Jamaican Halloween Spooktacular 2011 - Track Eight - To Hell And Back

Auguste Rodin's intricately sculpted doors you see pictured on the left are called the Gates Of Hell. Rodin worked on this project, inspired by Dante's Inferno, from 1880 until his death in 1917. Originally they were commissioned to be used for the entrance way to a proposed Decorative Arts Museum which was to be built in Paris but never came to fruition.

Impressive as they are, they make ones mind wander to the bigger question... is there really a gateway to hell? I would say the front door to my dentist's office is pretty damn close to the portal of eternal suffering and misery but that's just me. Now I'm not going to get all biblical here and the thought of even addressing the topic of religion that makes the belief in hell possible turns my stomach, so I won't go any farther.

Regardless of what you believe, the purported inscription above the gate to hell will serve as a nice segue into today's track. The inscription, "abandon all hope ye who enter here," is not exactly welcoming... but still appropriate above the dentist's office's entrance way if you ask me!

But I'm going to give you a piece of sound advice with today's tune that I want you store away in the back of your mind should you ever find yourself at the gates of eternal damnation. It's a simple two word antidote to the brimstone and fire that surely awaits you on the other side of that molten threshold... the word is Ken Quatty.

This is all speculation because it seems like every song I picked this year seems to be from artists who don't have biographies... Ken Quatty was a DJ in the mid to late 70s who recorded sparingly for a handful of producers. Quatty did some work with the vocal group Well Pleased And Satisfied but his alleged need for sleep put him at a disadvantage. Jerry Baxter, one of the founding members of Well Pleased, had this to say about Quatty in an interview on the website reggae-vibes.com...

"Yeah well, Ken Quatty was a friend, just a friend. First I and him we start to sing along with a guy called Dion, we called him Lester. And we start together, the three of us. But every time I call Ken Quatty to really do like try sing the harmony for a song, he always says he's asleep - his older brother tell us that he's sleeping, so every time I go to his yard to pick him up to go to rehearsal, he's always sleeping. So I just say forget it, y'know."

You know... on second thought, you may want to disregard what I said about remembering his name at the gates of hell... Ken Quatty will be too busy sawin' logs to help you!

Anyway, I'm not here to judge the man I'm here to give you kind people another spooky tune...
So without further ado, here is a rather slick tune from Ken Quatty from 1978 called "To Hell And Back." This comes from a 12" on the Heart & Soul label... enjoy!