Byron Lee and the Dragonaires - Dance the Ska
The James Bond films have long been an influence on ska music, and have been inextricably linked with the genre since Byron Lee and the Dragonaires provided incidental music for 007′s first screen outing in Dr. No. David @ Permission to Kill recently featured a few Bond-related ska songs, Desmond Dekker’s “007 (Shanty Town)”, and The Skatalites version of the Bond theme.
A number of first, second and third wave ska bands have, unsurprisingly, taken on the James Bond Theme. But as I was looking through my files, I was also impressed with the number of From Russia With Love covers that I’ve found: I’ve seen this version listed as being by both Roland Alphonso and Jackie Mittoo, who were both founding members of the Skatalites, so I wonder if it’s actually a Skatalites recording:
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This version, with a similar arrangement, is by Alphonso and the Studio One Orchestra:
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This version is definitely by the Skatalites, from the 2002 album From Paris With Love, but by that time neither the late Alphonso nor the late Mittoo were alive enough to record with the band:
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The Ventilators covered FRWL on their 1997 album Orange Flowers:
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This ska-soul version is by The Blues Busters, was released in 1964 and collected on their 1997 In Memory Of Their Best Ska & Soul Hits 1964-1966:
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And I turned up a slightly more upbeat version (pick it up, pick it up, pick it up!) on YouTube by a group called The Moonshots:
