Eric Deans
Band. Ska
- Active
- 1940s-1950s
- Also known as
- Eric Deans Orchestra, Eric Deans Band
Eric Deans was a bandleader whose orchestra, one of the leading Caribbean swing bands of the 1940s and 1950s, schooled a large share of the musicians who went on to make ska.
An instructor at Alpha Boys School, he picked the most promising pupils for his band: Tommy McCook was playing saxophone in it by 1942, Don Drummond sat in with it at the Bournemouth Club while still a student, and Rico Rodriguez later took Drummond's place. Roland Alphonso joined on leaving school in 1948, and Ernest Ranglin came to it from Val Bennett's orchestra as guitarist and arranger; Arkland "Drumbago" Parks also played with Deans.
The band toured the region, and Ranglin remembered bringing the merengue home from the Dominican Republic after a tour there in 1953, one of the Latin touches that found their way into ska. At home it played the hotels and clubs, with a Friday residency at the Bournemouth Club, and Deans led the orchestra at the Colony Club contest that the singer Totlyn Jackson won.
Last updated October 23, 2026
Connections
- Tommy McCook (band member)
- Ernest Ranglin (band member)
- Roland Alphonso (band member)
- Drumbago (band member)
- Rico Rodriguez (band member)
- Don Drummond (band member)
- Totlyn Jackson (band member)
Notes
- Steve Barrow and Peter Dalton, The Rough Guide to Reggae, 3rd ed. (London: Rough Guides, 2004), 8, 30.
- Barrow and Dalton, Rough Guide to Reggae, 8. On Drummond and Rodriguez, see their entries.
- See the entries for Alphonso, Ranglin and Drumbago.
- Barrow and Dalton, Rough Guide to Reggae, 30.
- See the Don Drummond and Totlyn Jackson entries.
