Profile:
Ripton Joseph Hylton, 19 November 1957, Kingston, Jamaica, West Indies. It is not only Eek-A-Mouse’s 6 feet 6 inches height that make him one of Jamaica’s most individual talents. Hylton’s unusual name was originally that of a racehorse upon which he frequently lost money; when the horse finally won a race, he had, of course, refused to back it. ‘My Father’s Land’ and ‘Creation’, his first two releases, came out under his real name in the mid-70s. In 1980, he started recording with Joe Gibbs after working briefly with the Papa Roots, Black Ark, Gemini, Jah Life, Black Scorpio and Virgo sound systems. By 1981, he had teamed up with producer and Volcano sound owner Henry ‘Junjo’ Lawes and had achieved significant hits with ‘Once A Virgin’, ‘Modelling Queen’ and ‘Virgin Girl’. Between 1980 and 1984, Lawes and Linval Thompson used the Roots Radics at Channel One with Scientist mixing, to help record a number of hit albums and singles by the DJ. In 1981, after the release of his first widely available album Wa Do Dem, Eek-A-Mouse was the surprise star of Reggae Sunsplash. ‘Ganja Smuggling’, ‘For Hire And Removal’ and ‘Do You Remember’ and the album Skidip! (1982) sustained his high profile. The singles ‘Terrorists In The City’, ‘Anarexol’ and ‘Operation Eradication’ (a response to his friend Errol Scorcher’s death) followed, along with Mouse And Man and Assassinator (both 1983) and several appearances on live dancehall albums. Nevertheless, it was not long before his characteristic ‘biddy biddy bengs’ started to wear thin and his popularity diminished somewhat after 1984’s Mouseketeer, the last of his albums with Lawes. Surprisingly, though, he began to pick up a following with indie and rock fans in Europe, which helped sustain his career for the rest of the decade.
Eek-A-Mouse made something of a comeback with 1991’s major label release U-Neek, which included tracks produced by Gussie Clarke, Daddy-O and Matt Robinson, and a cover version of Led Zeppelin’s reggae pastiche ‘D’yer Mak’er’. He also made a cameo appearance in the movie, New Jack City and recorded for Wild Apache and former Channel One engineer, Soljie. Following his brief exposure on a major label, Eek-A-Mouse returned to cult obscurity on a series of independent releases including 1996’s Black Cowboy and 2004’s Mouse Gone Wild. (Source: The Encyclopedia of Popular Music by Colin Larkin)
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