reggae avalanche!
An unbelievable reggae haul hit the site today — I feel like I find myself typing that sentence a lot! — below the cut, I’ll do my best to break it down.
Since we got a number of types and styles of reggae, it makes the most sense to break them out stylistically. So we’ve got:
Sweet & Melodic
John Holt, 18 Greatest Hits: So right out of the gate, you need his version of “My Sweet Lord.” When I sampled that in the office this morning, everything came to an “oh my god” dead stop. Gorgeous. The rest of the tracks here are just as good. Holt is awesome — he’s got a craggy voice that’s kiiiiiinda like Horace Andy’s, but the stuff here is lighter and more melodic than the kind of apocalyptic reggae Andy usually trafficks in. This one is a winner.
Various Artists, Jamaican Beat: Awesome. Light, rocksteady/doo-wop style numbers, absolutely catchy and infectious with superlative vocal performances. Listen to “Boom Shaka Laka” and tell me you don’t want to hit “Download All” immediately.
Leslie Kong’s Connection, Volume 1 and Volume 2: If you want my opinion, Volume 2 is the stronger one. Kong was a producer and label owner in Kingston in the 60s, and these 2 comps gather up some of the classic singles produced under his aegis. The second volume is all bright and sunny — straight sunshine reggae, perfect for the dying days of winter. Which is not to short-sell Volume 1, which has its charms as well. Basically, this is a goldmine.
Various Artists, Joe Gibbs Anthology: Back in Time ’70s & ’80s: Gibbs was a legendary producer, and the singles gathered here are a tiny bit sleeker and more “polished” than some of the other comps we got today. The version of “I’m Still in Love With You,” for example, can’t hold a candle to Alton Ellis’s version of the same. There’s two discs here, and though it’s really not digital reggae at all, I can see it appealing to fans of that approach more than the rustic 60s style. I could be crazy, though.
Various Artists, Rock Steady CD1 : No idea what became of CD2. These are classic rocksteady/ska jams from Duke Reid’s legendary Treasure Isle studios. A good mix of vocal-driven numbers and instrumental ska. Very two-tone, very good (pick hit: Stranger Cole & Patsy Todd’s beautiful, doo-wop inspired “Hey Hey Baby.”)
Various Artists, Raw Roots Volume 1 and Volume 2: This is a weird mix of dub and spookier-sounding reggae. There are some absolute gems here — The Heptones’ “Sweet for You Baby” on Volume One and Ken Boothe’s terrifying “Artibella” on Volume 2 are both unbeatable. You may want to weed out (no pun intended) some of the dubs, as they tend to interrupt the continuity. Or I might just be imposing my taste on you.
Various Artists, Gems from the Treasure Isle: More classic Treasure Isle singles. Had to mention because this features some cuts from the amazing Alton Ellis.
Various Artists, Greatest Jamaican Beat Music: This is sturdy, but might not be my first pick. You can hear the calypso influence in a lot of these tracks. They’re lovely and well-constructed, but might be more for hardcore completists.
Don Carlos, Lazer Beam: Carlos has a light, bobbing vocal style. The melodies aren’t super strong — it’s more like lilting conversation over steady, bobbing production.
Grooving Instrumentals
Don Drummond, Jazz Ska Attack: I LOVE DON DRUMMOND. This record is awesome. Drummond did time in the Skatalites, so you can guess what you’re getting here: solid, bounding ska with strong melodic trumpet leads. It is awesome.
Various Artists, Jazz in Jamaica: Great, light ska, not as consistent as the Drummond but will satisfy fans of instrumental ska for sure.
Bloodshot Dub
Augustus Pablo, Augustus Pablo Meets King Tubby at the Controls: Pablo’s ghostly melodic weaves its way through Tubby’s rubbery dub production. It’s pretty spare overall, not immediately accessible, but still solid.
Black Uhuru, Love Dub: Digital dub, lots of drum pad hits and some icicle-drip guitar chords.
Lee Perry, Black Ark in Dub: A collection of spooky dub from the master producer, slightly more melodic and straightforward than the titles above.
Prince Jammy Presents Black Uhuru in Dub: Jammy turns in some lovely, melodic dubs of classic Black Uhuru tracks — like the Lee Perry, the songs here are a little more fleshed out and not as spacy as, say, the Pablo.
Plain Toasting
Dillinger, Kingston Ruler: Dillinger yammers away over some minimal production — all top-of-head improvising, not super melodic but fitfully inspired/inspiring.
I-Roy, Crisis TimeSoulful prophesying by I-Roy atop simple, bobbing dub. I-Roy’s voice is deeper and more pained than Dillinger’s, which suits his deeply spiritual Rasta subject matter.
King Sighta, Master of All: Can I call him the Momus of reggae, because he has an eyepatch? More toasting, not too different from the items above, except Sighta is not as driving as Dillinger or as profound as I-Roy.
jamaican beat is insane. SO GOOD.
eMusic has an amazing back catalogue of roots reggae. Today’s haul makes me very happy I have downloads left this month. Is this all from a new label on the site?
Nope — we’ve had most of these for a while, they’re just starting to trickle through now.
John Holt was the leader of a popular Jamaican 60s band called The Paragons. eMusic just got their disc, “Original Paragons At Treasure Isle,” which is not to be missed. At a minimum, you need to hear the original of Blondie’s big hit, “The Tide Is High.” Link:
http://www.emusic.com/album/The-Paragons-Original-Paragons-At-Treasure-Isle-MP3-Download/11373595.html
Oh man, I missed this one! I love the original version of “The Tide is High.” Thanks for catching this, Daniel.
jamaican beat: baba boom time!
and speaking of original versions: Rock Steady CD1 has Carry Go Bring Come – Justin Hinds. The Selector covered it on their first lp. Woman Come ( also on Rock Steady CD1) is an old favorite of mine for its funny lopsided beat and – what’s this? – i just heard Norwegian Wood quoted in the sax solo. Fun.
UK users can hear yet another quoting of “Norwegian Wood” in Jackie Mittoo’s “Darker Shade of Black“
is i’m the one to blame john holt or paragons? because the track on 200% dynamite lists Holt, but its on a Paragons track at emu. all time favorite.
duuuuuuude…tubby dubbing pablo might be the greatest dub of all time.
yeah, but i like the other ones better — Rockers Meet King Tubby in a Fire House and King Tubby Meets Rockers Uptown. This collection didn’t quiiiiiiite work for me.
Yeah, I thought “Rockers Uptown” was their collab that was in the “holy grail” of dub discs.
…aaaand now people in the US can check out “Darker Shade of Black” (aka “Norwegian Wood”) too
Joe, what do you think of that Mittoo/McCook box-set? I see almost no press/reviews of it online, it’s a monster of a set to download, I fear it might be very repetitive (and thus tedious to sit thru) and there are a bajillion reggae comps, so I’m picky/skeptical.
I’m not familiar with this particular comp, but it looks like it grabs a bunch of songs from across their respective catalogs; I do think sitting through all 3 discs might be much. This Tommy McCook comp is amazing and is probably all the McCook you need. The best Mittoo comps, in my opinion, are Champion in the Arena and The Keyboard King at Studio One, but both of those are UK only.
On top of this, someone is pointing out to me, that there are some errors here — specifically, there are duplicate tracks under different names on some of the comps (Disc 3, Tracks 13 & 14; Disc 2, Tracks 1 & 3). Not sure what the deal is, but am going to point it out to our people and see what’s up.
I’ve got that McCook comp. It’s v. good. Everything from Blood & Fire is very good (R.I.P., BTW, what a damn shame). I’ve got one Mittoo, but it’s a “lost gem” when he was living in Canada (released by the Light In The Attic label, I think; on eMusic).
Thanks for the rundown. I’ll check out the sweet & melodic.
joe, daniel:
uh, yeah…guess i need to completely read something before i get all indignant. apologies. i’ll buy youse a beer if i ever see you in a bar somewheres.
No worries (I’ll take that beer, tho). I’m going to check out that new Tubby/Pablo collab, BTW. Come to think of it, I don’t have the Fire House disc, either. Anyone know if it’s good?
I see that a bunch of these new arrivals come from Charly Records. Among them are a number of Bob Marley discs. I’m happily ignorant of most Bob Marley music, but I’m willing to take a chance. Is any of it (a) genuine original studio versions and (b) good?
BTW, Joe, what do you think of Strut’s new “Inspiration Information” series, which pairs a roots reggae legend with a modern collaborator, e.g., the new Horace Andy/Ashley Beedle disc? Some of the samples — e.g., “Rasta Don’t,” the dubsteppy/Arabic-tinged “The Light,” and the cover of The Rolling Stones’ “Angie” — sound intriguing.
Not sure the disc is worth downloading, tho. Link below.
http://www.emusic.com/album/Horace-Andy-Ashley-Beedle-Inspiration-Information-2-MP3-Download/11397491.html
@ Daniel – Not sure which Pablo album you meant, Fire House or the Augustus Pablo Meets King Tubby At The Control ( as the cover says, rather than how emusic has it ‘Augustus Pablo Meets King Tubby In”?!). Both are great Pablo albums right up there with King Tubby Meets Rockers Uptown and the one that first got me into his greatness, East Of The River Nile. All 4 are the peak of his output in my view, and they all certainly have been regarded that way by just about everything I’ve read about his career. If you like one of those albums, I really don’t think you’ll find the other 3 any less a great listen.
BTW emusic, great bunch of original rockers and similar you’ve added with the labels mentioned here, please keep the goodies like these turning up.
@ Daniel: I haven’t listened yet! I tend to be suspicious of these kinds of things by nature, which is probably unfair of me. I kinda liked the single from this, so maybe today’s the day I give the whole thing a spin.
As far as the Marley — from what I can tell, the Charly stuff is just a bunch of different iterations of the songs contained on the Complete Upsetter Singles with some odds & ends mixed in. As far as Marley on eMusic goes, I’d skip these and just go straight for the Complete Upsetter Singles. Because it’s awesome.
Bob Marley, I think, gets a bad rap because of the kinds of people who tend to like him. But if you can get past that, there are some truly wonderful records waiting to be discovered. Exodus, for example, is phenomenal.
@ Dubdance: Totally agree on East of the River Nile. That record is amazing. I’d also rep for King David’s Melody. Obv neither of these are dubs, per se, but they both rule. The version of Melody we have on eMu sounds like it was just ripped straight from vinyl, but I actually like the crackling and popping in the background.
Agree with the rec. for the early Upsetter singles – amazing songs, produced by Lee Perry, and Bob really does some incredible things with his voice. At least check out “Sun is Shining”; also rec. “My Cup” and “Mr. Brown.”
I just noticed that this collection has a whole second disc of dubs that I have to check out.
This is the kind of head-scratching arrival I see a lot of in the reggae category. I love Cornell Campbell’s voice, and I know his big song is “The Gorgon.” So I see this disc appear today —
http://www.emusic.com/album/Cornell-Campbell-The-Gorgon-MP3-Download/11391995.html
– and I figure it’s a landmark album where the song originally appeared. But a quick scan of AMG doesn’t show the album at all, and I see no reviews of it. It’s hard to make heads-or-tails of discs like this, which is why good gatekeepers (like eMusic’s editorial staff) are so important.
Daniel, looks like that one’s at least authentic, although no telling how legal this upload is:
http://www.strictly-vibes.com/cornell-campbell-the-gorgon-1976-vt3072.html
Also strongly agree with the importance of emusic editors.
This Strictly Vibes site looks amazing!
Yeah. But it’s still very odd that there’s no discussion of the disc online (basically everything’s focused on the Blood & Fire compilation). Still, might be a disc to grab.
@ Joe – agree on the King David’s Melody comment. The You Say… reviews on emusic raise the sound quality issue too, I don’t have that album, but know others who do have it and agree that it could well have been ripped from vinyl.
It’s interesting how the sound quality issue gets raised about some older recordings, 27 years isn’t that long, but recording technologies have moved on tremendously since then. Digital recordings sometimes lack that certain warmness that more basic analogue recordings often captured, they can be too ‘clean’ sometimes in my view, I too don’t mind the crackles, within reason. A few crackles never seemed to wreck the enjoyment of many people at various Mad Professor, Jah Shaka, Denis Bovell sound system events I’ve been too, it’s all part of what comes with certain types of music and their associated events in my experience.
A number of recent (and older) Rounder Records releases found their way onto eMusic this past Friday. Three of them are collections of early reggae and dub from Studio One.
Lee “Scratch” Perry’s earliest recordings as a singer (1961-64):
http://www.emusic.com/album/Lee-Scratch-Perry-Chicken-Scratch-Deluxe-Edition-MP3-Download/11402741.html
Burning Spear’s recordings for Studio One (1969-1974):
http://www.emusic.com/album/Burning-Spear-Creation-Rebel-the-Original-Classic-Recordings-fr-MP3-Download/11403147.html
A collection of Clement “Coxsone” Dodd’s dubs from 1974:
http://www.emusic.com/album/Dub-Specialist-Dub-MP3-Download/11403168.html
@Dubdance: Yeah, I agree with you. I like the “warmth” of vinyl — crackles & all. I feel like it adds a sense of age and character. Purely personal bias, but so it goes.
@jonder: The Burning Spear comp is great; haven’t heard the others.