For the past 40-plus years, UK label Trojan Records has licensed reggae from Jamaican labels, re-releasing them occasionally in their original version, sometimes with overdubs, and quite often in compilations. The results have been mixed (particularly the overdubbed records), but chances are, if you lived in the UK, and you were/are into reggae, Trojan product has crept into your crates.
The Trojan Story was a 1972 three LP set that traced the years from 1961-1971, which is a great time span if you're at all into hearing the development of pre-roots reggae. For instance, the first cut, Laurel Aitken and the Carib Beats' cover of "Bartender" (1961), is a great example of how early ska adopted rhythms from R&B, particularly New Orleans style R&B. It's a pity that there isn't a compilation putting together the early pre-reggae sound system selections, because that was a whole other ball game. Operators would travel to the states and bring back obscure jazz and R&B records in order to have them as exclusives, featuring them at their outdoor dances (but not before scratching out the artist and title). This was serious stuff, with each sound system employing spies, enforcers, and sometimes gangs to disrupt other sound systems' dances.
Back to the set in question: Dinosaur Gardens posted the entirety of the 48 song Trojan Story, in individual mp3s, each listed with the year of release. These were posted in 2008, but the links are still live, so dig in. Oh, and another thing. The Infinite Wheel link below is a definite go-to link if you ever wanted to fuck around with dub, but didn't want to commit to a career change. There's a lot of exploring to do there. Just click away; after you learn the label-less navigation, it's really a hoot.
The Trojan Story, 48 reggae mp3s at Dinosaur Gardens
Trojan Records site
Jamaican Label Art, a comprehensive gallery of Jamaican reggae record labels
Infinite Wheel's Dub Selector, the ultimate time suck for wanna be dub mixers
3 comments:
Laurel is the king.
Do you remember a record store on University, near Park, in the early 80's? There was a hippie guy there who had a connection to Coxson Dodd's wife, I think. I scored a lot of great original vinyl at that store.
It was "Strictly Reggae" and the guy was Dave Allard, who, if I remember correctly, started stocking reggae at Ratner's Electric in downtown San Diego when he worked there, about 1977.
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