With his unique voice and nonsense lyrics, Eek-A-Mouse was a one-off who invented an entire new vocal style and became a dancehall legend.

Back in the late Seventies nearly all my favourite reggae singers recorded at Joe Gibbs’s studio, including this dude – Ripton Hylton, aka Eek-A-Mouse – who had a funny novelty voice, used to best effect on this tune: nonsensical but as contagious as a dose of Covid-19.

With his doggerel and his unique voice, stretching syllables into surprising (and, yes, squeaky) places, he invented an entire new vocal style somewhere between toasting and singing – dubbed sing-jay – and went on to become a legend on the dancehall scene. 

This, however, comes from earlier in his career. It was his breakthrough single in 1980, produced by Linval Thompason, and his bonkers lyric “biddy-biddy-beng” became the catchphrase of the following year’s Reggae Sunsplash, with the vast crowds singing it back to him at an even that became a national memorial for the recently deceased Bob Marley.

Although his voice does have a distinctive squeaky twang to it,  that’s not where his stage name came from. Eek-A-Mouse was the name of a legendarily bad racehorse upon whom he regularly threw away his money, only to see it lose time after time again. Until the one time he decided not to bet on it – and it won its only race, immediately earning him the nickname.

Seemingly as eccentric as his name, his costumes and his voice, he was always happy to live up to his cartoon image, dressing up as a mouse and, on a later album, a Mouseketeer.