Krung Thai Ska Porkpie Hat Classic Black (Various Sizes Small - XL)

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While I own many hats, Bruce Zales’ ska-inspired Dekker gets the most compliments. (Second would be my drinking fez. ) The crown is a tad high IMHO and it’s way too warm to wear on the dog days of summer, but it’s as close to perfection as I’m likely to come. I suppose now I can stop buying new hats, but that’s as likely to happen as me walking out of a vintage record store without a copy of something I already own. In multiple formats.

Ska music has an incredibly specific sound, with several key elements contributing. 4/4 Time Signature But Frank’s hat was cool—even an 8-year-old could see that. Just look at the album cover! As for the music, well, it was no Flintsones, but it wasn’t horrible. The Skanksters – I’m middle row, second from the rightThis unique music style was born from a wide range of influences, including American jazz and rhythm and blues, specifically New Orleans R&B, Caribbean folk music, calypso, and traditional Jamaican dance music called Mento. There were very few, very cool exceptions, but in general, hats were relegated to the top shelf of a storage closet or the local thrift shop where they were scooped up by late 70s trendsetting teens.

In 1964, the first international ska hit titled “My Boy Lollipop” was recorded by a teenage female artist named Millie Small. This song reached No. 2 on the UK and U.S. charts and sold over 6 million copies. It was largely responsible for bringing the signature ska sound to a wider audience and would pave the way for popular artists like Bob Marley later on. Local artists began to record their versions of these musical styles, and while they originally were emulating the songs they heard on the radio, the result was a unique experimental genre that combined these rhythmic, melodic influences into something brand new. Rosco Gordon was also a pianist and singer-songwriter who pioneered the Memphis blues style of music. He is known for his signature piano playing style, called the Rosco Rhythm, which had an emphasis on the downbeat. This off-beat emphasis would play a large role in the evolution of ska’s bouncy sound. It was 1967 when I discovered the album in my parents’ collection, and by then no one was wearing hats anymore. Hats were old-fashioned and, as my sister Helen would say, square. She was old, like 19. She smoked and had a boyfriend with a motorcycle. If she said hats were uncool, they were uncool.

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Borrowing sounds from England, America, and Jamaica, ska is a true fusion of genres with flavors from multiple continents.

And while things end badly for Trilby—can’t have young girls running off to Paris without a tragic lesson—the hat became a fashion sensation. Well, less a sensation and more a slow-warming, outlying fashion trend. Men’s hats continued on their wide-brim, high-crown ways for another forty years. In the late 50s, however, brims narrowed and crowns lowered and the Trilby became the hat of choice for the mid-century modern man.

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Popular bands of the era include Fishbone, Less Than Jake, Reel Big Fish, Rancid, and Mustard Plug. Of their five studio albums, Tragic Kingdom peaked at #1 on the Billboard 200 and sold over 16 million copies. They also won a Grammy for their single “Hey Baby.” Reel Big Fish After World War II, an influx of radios available to Jamaicans introduced American R&B music artists to the island. Artists like Fats Domino and Rosco Gordon were popular among the Jamaican public and inspired decades of ska music innovation.

Ska takes elements of both of these distinct music styles, combining instruments like the trumpet, trombone, saxophone, guitar, bass, piano, and snare drums to create its signature sound. Ska Music Characteristics My interest in hats—which sounds so much better than “my irrational, expensive hat obsession”—started when I was eight with Frank Sinatra, specifically, the “Come Fly With Me” album cover. The jet plane, that sense of adventure, Frank’s inviting smile and how he held his mother’s hand when he crossed the street, just like me. And that hat.The Mighty Mighty Bosstones’ While We’re At It was released in 2018. True to the genre’s second-wave history, the lyrics focused heavily on the contentious political climate in the United States. In May 2021, they released their 11th studio album titled When God Was Great. What is Ska Music? Conclusion Ska guitarists contribute by playing on the off-beats. This method is derived from Jamaican mento and Caribbean calypso music, and doing so creates the bouncy rhythm that ska music is known for. This style of playing is even called the ska upstroke, and it is an extremely percussive style of playing. Horn Section Although modern-day ska has lyrical topics that run the gamut from love songs to protest songs, traditional ska songs focused on social justice. Racial integration and equality were also huge topics ska music broached in the first and second waves, which we will touch on momentarily. 7 Song Examples of Ska Music And so did stylish Windrush passengers arriving from Jamaica, Trinidad and other Caribbean islands. The Trilby was everywhere, and then it wasn’t. My friends like to joke that I have almost as many hats as my wife has shoes. This is silly. I have far more hats. We’re talking proper hats here, not baseball caps (of which I have zero), fezzes (several), ghutrahs or yarmulkes (one each). And we’re most definitely not talking cowboy hats because, no.