“It was one of the premier dance halls for bands, live music,” says Jasper Adams, a regular at The Sombrero.
It was also an audience that demanded a certain quality of entertainment and, in the height of the band era the cream of the cream played there. “Nobody naa beat the gate,” Jackson said, remembering an entrance fee of 50 shillings. Jumping into the fun without paying was quite another matter. If you climb up on the wall you look down into Sombrero,” said bass player Jackie Jackson, who was once a member of Tommy McCook and the Supersonics and now plays with Toots and the Maytals. “When you stay out at Four Roads you can look down and see Sombrero and hear the music. And although it carried a Mexican name, the senors and senoritas who stepped inside the Sombrero nightclub did it in true Jamaican style. There was a time when 1 Pitter Avenue was not so drab and businesslike, when the sights and sounds of merriment carried all the way to one of the capital city’s major intersections, long before the commerce of construction replaced the commerce of merriment. Andrew, a long grey wall marks the first right turn.
Just below the famous ‘Four Roads’ intersection of Molynes and Waltham Park Roads in St.
So here, from the Jamaica Gleaner on November 20, 2005, is the text from that article entitled, “The nightclubs of yesteryear: Sombrero: rustic, intimate,” written by the prolific journalist Mel Cooke. I decided to refresh my spirit with what was likely about my 52nd time viewing the “This is Ska” documentary from 1964, hosted by Tony Verity and found on YouTube (clip seen above), and I realized I had recently come across an article on the site of this historically crucial film–The Sombrero Club. I haven’t posted in the past week or so because I have been entrenched in writing my biography of Byron Lee, literally spending hours everyday at my keyboard surrounded by notebooks and newspapers.
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