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Jerome Hines/Haynes, or Jah Jerry as he came to be known, died in Kingston on August 13, 2007, two days after his 86th birthday.

The vintage Jah Jerry sound was on a Hofner hollow-body, a thick chordal strumming that kept the ska beat. The classic Skatalites line-up usually listed him as the guitarist, though others often times recorded with the Skatalites as well. In his later years he proved too frail to tour with the re-grouped Skatalites, something you get the sense he was a bit sad about.

I'd originally hoped to talk to Prince Buster about Jah Jerry, but the first superstar of ska is currently on tour in Europe. Lloyd 'Matador' Daley did have a few reminiscences about Jerry, whom he described as a happy guy and "genuine rasta." Matador did do a few tunes in that era, and we've included one for you here that features Jah Jerry. But mostly Matador had a soundsystem he was busy running (and quite successfully too), and once Buster went into music production, the two of them had a good, working relationship, with Buster giving Matador lots of dub plate exclusives.

And so Matador, who had a car at age 17, would do Buster the favor of going to pick Jah Jerry up for recording sessions. You'd find Jah Jerry in the area known as "Ghost Town," sort of at the top of Trenchtown. Burned into Matador's memory is his venturing over a tiny little bridge ('if you fall into the gully, you never can come back') and finding Jerry and some other rastas with 'several kerosenes of food' on the other side, hidden in a yard.

My own memories of Jah Jerry actually end up paralleling the Matador's experience somewhat. Led by Alpha Boys' School bandmaster Sparrow Martin, we drove to pick up Jerry, still in that same basic area. Jerry finally emerged from a hidden home and walked slowly, gingerly to our Alpha van. Greetings all around, and off to Buster's we went, in the hope of softening our initial meeting with the great man via the delivery to him of his old friend, Jah Jerry. Matador reckons Jerry played on 70 percentof Buster's ska tunes, and that's a lot of cuts. One thing that's for certain, Buster couldn't get mad at our impromptu visit, not with Jah Jerry there. And as the hours wore on and Buster regaled us with this and that story from the past, he'd repeatedly interrupt himself and look at Jerry before going "Jah Jerry now!" and then set in to his impersonation of Jerry hitting those thumbed chord riffs on that Hofner of his.

Laughs and smiles all around. Jah Jerry was a Rasta and those in Jamaican culture who feared Rastas as "black heart" men had obviously never had dealings with Jah Jerry. A truly gentle and pleasant man, he told me that he enjoyed watching the youths play dominoes, and so off he'd wander sometimes, coming back late in the day. I used to call the house and no one would quite know where he'd gone. Sometimes he'd walk up to Studio One and just hang around, talking with King Stitt or the other old timers.

Matador All-Stars with Rico Rodriguez
"Continental Shuffle"
It's Shuffle 'n' Ska Time
Jamaican Gold 1994 (1959)

Prince Buster
"God Son"
King of Ska
Quattro (early '60s)

In a clip from the Deep Roots documentary series, Jah Jerry is interviewed during the early 80's and asked to comment on the sounds of the day. To Jerry's ears, those days of early dancehall were not really a reflection of the Jamaica he grew up in. The calypso/mento and rhythm and blues of his formative years had receded in many ways. But to his credit, he offers a gently reflective tone regarding the current music, saying "we have to accept it, [for] it is ours."

Jah Jerry's Hofner guitar was purchased in 2000 by the Experience Music Project in Seattle in connection with its Island Revolution exhibit. I worked on that exhibit and can admit these days to mixed feelings about all the items currently languishing in the vaults there. But it's at least in a secure place, saved for history, the future.

Thank you, Jerry.

Both Dave Katz and Pierre Perone wrote nice obits for Jah Jerry, each in the UK newspapers, The Guardian and The Independent. Coverage within Jamaica doesn't appear to have been very strong, I'm sad to say.

– Mark Williams
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