The bassist and guitarist Bertram "Ranchie" McLean died last Wednesday at St Andrew hospital, aged 64. According to his son Antonie, McLean had undergone surgery for prostate cancer two years ago and had been using a wheelchair for a year.
During his very rich career as a musician, "Ranchie" McLean rubbed shoulders with the greatest singers, musicians and producers in Jamaica. With Lloyd Parks (bass), Ansel Collins (keyboards), Uzziah "Sticky" Thompson (percussion) and Sly Dunbar (drums), "Ranchie" the guitarist played notably for the Revolutionaries. He was also part of the RHT Invincibles and Skin, Flesh and Bones.
On guitar, "Ranchie" McLean recorded for Coxsone Dodd's Studio One, alongside the Ethiopians and Jacob Miller. At Channel One in the 1970s, he also added bass to his repertoire, after the Hoo Kim brothers noticed his talent on the Mighty Diamonds' Have Mercy, during a Delroy Wilson recording session.
"Someone was playing, but they (the producers) didn't like the pattern. I picked up the bass and played a line, which was Have Some Mercy. From then on, they said: "we want you to be the one playing"", McLean told the Gleaner in 2009.
McLean thus showcased his characteristic style on numerous hits branded Channel One, including the Mighty Diamonds' I Need A Roof and Right Time, the Meditations' Woman is Like a Shadow, Leroy Smart's Ballistic Affair, the Wailing Souls' Things and Time, and John Holt's Up Park Camp.
He can also be heard on the tracks Dreamland and Stepping Outa Babylon by Marcia Griffiths (produced by Sonia Pottinger), Money Girl by Culture, on Burning Spear's album "Man In The Hills", or alongside renowned artists such as I Roy, U-Roy, Dillinger, Alton Ellis, Gregory Isaacs, Earl Sixteen…
He also toured with Peter Tosh, Burning Spear and above all Jimmy Cliff, with whom he toured in the 1980s, in the Oneness band. For Cliff, McLean even wrote the song Rub-A-Dub, from the album "Special".
Father of eight children, including the singer Jefferey Starr, McLean was also behind the Taxi label, which he created in 1974 with Sly Dunbar, before Robbie Shakespeare succeeded him in 1978.
Struck in 1998 by a heart attack that considerably weakened the left side of his body, Ranchie McLean brought his prodigious career to an end, leading a quieter life in Portland Cottage, in the parish of Clarendon, lamenting in the columns of the Gleaner the lack of "creativity" in contemporary music.
He nevertheless made a stage appearance at a tribute to Augustus Pablo, King Tubby and Lee Perry in St Andrew in 2009, alongside Leroy "Horsemouth" Wallace, Ansel Collins and Earl "Chinna" Smith.