Paul first heard the words
'Ob-La-Di Ob-La-Da' uttered by Nigerian conga player Jimmy
Scott, whom he met at the Bag o' Nails club in Soho, London.
A flamboyant and unforgettable character in dark glasses and
African clothing, Scott was renowned for his catch phrases:
"He used these phrases every day of his life," says Doug
Trendle (a.k.a. Buster Bloodvessel) who later worked with
him in the band Bad Manners. "He walked around using them.
He was form the Yoruba tribe and if you find someone from
the Yoruba they will tell you that 'Ob-La-Di Ob-La-Da' means
'Life goes on'."
Jimmy Anonmuogharan Scott Emuakpor
was born in Sapele, Nigeria, and came to England in the
Fifties, where he found work in the jazz clubs of Soho. He
played with Georgie Fame and the Blue Flames in the Sixties,
backed Stevie Wonder on his 1965 tour of Britain and later
formed his own Ob-La-Di Ob-La-Da Band.
The fact that Paul used this catch
phrase as the basis of a song became a matter of
controversy. "He got annoyed when I did a song of it because
he wanted a cut," Paul told Playboy in 1984. "I said 'Come
on, Jimmy. It's just an expression. If you'd written the
song, you could have had the cut.'"
'Ob-La-Di Ob-La-Da' has been cited
as the first example of white reggae; although the phrase
was Yoruba, the song Paul created around it and the
characters he invented where from Jamaica. When recording
the vocals, Paul made a mistake in singing that Desmond,
rather than Molly,"stayed at home and did his pretty face".
The other Beatles liked the slip and so it was kept. Paul
loved the song and wanted it to be a single. John always
hated it.
Jimmy Scott played congas on the
session (July 5, 1968) - the one and only time he worked
with the Beatles. Later that year, he appeared on the
Rolling Stones' Beggars Banquet album and in 1969 at the
Stones' free concert in Hyde Park. Around this time he was
arrested and taken to Brixton prison to await trial on a
charge of failing to pay maintenance to his ex-wife. He
asked the police to contact the Beatles' office to see if
Paul would foot his huge outstanding legal bill. This Paul
did, on condition that Scott dropped his case against him
over the song.
Scott left England in 1969 and
didn't return until 1973 when he inmersed himself in the
Pyramids Arts project in east London, giving workshops on
African music and drumming. In 1983, he joined Bad Manners
and was still with the when he died in 1986. "We'd just done
this tour of America and he caught pneumonia," remembers
Doug Trendle. "When he got back to Britain he was
strip-searched at the airport because he was Nigerian. They
left him naked for two hours. The next day he was taken into
hospital and he died. Nobody is too sure how old he was
because he lied about his age when he got his first British
passport. He was supposed to be around 64."
Two British cover versions of 'V'
were recorded and the one by Scottish group Marmalade went
to Number 1. The Beatles' version was only released in
America, but not until 1976.
|