I'm pretty sure that most of you just tolerate the reggae posts here because there's stuff on other posts you might dig. If I were an asshole, I'd say tough shit. But it's not to piss you off. It's just that there might be a handful of people that would get excited about a a combination like this: Burning Spear, Coxsone Dodd, the Sound Dimension, both sides of a 45, the B side a version. I'd be lapping that shit up if I was you. That doesn't necessarily make me an asshole.
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Because I've posted Studio One stuff here about a thousand times, I haven't bothered to look for anything else for a while, not because there isn't a lot out there but because there's so much of it that you have to give it a rest at some point. Or not. Tonight I was in the mood, and I ran into a page with over a hundred Studio One cuts. If you're familiar with the label, you already know that a second wasted here reading any crap I'm writing is a second you could be spending listening to good music. You are excused.
If you aren't familiar with Studio One, get with it, man. Just consider them one of the most important reggae labels of all time and you're off to a good start. From the late fifties, through the seventies and beyond, from R & B, through ska, rocksteady, reggae, DJ stuff, and all sub-genres in between, label owner Coxsone Dodd churned out quality shit, and when he was done with that he churned out more quality shit. Studio One was like Jamaica's Stax, Motown, Chess or Sun. And there's a lot of it. You'd be hard pressed to find anyone who's heard all of it. Although by now someone must have put together a complete Studio One discography, the last time I checked, not one person knew of all of Dodd's releases, not even Dodd himself when he was still alive.
The songs at Internet Archive are almost all early, some from vinyl copies with audible surface noise. If you're expecting some sanitized remastered stuff, you're in the wrong place. That's kind of missing the point. Jamaican studios were rather funky in comparison to the fancy shit in the states, and their record pressing operations were even funkier. I'll take a loss in fidelity any day if it reminds me of the less than perfect conditions that something was recorded in.
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In need of some summer jams? Clumsy and Shy just posted five reggae songs, and, boy oh boy, they hit the spot. The first one is Sound Dimension's "Real Rock" the rhythm (riddim) source for a bunch of other reggae songs. Sound Dimension was the house band at Studio One. If you want to see how many songs have used "Real Rock", check the page at Riddim Guide. Keep in mind, all of the songs, all five or so pages of them, are based on one riddim.
The second song, Sister Nancy's "Bam Bam" is another Studio One selection. She was the first woman DJ. After that, a personal favorite, Althea and Donna's "Uptown Top Ranking", which just totally rules. I've had that record in my stacks for decades and I never tire of it. (Even if you've nabbed it before, go download this one, it's a far superior rip.) The next one is Susan Cadogan's "Hurt So Good", a real sweet and spacey trip, produced by Lee Perry. Love this one, it's all heavy and sweet at the same time. (Even cooler? Prior to a comeback, Cadagon worked as a librarian.) The last one is Willie Williams' "Armageddon Time", famously covered by the Clash. Recognize that riddim? Yes, it's "Real Rock".
Each of these five songs has a reason to be heard. It's a great post from a great blog. Clumsy and Shy's taste and mine intersect a bit, enough for me to check out stuff that they post that I've never heard of. It's like they're over there, and I'm over here, and every once in a while we happen to be at the same party, in a manner of speaking. So dig around over there.
Leroy Sibbles is the man. Okay, got that out of the way. He was one third of the Heptones, the amazingly smooth vocal trio, that much most of you may know. But his contribution to of reggae in general is so much more. When keyboardist and studio arranger Jackie Mittoo left Studio One, it was Sibbles who took over as arranger. Important role in any studio, right? But how important is the rhythm section? In reggae, it's absolutely crucial. Rhythms are what reggae is all about. And, as you know, the rhythms (or riddims for people who aren't self conscious about using the term) get used and reused. Some rhythms never die. In the sixties and seventies, Studio One was a damn riddim factory. There were lots of them, the good ones used several times for different artists and different songs. (Okay, assuming you guys know a thing or two about reggae, and that this stuff is all pretty elementary, indulge me.) Reggae is ,..wait. Here's a question. When you put on a good reggae record, after you adjust the volume, what's next? That's right. The bass. Hells yeah, am I right? Okay, Leroy Sibbles was the bassist and arranger for the Soul Vendors, the Studio One house band, later renamed Sound Dimension, makers of the crucial golden era Studio One rhythms. You can see where this is going. Just believe me, you've turned his bass up a time or two.
This all started when I ran into his most awesome solo cover of Express Yourself at DJ No DJ. It's a top notch funky reggae jam, trust me. After you listen to some of these, you can check out some of the Heptones stuff posted a while back. (I checked, about half of the links are good.)
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As you reggae fiends know, rhythms (riddims, if you will) can get used and reused many times over. If it's a good one, a studio may use it for a backing track or dub meat for years, sometimes decades. "Real Rock" by the Sound Dimension was recorded in 1967, and has been used dozens of times, as recently as 2003 (see NY Times link below for some of them). Many of the instrumentals get credited to a faceless studio band with revolving members, and some ultimately get released as "solo" instrumentals credited to the player of the melody holding instrument dubbed over the backing tracks. Often they're created spontaneously, as if the singer is on a pee break, hatching from just a few notes. The rhythms are a hot property for the studio owner, but that doesn't stop other studios from copying them as some sort of organic sampling. There's a few here you may recognize as backing tracks to something you've heard before, and a few of the lead instrument variety. And there's one below by Jackie Mittoo, a frequent member of several studio bands, where he takes off, straddling the Memphis groove of Booker T and the MGs and reggae.
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Back when I used to DJ on a regular basis, I used to let people flip through my records. If you've ever DJ'd you already know what happens. Months. or even years later, you go looking for that song that you used to always play and can't find the record anywhere. After this happens a few times, you may experience a "what was I thinking?" moment. You might go through a period of regret. But then several years later, you realize that there were serendipitous benefits to your crappy accounting system. Letting strangers flip through your records results in lost vinyl. That is a fact. You can believe in all of your unicorns and rainbows you want, but there will always be bad eggs. But, and this is big but, for every record that was lifted, there was another requested by someone who you might now associate with the record. That's the case with Aretha Franklin's "Rock Steady," requested by a friend of a friend one night. Helena was a poet. Got that image? Toss it. She was also a tomboyish ball of energy, who liked baseball, shot good pool, and requested a song that remains an association years after she passed away. Every time I hear the song it brings a pause and (enter buzzed unicorns and smoky rainbows) a smile. That's worth far more than a few lost records.
I've related the Helena association before, but after running into the song at Plain or Pan, it all came flooding back, a memory so intact, I practically plagiarized my earlier post without even revisiting it.
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One advantage of being a certain age is that, when it comes to reggae, your objectivity isn't necessarily skewed by hippies, hacky-sack, Bob Marley, trustifarians or other such reggae cliches. My friends and I were lucky enough to be turned on to reggae as an ersatz chaser to a punk rock cocktail. When all other mellow music was getting tossed aside, reggae was not. Simply put, it was the best rebel music with a soulful beat available. It was an awesome awakening: the hunt for reggae on the shelf, any store shelf (Ratner's Electric in downtown San Diego?!?), the booming sound system of the reggae disco at North Park Lion's Club (you could feel the bass in your chest), the kind recommendations from reggae freak elders, and learning the proper way to spell New York ("a knife, a fork, a bottle, and a cork, that's the way you spell New York..."). And all of that discovering of this other acceptable genre comes flooding back when I hear anything from Horace Andy's first album, "Skylarking".
At the time, a lot of earlier reggae was getting licensed in the U.S. and issued at bargain prices. Marley had yet to break and it seemed like the reggae that was being released as if spattering paint, just hoping some of it would stick. The reissues were typically released with bland packaging with total disregard of the exotic covers of the originally issued LPs. It boggles the mind to think about what could have happened if these LPs were released with the original packaging (as seen here). What if the significance of these reissues was more widely recognized, and what would have happened if reggae music as a whole had broken before the rampant one dimensional Marley mania?
Before any miscreants start whining about how great Bob Marley was, let me pose this question: what would rock n' roll be like if the only artist most people were familiar with was the Rolling Stones? You get the picture, so make room on your plate. There is so much more essential reggae.
