Jamaican Halloween Spooktacular 2014 - Track Eight - Twilight Zone

Ever since I was a kid I've always enjoyed the Twilight Zone... there was something about these half-hour slices of the weird and supernatural that always appealed to me and I have memories of watching the repeats with fiendish delight, some episodes were more fiendish than others but nonetheless they were always enjoyable.  The Twilight Zone, the brainchild of Rod Serling, began its run on CBS in 1959 and bewildered, sometimes frightened and usually weirded-out audiences for the next six seasons.  Rod Serling's imaginative, insightful and spectacularly written "bookends" to the show were one of the things that steered me toward an interest in creative writing as a middle school kid - I thought, and still do for that matter, that he was the Man!

Oswald "Baba" Brooks has also been a guy I've admired for many years but on a separate distinctive level.  Brooks was a jazz trumpet player and session musician in Jamaican music from the 1950s and made the transition from jazz to the then-emerging ska sound in the early 1960s for producers like Duke Reid, Sonia Pottinger and Prince Buster.  Around that time he formed his own band and recorded the classic hit "Independence Ska" in 1962 when Jamaica received its independence and Brooks continued playing with his band, the Skatalites and countless other sessions in Jamaica's recording studios all the way into the 1970s.

The eighth track in the Spooktacular "Twilight Zone" does both Rod Serling and Baba Brooks proud and originally came from a 1965 7" on the Treasure Isle label.  The problem was that my vinyl copy sounded like crap so I lifted this one from a 2007 various artists LP called Original Ska Explosion Vol. 2 on the Carib Gems label.  Dig it!

Stay tuned to this channel for a Jamaican tribute to yet another spooky American television program on Monday! 

 Spooktacular Track Eight - Baba Brooks - Twilight Zone

Like years past... I always appreciate some feedback!  Six days with no comments and I start wondering if I'm just wasting my time keeping this going...