I get up every morning have pancakes for breakfast

Desmond Dekker, ska and reggae pioneer, rude boy icon, influential mod, and the “Desmond” that Paul McCartney refers to in “Ob-La-Di, Ob-La-Da,” died this week. He was 64.


Dekker’s song, "Israelites," was the first purely Jamaican reggae song to make the charts in the United States (it topped the UK charts), and is one of the few reggae songs I can actually say that I love.


"Israelites" is also the parent of perhaps my most ridiculous mondegreen. I really don’t know what the first line to this song is (few do, I discovered, when I heard the remembrance on Friday’s All Things Considered), but what could be more inspiring than pancakes?!?