I was introduced to Louis Ribeiro by Terry Britten, who had heard his demo tape and decided to refer it to me.

Louis Ribeiro was playing the South African Music circuit around the time that I left South Africa. He had moved to London in 1986 where he was working the pubs and clubs  prior to sending me a cassette with some of his songs. I had not heard of Louis prior to Terry’s call.

At that time we had a studio in Ripley (Black Barn Studios) and after listening to the songs with Charlie Morgan, we decided to produce a proper recording of this fine writers work using ‘down time’ in the studio as well as introducing some session musicians to supplement Louis regular band. Charlie Morgan was instrumental in arranging the recordings.
Liane Carrol, Roy Villanis and Ken Anselm came in to help the vocal side. Doug Boyle added his distinctive guitar sound, and Mo Foster was booked for the two cheerful sessions of bass.

The end result shows the songs in an honest and accurate way. The artwork is by Stuart Catterson, who also contributed greatly to adding the CD-ROM aspect to the CD, which was one of the first ‘Enhanced CD’s’ including a multimedia ROM part on the disc.

The album promotes great affection after one listen, and I receive many nice comments from those who bought the album. Sadly on presentation to the trade I was told it ‘fell between two markets’ – World Music and Rock. This created a problem for selling into retail, and on the advice of my distributor, the album was not given a mainstream release. Instead, we concentrated on Web sales and sales at Jive Nation gigs. 
Louis and Jive Nation continued working the London circuit, establishing a loyal fan base, albeit modest in numbers, it was enormous in affection.

Louis always enjoyed a good smoke and it may be that this contributed to his early departure, to cancer on 23 October, 2007.  A lovely musician and a kind person who helped the lives of a great many people.

Under African Skies is a quite beautiful reminder of this uniquely talented musician, and this version of Shoshaloza is my favourite.

Listen or download:
iTunes / Spotify / Amazon / YouTube /

Louis introduced me to Patrick Lee Thorpe, who had a record label promoting and selling South African music, based in Hamburg. That that led to a lifelong friendship, as recalled in this letter from me to Paddy.

2nd June, 2020.

I visited Louis twice in his final week. The last time I drove up to his Counsel estate he had been sent back from hospital, with a gurney and an oxygen tank for the remaining 5% of his his lungs to keep him going for what was expect to be his final week. It was a council house and not an especially nice one. Louis was very happy to see me. We both knew this would be my final visit.

His wife left us, to go for a smoke on the patio outside, about two feet away. The smoke was kind of annoying to me, prompting him to tell me – in that croaky whisper he had left “I wish I could have a schmaff now.”

I left £200 in cash when I saw their fridge was empty, asking his brother who had showed up for those final days to make sure he had food in the fridge. I noticed both had cigarettes to smoke, but no food in the fridge. but then I have never properly understood Catholicism.

During that last chat – I called and arranged with Hugh Burns to take the call when Louis was near the end, to go and sit at his bedside to play him away.
Hugh is the most amazing musician I have met in this capacity – who does this musical service in a Buddhist tradition – with a mastery of musical choices on guitar that is breathtaking. He has given this great gift to friends more times than I can count. He gets a phone call – and he shows up with a guitar and starts playing. It is possibly the coolest use of advanced guitar skills I have ever seen. Also, Hugh knew Louis and saw in him what we all did.

Those were the last two things I did for Louis before I left. His last words to me as I said goodbye were “Don’t go.”

He died the following day. By memory, Hugh did show up when Christine (Louis wife) called. And played until he was gone. I think of it as a musical equivalent of the Nordic fire tradition – sending the body to sea in a flaming vessel.

For a musician I could not have hoped for a finer farewell than that for Louis.

I met Louis through Terry Britten – who called me after drummer Harbans Sri had played him Louis demo tapes. Terry invited me to his studio and played me the songs. He said “I think this will be more up your street than mine.” I agreed to meet Louis because of that. of course I knew from the off it was not a monetary thing. Not good business at all.

We (Charlie Morgan) and myself spent some £25,000 over the next 12 months putting together the songs and recording them with great players. I worked the arrangements with Louis at my home, rewriting lyrics to probably every song on that album for him with the exception of Shoshaloza. And with the pre-production done, we brought in the very best players in our world of 90’s session players to record the album at Black Barn Studios.
With Robin Black engineering.
Mo Foster on bass.
Liane Carroll came in for a day and sang in a choir with Roy Villanis and Kenneth Ganpot, doing BV’s for five songs in one day, including a solo line on “Don’t say that its over‘.
Charlie drummed on many of the tracks with his uniquely British timing that works so well with Mo’s playing.
Doug Boyle did several guitar parts.
Spike Edney came in for a day – with his Hammond B3 and played on ‘Don’t say that its over.’

Stuart Catterson, my art director, became besotted by Louis music and spent a lot of time and effort on the cover design as well as putting an interactive CD-Rom layer on the original CD release. Which was ‘The making of ‘Under African Skies’. Text I wrote with photos from the sessions.

Charlie and I paid all the bills, but many of the participants worked for little or no money. To help Louis. The album went though Bridge Recordings distribution deal with Grapevine/Polygram. Nigel Reveller was my distributor then. (1997 – late nineties.) Steve Fernie was the owner. Both good friends. I remember the sales meet well – up in Camden at the Grapevine office. They both had that sorry look. “It doesn’t have a rack in retail.” We wont be able to sell it in. The stores wont have a place to put it.

World music was not a thing then. (If it ever really was.) Still, they took 1,000 copies to ‘try’ to help me out, but in fact, almost all of those were returned.

I tried helping Louis with live gigs encouraging him to sell CD’s at his gigs. For £10. He should give me £5 per sale I explained, to help recoup the production costs. I would give him 25 CD’s at a time. And then he could come get another 25 when he paid me for the last batch. Of course, I didn’t actually expect that he would pay the £125 for each box when he arrived to collect the next box. He went on to sell almost all the 1,000 units from that original print run. At £10 each.

I never pressed him to pay me from that. He clearly needed that money to stay alive. He was not well rewarded by his musical career. He loved smoking. Camel Plain was his favorite. I persuaded him, persuasively, to switch to Camel Lights.
He did.

One day I the studio cleaner drew my attention to a big pile of snapped off cigarette filters. Turns out Louis had been snapping the filters off the Camel Lights. For that full bodied flavor. He was a devoted Catholic. Most Sundays he worked at the Church food kitchen, handing out food for homeless. And in that way got a free meal himself.

I spoke to him at great length. Trying to help him lose that destructive addiction to Catholicism. But he was impervious to reason. Like the cigarette story. He agreed to smoke filtered cigarettes to appease me – but then would break off the filters when I was not around to censure him.
When I showed him that pile of cigarette filters and asked him why he had deceived me in this way, his reply was, he couldn’t help himself. He had no choice because he was an addict. But Jesus would forgive him. And so should I.

Of course I did. I kept giving him money for cigarettes despite thinking I was harming not helping. He would show up at my home out of the blue – no one does that – not even then – and say “I’ve popped round for a cup of tea with you.” Invariably though it would involve a cup of tea and a small sum of money to “Tide me over til the next dole cheque. Fifty bucks would mean we can eat til the end of the week.” But on two packs of Camel lights a day – costing whatever – like £10 a day – it was no less than supreme irony that he would come to me – an avid anti smoker – for cigarette money.

I tried conflating this benevolence with his religious habit – explaining that Jesus provides, why not get Jesus to help you out until the next cheque. “Don’t you think its ironic that you are asking an Atheist to help you out, when that’s what Jesus does for you?”
“No. Its not ironic. Jesus is working through you to help me.”
That’s Louis in a nutshell.
He got Jesus to convince atheists to help finance Louis’ smoking addiction. Beautiful logic.

My final memory of him on a Hospital gurney in his Counsel estate room, sharing with me that he had lost 95% use of his lungs, days away from the end, literally praying he could join his wife outside for a cigarette.

Jesus must have been working through me to make me leave a couple hundred bucks for household expenses. Like cigarettes. I can’t imagine I will meet anyone again who I would carry on supporting with friendship and money, to keep on smoking right until the last day.

I miss Louis in a way that I don’t miss other friends who have gone. He was one of a kind, even in his Catholic conformity. He was that rare thing. A beautiful singer and a beautiful human being. Not a hint of vanity in his vocal choices. His pitch, phrasing timing, all the components that make a singer were made without vanity. With true humility. His vulnerability as a human transcended all his vague relationships with sensibility.

I am happy to have met Louis and been a part of his life and to have introduced him to my musical friends who all feel the same. But for the accident of birth – Durban and not Nashville – Louis Ribeiro may well have been an all time great in the world of Country Music. He had it all.

I don’t remember him for my serial failure in those endless attempts I made to turn him away from the demons of his own demise; as much as I do for teaching me that you can believe in childish fairy tales complete with superstitious forgiveness and still be remembered more as a beautiful person than an idiot. That is the miracle of music.

My Catholic friend Louis Ribeiro lives on in our friendship as well as that beautiful record we made in 1997. In success terms, an expensive folly that never came close to recouping its cost (sorry Charlie) but one that continues to pay enormous royalties in rewarding so many listeners