Dr Alimantado - The Ital Surgeon - Profile

Dr Alimantado, The Ital Surgeon, was born Winston Thompson, in Kingston, 1952. He grew up in the ghetto of the city's west side, an area notorious for its poverty and violence. In his early teens he became interested in the Rastafarian faith, grew his hair in locks and then ran away from home. He didn't get far and was soon re-captured by his parents who lost no time in trimming his dreads. When he left school he drifted between various dead end jobs before realizing that music was the career he wanted to follow and that it offered a form of escape from the drudgery of life in Kingston. Winston found that he had a talent for DJ'ing and he listened and learnt from the master and originator of the art, the great daddy U Roy.
When the time was right he decided to set about getting his foot in the door of the record business. He went and hung around the various studios, as did many others, waiting to be given a chance to show his skills. Eventually Lee Perry gave the promising youngster a break, and got Winston to chat a few lines on the version side of Junior Byles massive hit 'Beat Down Babylon'. Suitably impressed Perry then went on to produce three more sides with him under the alias of Winston Prince, 'Piece of My Heart', 'Macabee the Third', and 'Place Called Africa Version 3'. Winston then changed his moniker to Winston Cool, then Ital Winston as he continued his fledgling career. In 1973 he had by now gained a fair bit of experience of the Kingston music scene, although none of the records he'd cut for other producers had sold all that well. This however did not dissuade him from starting his own label with the intention of producing himself. The label Vital Food, and yet another name change to Dr. Alimantado were born. That year saw the first release for both with 'Just The Other Day'.
Dr. Alimantado's next records all dealt with social and Rastafarian themes, 'Ride On', 'Plead I Cause', 'President Nyrere' and 'Oil Crisis'. All these tunes sold well enough on the local JA market and the copies that reached England as pre-releases were beginning to establish him as a strong underground artist. But he still was without a really strong seller that would mash up the radio station charts. He didn't have to wait too long, and towards the end of 1974 he went into Lee Perry's then new Black Ark Studio and cut the influential, 'Best Dressed Chicken In Town'. The tune uses the riddim track of Horace Andy's 'Ain't No Sunshine' and apparently draws inspiration from a well known poultry advert on Jamaican radio at the time. Between them they went on to create three minutes of musical madness, as the song is echoed, reverberated and equalised, with tapes speeded up and down until the whole thing becomes a whirlpool of sound, and one of the most totally original and imaginative records ever to have come out of Jamaica. 'Best Dressed Chicken' proved to be very popular in JA, but it was in England where the record became hailed as a cult classic and Dr Alimantado became not just another good artist to look out for but a legend.
In 1978 Greensleeves Records collected some of Dr Alimantado's tracks recorded in the early to mid-70s, such as 'Gimme Mi Gun', versioning Gregory Isaacs' 'Thief a Man', and 'Poison Flour', using The Paragons 'Man Next Door' riddim, and released the "Best Dressed Chicken in Town" album. The album show cased his tunes, a mix of Rastafarianism with commentary on the events going on in his community; 'Poison Flour' for example referenced a recent incident when a number of local Kingstonians had been poisoned by eating bread made with contaminated flour, while 'Gimme Mi Gun' was a plea for the right to protection from ghetto gunman. Dr Alimantado also became popular with UK punks in the '70s following Johnny Rotten praising him in an interview and choosing 'Born For A Purpose' as one of his top 10 records. He also gained a mention in The Clash song 'Rudie Can't Fail in the line "Like the doctor who was born for a purpose". In fact 'Born For A Purpose' was one of the few records to actually capture the spirit of 1977 and of the Punk movement. The song recalls a fateful Boxing Day in 1976 when while walking back home after an early morning dip in the sea Alimantado was struck down and nearly killed by a bus on Orange Street. After he had recovered from the incident he managed to get a free session at the Channel One Studio and it was here that he recorded the song. In it he tells of how he believes the bus driver was intent on running him over for daring to wear his dreadlocks in the street, Dr Alimantado pleads in the song "If you feel that you have no reason for living, don't determine my life." That one line must surely be the defining one that captured both the imagination of Rotten, the Clash and the Punk ethos.As the success of "Best Dressed Chicken" and its follow-up compilation "Sons of Thunder" brought him to the wider attention of people as a toaster, Dr Alimatado had already moved on preferring to go for a singing style, apart from occasional records such as "Go Deh Natty Go Deh" on a heavily dubbed mix of Delroy Wilson's "Trying to Conquer Me". He released several singing tunes, including "Mama (I Thank You)", "Jah Love Forever", and a cover of Billy Stewart's "Sitting In the Park", and though not without vocal talent, his singing records never really captured the public imagination to the extent that his DJ / toasting records did.