It’s 1962, you've had a sound system for a few years, and in Jamaica you’ve built up a sizeable following among the discerning Kingston dancegoers by playing a stunning selection of imported US R&B rarities. Your sound has a catchy name - like Sir Coxsone’s Downbeat or Duke Reid The Trojan – and is ranked up there with the very best of the competition, playing prized 78s with scratched out labels so that your rival sound men will hopefully never find their own copy and play it back to you when you meet in a dancehall clash.

Clement ‘Coxsone’ Dodd was the self-styled Master of The Royal Society of Jazz and Knight Commander of the Blues Empire, with those titles painted on his speaker boxes, and Arthur ‘Duke’ Reid won King of the Blues contests and was crowned King of Sound and Progressive Jazz for the sixth consecutive time in 1959. Both men eventually acquired their own recording studios and had access to the finest local musicians, many of whom were pretty decent or at least aspiring jazz players.

These major players in the Jamaican music scene certainly loved their jazz, and Dodd even recorded a couple of jazz albums with some of these musicians… so why, when a style of popular music evolves that lends itself perfectly to jazz instrumentals, would they record so few jazz tunes?

It's an enduring question, especially when you consider that there are so many classic jazz originals from the 1940s, 50s and early 60s that would have made for absolutely killing ska and rocksteady instrumentals. Of course, there were plenty of pop hits and showtunes covered by Jamaican ska musicians during the 60s, but the absence of classics such as “Cherokee”, “Yardbird Suite”, “A Night In Tunisia”, “So What”, “Equinox” and dozens of other eminently suitable jazz compostions is a mystery that remains unexplained to this day.

Seasoned musicians such as Tommy McCook, Don Drummond and Roland Alphonso had already recorded jazz in Jamaica, and – along with other members of The Skatalites – regularly appeared at Kingston jam sessions. I’ve always found it strange that many of their biggest tunes were covers of Mongo Santamaria’s supremely catchy Latin instrumentals, and the easy listening exotica of Hawaiian bandleader Arthur Lyman.

As far as I know, there are no ska covers of any Charlie Parker tunes, and it wasn’t until the later part of 1968 and the early rocksteady era that the recently departed Skatalites stalwart Lester Sterling committed “Barbados” to tape under the name of “Forest Gate Rock”, an area of East London that producer Bunny Lee had been staying in.

“Barbados” is a typically ingenious Parker blues but with a somewhat tricky head, and you have to wonder why Sterling would have chosen this one to record rather than an easier tune such as “Now’s The Time” or perhaps even “Billie’s Bounce”. As it is, Parker’s sprightly melody sits uneasily on a rhythm that lies on the cusp of reggae, and although it has some of the flavour of The Upsetters’ “Return Of Django” it has little of the groove that made that hit tune so irresistible.

Perhaps even more oddly, “Barbados” was also covered a few years later by Sonny Bradshaw, the veteran Jamaican trumpeter, bandleader, promoter and President of the Jamaican Federation of Musicians. He made made a pretty decent job of it, and renamed it “Gas Riot”, but it still feels like a peculiar choice for a cover in view of all the other options available.

Perhaps one day a reel of tape will emerge from the vaults of Treasure Isle or Studio 1 that contains 60s recordings of some of the jazz classics that should have been covered in ska or rocksteady. The relatively few jazz covers that we know of showcase Jamaica’s most accomplished musicians (Tommy McCook, Roland Alphonso, Don Drummond, etc) emulating their heroes but it would be so nice to hear more.

Chris Lane is a label boss, writer, producer and selector based in London. Subscribers can read more about his Fashion Records label in Neil Kulkarni’s feature in The Wire 421 via Exact Editions. You can find all of Chris’s previous columns here