Who recorded it first

A Message to You, Rudy

Not a Specials original — a 1967 Dandy Livingstone single on Ska Beat

The song is so tightly bound to The Specials and the 2 Tone label that it is routinely assumed to be theirs. It is not. Dandy Livingstone wrote it and recorded it first, in London in 1967, released on the Ska Beat label as “Rudy a Message to You.” His record sold around 30,000 copies and reached number 9 on Record Mirror’s Top R&B Singles chart in August 1967 — respectable, but nothing like the hit The Specials had with it in 1979, on which the same trombonist, Rico Rodriguez, played the intro.

The record

Who recorded it first

Record
“Rudy a Message to You” b/w “Till Death Us Do Part”
Label
Ska Beat (UK), catalogue JB 273, 1967
Written by
Dandy Livingstone (Robert Livingstone Thompson)
Recorded at
Maximum Sounds Studio, Old Kent Road, London — engineer Vic Keary

Released Issued in 1967 as a UK 7″ single on the Ska Beat label (catalogue JB 273), titled “Rudy a Message to You,” backed with “Till Death Us Do Part.” It was cut at Maximum Sounds Studio on the Old Kent Road in London with engineer Vic Keary; Livingstone has said he had a heavy cold that day and the take meant only as a guide vocal became the finished record.

Charted Did not reach the UK Singles Chart. It sold about 30,000 copies and peaked at number 9 on Record Mirror’s Top R&B Singles chart in August 1967, where it was listed under the garbled title “Rudie Take a Message.”

How we know

The 1967 Ska Beat single is catalogued on MusicBrainz as a UK 7″ on Ska Beat, JB 273 ↗, with “Till Death Us Do Part” on the flip.

Wikipedia’s account of the song’s composition and recording ↗ places the session at Maximum Sounds on the Old Kent Road and records the Record Mirror R&B placing of number 9 in August 1967.

Rico Rodriguez was brought in about a week after the session to play the intro melody — and played it again on The Specials’ remake, a detail also noted by Round Hill Music’s piece on the song ↗.

Wikidata records the composition as a 1967 rocksteady song by Dandy Livingstone ↗.

Wikipedia: “A Message to You Rudy” — the original and its cover versions
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Fact-check

Right band, wrong order

The Specials’ record is so completely identified with 2 Tone that the 1967 original tends to disappear behind it. Here is what the sources actually support.

The beliefCover, 1979

The Specials

Their 2 Tone single, produced by Elvis Costello, was a UK number 10 in November 1979 and is the version nearly everyone hears first.

The originalSka Beat, 1967

Dandy Livingstone

Released as “Rudy a Message to You” on Ska Beat (JB 273), recorded at Maximum Sounds Studio in London.

The writerSole credit

Dandy Livingstone

Credited as Robert Livingstone Thompson; the publishing sat with Carlin Music.

The link between themTrombone, both versions

Rico Rodriguez

Brought in about a week after the 1967 session to play the intro melody, and played it again on The Specials’ recording.

Dandy Livingstone wrote and first recorded it in London in 1967. The Specials’ 1979 hit is a cover — with the original’s trombonist on it.

Context

Why the cover swallowed the original

The 1967 record was not a flop. It sold around 30,000 copies and got to number 9 on Record Mirror’s R&B chart, though the chart printed the title wrong. What it did not have was a movement behind it. By 1979 the ska revival had one: a label with a logo, a look, a national tour and a television audience. Livingstone’s single had sold well inside a scene the mainstream British charts largely ignored; The Specials’ version arrived with all the apparatus of a pop hit and a producer, Elvis Costello, who understood how little needed changing.

There is also the matter of intent. Livingstone wrote it as a warning to a young man drifting toward trouble, and has said the reception surprised him — it was taken up as a celebration of rude boy culture rather than a caution against it. The Specials inherited both the tune and that ambiguity, and the long afterlife of their recording in film, from Grosse Pointe Blank to Chef, settled which version the world would mean by the title.

The chronology, step by step
  • 1967 — Dandy Livingstone writes and records “Rudy a Message to You” at Maximum Sounds Studio, Old Kent Road, London, engineered by Vic Keary. Rico Rodriguez adds the trombone intro about a week later; a tenor saxophonist known as Pepsi plays an alternate reading of the same figure.
  • 1967 — Released as a 7″ single on Ska Beat, JB 273, backed with “Till Death Us Do Part.” It sells roughly 30,000 copies and reaches number 9 on Record Mirror’s Top R&B Singles chart in August.
  • 1969 — Livingstone notices three cover versions already in circulation, the first of them by the Locomotive.
  • 1971 — Trojan Records acquires the recording.
  • 1979 — The Specials release their version, retitled “A Message to You, Rudy,” on 2 Tone / Chrysalis, produced by Elvis Costello, with Rico Rodriguez again on trombone and Dick Cuthell on trumpet. It reaches number 10 in the UK in November.
  • 1979 — Livingstone, who found out about the cover by seeing The Specials on Top of the Pops, traces the publishing to Carlin Music and signs with them, turning down a rival offer from Eddy Grant. In December his own version is reissued on Trojan, remixed by Clem Bushay.
The same trombone intro, played by the same man, on two records made in different decades for different labels.

The original recording artist — and the writer

Dandy Livingstone

b. 14 December 1943, Kingston, Jamaica; Jamaican-born British ska, rocksteady and reggae singer and producer

Born Robert Livingstone Thompson in Kingston and raised in London, Livingstone was one of the central figures in British-made ska and rocksteady in the 1960s, recording as Dandy for labels including Ska Beat and later Trojan. He has said the idea for “Rudy a Message to You” came to him in about ten minutes and that the record was made in roughly twenty, at Maximum Sounds on the Old Kent Road, using a vocal he had only intended as a guide. He had his own UK chart moment in 1972 with “Suzanne Beware of the Devil.” He only learned that The Specials had cut his song after seeing them perform it on Top of the Pops.

Popularly credited as the original

The Specials

English 2 Tone and ska revival band, formed in Coventry in 1977

The Specials’ 1979 single, produced by Elvis Costello and released on their own 2 Tone imprint through Chrysalis, reached number 10 in the UK and became one of the defining records of the ska revival. Their arrangement stayed close to Livingstone’s — and closer than most covers manage, since they hired Rico Rodriguez, the trombonist from the 1967 session, to play the intro again, with Dick Cuthell on trumpet. It is a genuinely great record; the only error is chronological. The band never claimed authorship, and the writer credit on the single is Livingstone’s.