ROOTS | Trombone Man - Ska's Fallen Genius

Hearsay Media

Trombone man: ska’s fallen genius

A comic book series on the life and times of Don Drummond
Written/created by Adam Reeves
Illustrations by versions (Costantinos Pissourios).

Trombone Man: Ska’s Fallen Genius is the tragic story of one of Jamaica’s greatest and most influential musicians, Don Drummond, a trombonist with 1960s ska giants, the Skatalites. The story will be presented as a series of seven full-color, 32-page comic book volumes to be published later as a full-length graphic novel.

The crowdfund will be going live on Kickstarter from Thursday 27th October – Wednesday 30th November. To raise production costs for volume #1 in the series.

Don Drummond was the Skatalites’ trombonist. He was one of Jamaica’s greatest-ever musicians, a much mythologized and misunderstood character. At the height of his success, he destroyed everything by taking the life of his lover, rhumba dancer Margarita Mahfood, himself dying in a mental asylum five years later.

This is the story of their lives, adapted from the biography Don Drummond: The Genius and Tragedy of the World’s Greatest Trombonist, by Heather Augustyn (2013, McFarland).

Throughout the campaign, Adam Reeves will be available for discussion on podcasts, radio shows, blogs, fanzines, etc. Please get in touch if you would like to include a feature.

So, Who was Don Drummond?

In the days before the internet there was literally no information available on this elusive yet highly original musician – only hearsay. All that seemed to be known was that he had murdered his lover, a renowned rhumba dancer and singer called Margarita Mahfood, whose one and only recording was a hauntingly atmospheric love song to Don. in 1969 Drummond died in a mental asylum under mysterious circumstances with much speculation about whether he himself had been murdered. On a trip to Jamaica, I personally heard several wildly conflicting stories.