bringing the non-Jamaican influences most clearly to light and taming any notions that ska was only a low-brow hodgepodge of native rhythms. Those misguided associations would have been a classic form of class-based ignorance, for in crafting a "music of the people," these founding ska musicians created one of the most powerful models of truth-telling in art that the latter half of the 20th century was witness to.

In the engine room of ska's artistic statement were the original rhythm twins, the two Lloyds, Knibb and Brevett. The complexity of ska's evolution was at Knibb's fingertips, but he needed an interacting bassie who could move from the R&B shuffles to the suddenly complex burru-inflected drum beats that ska's pinnacle showcased in later-period Skatalites compositions. Brevett was that man. He was born to a bassist's tradition, as his father himself had played stand-up bass in ensembles and forged an identity as "Count Brevett." If memory serves me correct, his father built Lloyd Brevett's first bass as well.

As teenagers, Brevett, Knibb and Alphonso met and then played on Kingston's waterfront area known as Coney Island. They all subsequently trouped through some of the island's many jazz and society band ensembles, meeting Drummond and other Alpha Boys' School alumns along the way, and eventually ending up in the hugely influential Eric Dean's Orchestra. From there, the short historical walk to The Skatalites was the necessary evolution, the one we are so thankful for.

It seems almost quaint nowadays to talk of musical partnerships that last a lifetime, but it is precisely this quality that shines through the most with The Skatalites. Individual brilliance in inspiration or composition existed too, but somehow the whole thing just fell together like a bond. It was frequently a troubled bond, but a silently nodded assent of a bond nonetheless. The sometimes squabbling Lloyd's were matched by the irascible McCook/Alphonso moments, and so on. But how else to forge ahead in improvisation and inspiration, when the sum necessarily has to be greater than the parts?

Of Brevett's playing, I should probably leave the details to musicians to comment on. The selections in our 8-song homage showcase the basic ska evolution from earlier "walking" shuffle basslines to the exhilarating counter-punches that the brooding Drummond compositions demanded. It was not meant to be a poignant selection as closer, but the Skatalites-backed Jackie Opel track highlights a melodic and mournful reflection that Brevett could impart on a song. Of course, one still reads of the heady early performances at the Bournemouth Club by the Skatalites and imagines an unbridled assault, with Brevett, as ever, indefatigably possessed of the rhythm's energy.

I met Brevett again years later, in the late-'90s. Then I spent some minutes alone with him and his instrument, and I troubled him to remember a Drummond tune I was absolutely agog with. He struggled initially to find that memorable line to "The Reburial" but finally he did, and then he kept going and going and going. There was simply no half-stepping for Brevett once the rhythm was flowing through his body. I don't know how better to think of the Skatalites than of that small, quasi-meaningless moment. The beat, the rhythm, the pulse… it simply must go on.

– The Kaiser