Island Records reggae refreshers sampler Volume 1

This is one for the teenagers. Before I phones, You Tube, and Facebook we used to have this thing called cassette tapes. The record industry has always been under threat from one threat or another but back in the 1980s cassette tape was seen as a threat to Vinyl. When the Sony Walkman first came out it was revolutionary. For the first time you could take your music with you. Nowadays MP3s have taken over but Vinyl and cassette tapes still have a place in peoples music collections (although most of my tapes are now mp3s). This week a friend shared an old reggae track on Facebook- Roast Fish and Cornbread by Lee Perry. However, after looking everywhere on the web then I couldn't find the old compilation that included this. Eventually after much digging through old boxes I found it.

In the 1990s Island records had released a number of old albums from their reggae back catalogue under a new label 'Reggae Refreshers'. This compilation was a taster of the various artists who had reissued albums in Islands Reggae collection. So here is a piece of music archaeology. From 1990 here is the track-listing for Reggae Refreshers Sampler Vol 1.

Side One

Night Nurse - Gregory Isaacs
Moulding - Ijahman
Street 66 - Linton Kwesi Johnson
Draw Your Brakes - Scotty
Babylon Makes The Rules - Steel Pulse
Hard Road To Travel - Jimmy Cliff
Burnin' and Lootin' - The Wailers
Tribal War - Third World

Side Two

Fatty Fatty - The Heptones
Funky Kingston - Toots & The Maytals
Roast Fish & Cornbread - Lee Scratch Perry
King Tubby Meets The Rockers Uptown - Augustus Pablo
Cokane In My Brian - Dillinger
Push Push - Black Uhuru
War Ina Babylon - Max Romeo
Door Peep - Burning Spear

Spitfire Women of World War II

Spitfire Women Of World War II by Giles Whittell

My rating: 5 of 5 stars

Although I was aware that female pilots had served in the Second World War, I did not know anything about the work that they did in ferrying aircraft in the Air Transport Auxiliary (ATA). This book tells the story of the brave women who flew unarmed aircraft from the factory to RAF bases around the country. This was a time when there was a shortage of pilots and factories were mass producing aircraft to fight against invasion and ultimately for the D Day Normandy landings. Not only were the women pilots paid 20% less salary than their fellow male pilots, but they also had to face the sexist attitudes of Male officers, pilots and aircrew who didn’t believe that women would make good pilots and in heir view should stay in the kitchen. At first they only ferried trainer aircraft like the Miles Magister and Tiger Moths but eventually they flew Hurricanes, Spitfires and four engine bombers.

Amy Johnson gets a lot of attention as she was the pioneering aviator who set records and was seen as a great inspiration for women aviators. She later tragically got lost in bad weather when ferrying a plane and bailed out over the sea. Before the War flying was the pursuit of wealthy men who could afford to buy their own aircraft, but women like the Olympic female skier Wendy (Audrey) Sale Barker loved flying and became the first ATA girl. Other women were breaking records and in the case of the MPs daughter Pauline Gower had gained 2000 hours of flying experience flying joyriders for 5 minutes in a flying circus. She was the first woman who proposed that women should fly aircraft in the war. Women like Freda Sharland were encouraged by members of their family who were already bomber pilots to join the ATA. She had many letters rejected but didn’t give up and eventually succeeded. At first the RAF insisted that the first women pilots should only be 8 and not the originally proposed 12. They became known as ‘the first eight’ and were mainly instructors. At first they flew trainers but they moved to Spitfires and Hurricanes after Pauline Gower argued why there was no reason why women should not be allowed to fly aircraft like Spitfires and Hurricanes.

The women volunteered from different countries like Maureen Dunlop from South America. She became a Picture Post cover girl after being photographed getting out of a Spitfire. There was a lot of unwanted attention when the press got to hear of women flying aircraft. Characters like Diana Barnato Walker worked hard but liked to party hard too, going up to London and being ferried back to the air base afterwards. For most of the surviving women this was something that they were proud to do and most of the women interviewed did not wish to brag about their time in the War. The writer covers some of the glamour but prefers to concentrate on the danger and loss of life, Diana Barnato Walker lost her husband when his Mustang crashed. Many men and women lost their lives when their planes failed and they often had to fly aircraft to the scrapyard. Often they had to fly with no instruments in bad weather. They had no pre training instead they relied on a ferry pilot’s manual the bible of pilots often flying a particular aircraft for the first time. It was a dangerous job with no radar so pilots often used to crash into hills or would fly above the cloud cover and hope that they were above ground level when they emerged. Lettice Curtis flew from Prestwick to white Waltham in bad weather and was met by male pilots who could not imagine that a woman could fly in such weather. One in ten women lost their lives during the war.

Hamble became one of two woman only crew bases. The American Jacqueline Cochran recruited 25 women pilots and took them to the UK. She was against the stuffiness of the British and was seen as abrasive, she later returned to the US to set up the Women’s Air Service Pilots (WASP). She had argued that women should be allowed to fight combat missions. Only Women in the Soviet Union were the first to be allowed to fly combat missions. Eventually women in the ATA got equal pay thanks again to Pauline Gower who convinced a woman MP in the House of Commons to ask Stafford Cripps about whether women would get equal pay to men, with the threat of a fuss if he wouldn’t. However, Men still wouldn’t believe that in the case of Mary Wilkins Ellis who was to pilot a Wellington bomber that ‘a little girl could fly a big aeroplane’. After the war this prejudice continued when demobbed male pilots blocked Women pilots ambitions to fly as pilots and not aircrew on commercial airlines. Eventually these forgotten women of the ATA got a Veterans badge in 2009 under then PM Gordon Brown. This book is a great history of the brave women of the ATA, and a testament to their selfless bravery and pioneering spirit,

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