Ranking Roger (1963-2019)

Ranking Roger (1963-2019)

Roger Charlery, known professionally as Ranking Roger, was a British musician. He was a vocalist in the 1980s two-tone band the Beat (known in North America as the English Beat) and later General Public. Later, he headed up a reformed Beat lineup.

The "Ranking" moniker is short for "top-ranking" or "high-ranking", and is a boast typical of many MCs.

Achievements:

Discography:

Radical Departure (1988)

Inside My Head (2001)

The Beat (6) Feat. Ranking Roger - Bounce (2016)

The Beat (6) Feat. Ranking Roger - Public Confidential (2019)

In the early 1990s, Roger joined members of the Specials to form the new band Special Beat which released two live albums. In 1996, he sang back-up and toasting on the new version of "The Bed's Too Big Without You" on Sting's "Let Your Soul Be Your Pilot" CD-Maxi single. The rock band Smash Mouth featured Roger on their song "You Are My Number One" in 2003.

He collaborated with Pato Banton in 1995 on "Bubbling Hot", which reached number 15 on the UK single charts.

In 2005, the Beat re-formed, with Roger and Everett Morton of the original line-up, with Roger's son, Ranking Junior also on vocals. Performing some new material, the Beat performed at Glastonbury the same year, where Roger was joined by Ranking Junior.

Roger sang on "Roxanne" on stage with the Police on their 2007 world tour. He was a guest performer on Big Audio Dynamite's seventh album Higher Power in 1994 when the band were known as simply 'Big Audio'. He later became a member of Big Audio Dynamite for their final studio album Entering a New Ride (1997).

Roger contributed to Walls Come Tumbling Down: The Music and Politics of Rock Against Racism, 2 Tone and Red Wedge, written by Daniel Rachel and published in 2016.

Roger continued to lead the Beat and tours throughout Europe as well as works on solo projects. In his last years he released a series of new albums. 2013 saw the release of Retrospective, an album of solo work recorded over the 25 years since the break-up of General Public, featuring various artists and producers including Sly and Robbie, and songs such as "Bubbling Hot" (the 1994 hit collaboration with Pato Banton) and a cover of "The Bed's Too Big Without You" (first recorded with Sting for the 1996 film The Truth About Cats & Dogs).

Live in London was released in 2013 – a live recording of the Beat playing at 229 The Venue, featuring some of their greatest hits as well as new tracks by Roger and Ranking Junior.

2014’s Pop Off the Head Top consisted of entirely new compositions, including additional vocals and song writing from Ranking Junior. They recorded tracks for this project with Hugh Harris from London, Dopegrinders from Brighton and Mr. Anonymous from Colorado. Other key tracks involved the Italian producer AleXannA whose version of “16 Tons” features vocals by Roger, Ranking Junior, and Roger’s daughter Saffren Murphy.

“Rock the Casbah”, released in 2015 in collaboration with the charity Strummerville (founded by the friends and family of Joe Strummer to support aspiring musicians and projects that create social mobility through music). This five-track EP featured a previously unheard version of "Rock The Casbah", which Joe Strummer and Mick Jones of the Clash, had asked Roger to sing on back in 1981, re-recorded by the Brighton producers Dopegrinders, using the original stems donated by Mick Jones. The EP featured new tracks by Roger, Ranking Junior and Hugh Harris as well as a re-working of "Muscle Ska", co-written by Roger and Neville Staple from the Specials.

In September 2016, DMF released Bounce; the first new album by the Beat in 30 years. Written by Ranking Roger, Mick Lister and Ranking Junior, it was produced by Mick Lister and mixed by Tim Hamill and Mick Lister, with the exception of "Side to Side" and "My Dream", which were mixed by Dennis Bovell. The album was recorded in Roger's 'eco-friendly hideaway' – a round recording studio in his back garden, which he called The Pod. The album received generally positive reviews with reviewers typically praising the band's 'passionately political edge' and pointing to how the album 'encompasses every aspect of one of the most musically diverse bands to come out of the multi-racial, multi-cultural explosion that made British pop music what it was in the 80’s'.

The band continues to tour and currently features Roger’s son Ranking Junior (real name Matthew Murphy), with drummers Oscar Harrison of Ocean Colour Scene and Fuzz Townshend of Pop Will Eat Itself. The line-up is completed by Chiko Hamilton on sax, bass guitarist Andy Pearson, guitarist Steve Harper and Bobby Bird of Higher Intelligence Agency.

In 2017, the Beat joined fellow 2-tone band the Selecter for a co-headline UK tour, Owing to demand, the tour was extended to cover other countries.

In early August 2018, Ranking Roger was hospitalised with a suspected mini-stroke. He recuperated at home, but cancelled planned live shows in the United Kingdom and United States. The band had just finished recording an album and Roger had written his autobiography, I Just Can't Stop It, published June 2019.