Back when I was about twenty years old I was driving back down from San Francisco with my brother. We stopped in Santa Cruz to stretch our legs and hunt for record stores. We found one that had a fairly decent stash of old reggae. Back then you wouldn't have considered it vintage, but they were early titles. I was just starting to get into reggae and, well, I didn't know shit. But the records that they had were on racks with multiple copies. Being cheap, roughly four or five bucks, I figured they were cut-outs. Not really knowing reggae, I bought about three or four titles, the ones with the funkiest album covers. One was Duke Reid Golden Hits. I had no clue who Duke Reid was, but check that cover (above). If you saw that in a stack of records you might have taken the chance as well. Unbeknownst to me, it would be my introduction to rocksteady.
For several years I had no idea why it appeared to be a multi-artist compilation but was titled Duke Reid Golden Hits. None of the songs were by anyone named Duke Reid. I eventually found out that Duke Reid was the producer. Then everything fucking snowballed. Artists, sub-genres, producers, labels; I sucked it all up. I'm still sucking it up. This is classic rocksteady, from the producer that dominated the rocksteady years (roughly '66-'68). I'm on my third copy of this one. An absolute classic. I just checked Discogs and there's over fifty used copies for sale, from various pressings. The ones on Treasure Isle (Reid's label) are the original, the others (on Trojan) were licensed. But if you don't want the vinyl there are multiple Duke Reid and Treasure Isle compilations out there on CD, cheap too.
Alton Ellis - Rock Steady mp3 at Internet Archive
The Techniques - You Don't Care mp3 at Internet Archive
The Jamaicans - Baba Boom mp3 at Internet Archive
The Three Tops - Do It Right mp3 at Internet Archive
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