»In a business of snakes, Riley played fair.«
posted on January 24th, 2012 by Tobias in Article
Not only did our our friend BigBlackBerry break his self-imposed silence pon the Twitters, he also published the best obituary for Winston »Fiya« Riley that I have come across so far. It’s the best because it’s the most personal:
I started buying records when I was around 8 years old. Seven inch 45s were around 50 cents then, which worked out to be one week of saved lunch money if I ate nothing. So maybe once every month I would have saved enough to buy one record. This would have to be the record that I could play every day for a month straight because I didn’t have shit else to play. In other words it had to be a real monster tune. Arleen by General Echo was my third music purchase ever.
How do you explain Arleen? How can you explain in real terms the impact of the Stalag Riddim which Echo rode? As a child I just knew it made me feel good. It was funny, I could dj along with it, I could dance and do my 8yr old badman skank to it. It sounded like what great Jamaican pop music should.
Winston Riley was its producer.
Throughout the years as I got involved with music, he and I did business together. I was happy when I realized that miserable grumpy Riley actually respected and liked me. He looked out for me. In a business of snakes, Riley played fair. He was a hard negotiator but always held up his end of the deal. He was willing to give advice and opinions freely. He would cuss you to your face and happily buy you a drink afterwards. Fiya was the real fucking deal.
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