Lone Ranger creates hit song from The STAR

Mel Cooke, Gleaner Writer

"If you have a problem in your lover's affair

Me say go tell it to Janet Sinclair

If you feeling shame no bodda write on yu name

Jus' tell har yu damn complain"

While deejays have been referred to as 'talking Gleaner', acknowledging their role in recording current events in the oral format, deejay Lone Ranger's Lovelorn comes from his reading The STAR's advice on matters of the heart.

Lone Ranger says Lovelorn was recorded in 1981 or 1982, but he had been deejaying the lyrics in the many rub-a-dub dances he performed at previously. And the song came from his reading Janet Sinclair's advice column of the same name.

"Me was a STAR reader. Me buy The STAR jus' fe read that," Lone Ranger said. He was not the only person who read the afternoon tabloid just for the juicy details of other person's derailed love lives.

"Me do it for me personally. Me and Clive Jarrett start to produce for ourself but we never had a label, so Sly and Robbie say do it on Powerhouse," Lone Ranger said.

Lovelorn was recorded when Lone Ranger was already on a high with a number of popular songs, including his enduring Love Bump. The session was done at Channel One on Maxfield Avenue, with Sly and Robbie as the core of the Revolutionaries Band. The track was recorded as part of an extensive four-day session where Lone Ranger says "we all sleep a studio".

In the song, Lone Ranger writes to Janet Sinclair about a problem he is having with his lady:

"Me have a likkle gal by de name a Susan

Dis likkle gal say she love I man

But when me take a stock she a keep a dozen man"

Concocted story

He laughs when The Sunday Gleaner asks if it is a true story and says he made up the scenario and "put it in my way, the ghetto way. Is like me a tell her my problem".

And he told the dancehall audiences about the matter before he put it on record. "I used to deejay seven days a week across Jamaica. I am a hitmaker and I am a rub-a-dub master," Lone Ranger said. He said he won 'Deejay of the Year' at the 1979 El Suzie Awards and when he was deejaying on Soul 2 Soul, it was also awarded Rub-a-Dub Sound of the Year in 1979. Then when he went to Virgo in 1980, it was also awarded Rub-a-Dub Sound of the Year.

He was deejaying Lovelorn from 1979 and in deciding what to put on his Hi Ho Silver Away! album the live performances were key.

"Every time I do a dance I look at how the crowd respond and if a tune get two, three forward I say let me go home an' fix up this one," Lone Ranger said.

Lovelorn was duly 'fixed up', Lone Ranger going on to deejay about a woman who he is committed to but is not as committed to him:

"Den yu go a road an ketch yu belly

An' den yu tell him say him haffi min e

Yu carry him go court an him haff own e

An when de baby born it look sickly

A true yu no know a 12 man pickney"

He says Lovelorn went into the top five on the charts at a time when he also had popular numbers in Three Mile Skank, Barnabas Collins and The Answer.

More than 30 years after he did Lovelorn, Lone Ranger says "a Dear Pastor take over now. Maybe me haffi go do a tune bout him. Me listen him nuff".