IT'S BABA BOOM TIME SOMEWHERE

That record above was my first taste of Duke Reid. I had clue who Duke Reid was at the time. It was in the reggae section and it was cheap, about four bucks, and that was for a new original pressing (this was years ago). I figured it was worth the gamble. After getting home and looking at the back cover more closely I saw that it was a compilation and that none of the artists were named Duke Reid. What the fuck?

A few years later (still pre-internet) I found out that Reid owned the recording studio and label, Treasure Island. In ensuing years I became aware of the significance of Reid. Basically, in the beginning, the big two were Reid's Treasure Isle and Coxsonne Dodd's Studio One studio and label. They were both really active in the ska years, then when ska evolved into rocksteady, Reid had the edge. Ultimately Dodd would come out on top in the reggae years. A bunch of reasons for that, among them is that Reid was an ex-cop and allowed no weed on the premises. Dodd already had the killer studio band, songwriters, talent scouts and roster (almost all of it passing through the hands Leroy Sibbles, who wore all of those hats at different times). Not to mention his records sounded better. By looking the other way when the weed came out, he also had a less uptight environment, enabling more creativity. Blah, blah, blah. Someone should make a movie.

Anyway, there's something about Reid's stuff, particularly the rocksteady era, that makes it perfect for after-beach farting around. Which is why it took three hours to write three paragraphs.

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Listen:
Baba Brooks Orchestra - Watermelon Man mp3 at Internet Archive
The Paragons - On the Beach mp3 at Internet Archive
Alton Ellis and the Flames - Dance Crasher mp3 at Internet Archive
The Techniques - You Don't Care mp3 at Internet Archive
The Jamaicans - Baba Boom mp3 at Internet Archive
The  Melodians - Last Train to Expo '67 mp3 at Internet Archive

RIDDIM DEPOT. YEAH, WE GOT THAT.

Garret Mimms's "A Quiet Place" was just a slow tempo soul song when it was released in 1964, making it to #78 in the charts. Hardly a smash hit. But when it crossed the water over to Jamaica, boy, did it ever get legs. The Paragons recorded it at Duke Reid's in 1968, and the riddim (rhythm) that it was laid over has been mined for the past four decades. Usually referred to as the "Man Next Door" riddim, it's been used by U Roy, Doctor Alimatado, and I Roy, to toast over, and the song itself, with the riddim (as opposed to Simms's original version), has been covered by everybody from Horace Andy and Dennis Brown to the Slits. My personal favorite (which you should rightly not give a shit about) is Dr. Alimantado's version, "Poison Flour", because he incorporates Horace Andy's vocal tracks as well as the riddim, and, of course, his own spouting off . He must have like the song, because he used it twice, as did U Roy, John Holt (solo and with the Paragons), and Horace Andy (solo, with the Paragons, and with Massive Attack). And you just know the session musicians that came up with the riddim probably got the paid for the session, but squat for coming up with the very part of it that has proved so enduring. I've no clue if you can be paid royalties for just playing a song differently, but that opens up the biggest can of worms in reggae, who did what? It's like a damn free for all over there.

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Songs:
Garnet Simms - A Quite Place (streaming at YouTube
The Paragons - A Quiet Place mp3 at Essentially Eclectic
Horace Andy - Man Next Door (streaming) at YouTube With dub version.
Dr. Alimantado - Poison Flour mp3 at Le Blog de la Grande Chose
I Roy- Noisy Place (streaming) at YouTube
U Roy - Peace and Love In the Ghetto (streaming) at YouTube
Dennis Brown - Man Next Door mp3 at Essential Eclectic
The Slits - Man Next Door (live) mp3 at Essentially Eclectic

REID'S RECYCLING

If you listen to early rock steady recordings by the Paragons and didn't know anything about them, you might not think they were anything remarkable. The more you listen to reggae though, particularly early reggae and rock steady, the less you notice the production quality, which is not as crisp as you may be used to. Whether it was the production or the pressings, most early Jamaican vinyl is a little muddy. But if you dig that sort of music and listen to it enough, you just sort of tune it out until eventually your imagining it in the era it was released. At that point, the muddiness almost seems to enhance the listening experience. That's when you can truly hear the greatness of the Paragons (or Alton Ellis, or early Toots, or early U Roy, or...). And the Paragons were great, particularly when a young John Holt joined in 1964. Before he went on to a lengthy solo career, Holt wrote "The Tide Is High", the one song of theirs you've probably heard. Their On The Beach LP is a bit like the first Velvet Undergound LP, not in sound, but in that time has proven it a classic, a moment in time where everything came together. Fidelity be damned.

Duke Reid put it out, as well as early sides by U Roy. U Roy would tap into the Paragons' catalog for stuff to toast over, two on his early LP Version Galore, and a few years later another, a riddim rerecorded by the Skin Flesh and Bones band, on the 1975 LP Dread In A Babylon. The fidelity on that one ain't so damned.

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Listen:
The Paragons - Wear You To The Ball mp3 at Kazoo Wailers
U Roy - Wear You To The Ball mp3 at Grounds For Appeal
The Paragons - Tide Is High mp3 at Boogie Woogie Flu
U Roy - Tide Is High mp3 at A.Tumblr (?)
The Paragons - Silver Bird mp3 (via DivShare*) mp3 at Dave's Juke Box
U Roy - Silver Bird mp3 at Xiami
The Paragons - My Best Girl mp3 (via DivShare*) mp3 at Dave's Juke Box
The Paragons - Happy Go Lucky Girl mp3 at Reggae Top Site
*NOTE: Once you get to DivShare, click on the green "Download" button, and scratch your head for fifteen seconds. When the button reappears, you're good to go. Give it a second or two.

CRASH COURSE

Here's a nice contrast and compare exercise for anyone not really sure what the Jamaican DJ or toaster actually does. The first thing you should know is that they don't actually play records. In a nutshell, they talk, shout, boast, comment, make fanciful noises, and throw in a few of there own personal catch phrases, basically just about everything vocal but sing, and they do it over records being played at sound systems. Jamaican sound systems were basically mobile discos. In the beginning (late fifties) they played rhythm and blues, later moving to ska, rocksteady, and reggae, as Jamaican music evolved. DJing started back with Count Machuki, credited by most as the first person to toast over Jamaican records. It was one of those serendipitous improvised moments of brilliance. He was just fucking around, killing time while the sound system operator Tom the Great Sebastian took a break, just throwing out stuff over the records being played. When the crowd dug it, he went home and started working on his rhymes. "If you dig my jive, you're cool and very much alive, Everybody all round town, Machukis' the reason why I shake it down, When it comes to jive, You can't whip him with no stick."  People went nuts, so in no time others followed suit.

Which brings me to the song "The Tide Is High" by the Paragons, recorded at Duke Reid's studio in 1967. Here's the original version, along with an early U Roy version, toasting over it sans lead vocal. You can hear that a good DJ adds flavor, and U Roy was one of the best. (Just for context, the antiseptic version by Blondie is down there too. They add no flavor.) If you listen to enough U Roy, you'll start to recognize his catch phrases, which made me think of the last one below, "D.J.'s Choice" by Dennis Alcapone. It's a bit of a novelty, in that the first verse name drops about eight or so DJ's, followed by one of their catch phrases. The song actually annoys me, but I'm that way about name dropping in songs. Regardless, it's a  DJ toasting about other DJs, so it's interesting.

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Listen:
The Paragons - The Tide Is High mp3 at Cubik Musik
U Roy - Tide Is High mp3 at A.Tumblr (?)
Blondie - The Tide Is High mp3 at Evil Vince
Dennis Alcapone - D.J.'s Choice (streaming) at YouTube
Visit:
DJ at Wikipedia
The Tide Is High at Wikipedia
More DJ stuff

JUST STOP WITH THE STRINGS

John Holt is confounding. Seriously, I don't know where to start. He began his singing career in 1957 at the age of twelve, entering talent contests. By the time he was 16, he'd won 28 contests and was picked up by producer Leslie Kong. A couple years later, he joined the Paragons, who are best known for singing the Holt-penned original version of "The Tide Is High." Yes, that "The Tide Is High," the one that was a hit for Blondie. Better known to reggae fiends is the 1971 DJ version, by U Roy. It was Holt, in fact, who introduced U Roy to Duke Reid. Reid ended recording all of U Roy's early hits, including another Paragons song, "Wear You to the Ball."

Studio footage from 2009 (music starts at 1:08)

Back to Holt. He's had some mighty weird twists. When the UK label Trojan brought him to England, they schmaltzed him up real good. His output got sappier and sappier. His music became bathed in strings, culminating in the unthinkable, "Holt Does Disco" (an actual album title). Need I continue? Then, in 1983, there was a dramatic change, he became a rastafarian. Not just dreads, but the whole thing. His music got rootsier, with a load of songs about rasta and weed. Now you'd think that's where he would just sort of drift off into elder-rasta singer lore. But you know what? He's still got his WTF moments. One of the things that I can't seem to wrap my head around is the fact that, as late as 2001, he was still occasionally fronting a symphony orchestra. I'm not saying that something in the rasta faith should preclude one from doing that, but, come on. (Dude, you already survived, and came back from, the depths of schmaltz hell. Why risk it again?)

If all of that isn't even of moderate interest to you, let me ask you this: Can you name any reggae artist who sang through the ska, rock steady, reggae, and roots eras, (wait...), and covered a Slade song? (You can hear a snippet of his version of Slade's "My Oh My" here.) Without going into too much more detail (because frankly there's too much more detail to cover), I'd just advise avoiding anything of his that looks too glossy. Now, on to the goods...

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Listen:
The Paragons - The Tide Is High mp3 at Boogie Woogie Flu
The Paragons - Wear You to the Ball mp3 at DJNoDJ
The Paragons - Happy Go Lucky Girl mp3 at Brobots!
John Holt - A Love I Can Feel (Studio One!) mp3 at Slang Editorial
John Holt, King Tubby & Augustus Pablo - Ali Baba Riddim Dub mp3 at Fredeeky
John Holt - My Sweet Lord mp3 at Slang Editorial
John Holt - Hey Jude mp3 at Ska.Sk
John Holt - Mr. Bojangles (live, with orchestra) mp3 at Premium Wanadoo
John Holt - Police In Helicopter mp3 at Le Blog de la Grande Chose
John Holt & Big Youth - Leggo Beast mp3 at 4Shared
LPs:
John Holt - Four LPs at Satta Massagana, including the dyn-o-mite I Can't Get You Off My Mind collection of Studio One material, and the questionable Holt Goes Disco.
Related:
Earlier reggae posts here
Read:
John Holt - Excellent bio at LastFM
John Holt at Wikipedia

JUST LIKE UNCLE FREDDY

This was going to be a quick one song post, just because I found an mp3 of the Jamaicans' "Ba Ba Boom," a laid back rocksteady cut that's, to put if softly, remarkable in its unremarkableness. That's not to say that it isn't a great song, it's just so laid back that nothing really hits you in the face. It's been in periodic rotation on my turntable since I bought a bargain Duke Reid compilation many years ago. The artists weren't even mentioned on the cover, so it was a gamble. It turned out to be my introduction to rocksteady, the early form of Jamaican music (mid 60s) that was the link between ska and reggae. It was an important moment in Jamaican music, because it was when their music started moving away from the earlier R&B influenced blue beat and ska, and towards reggae, an uniquely Jamaican sound. The training wheels were coming off.

After traipsing around looking for other rocksteady cuts, I found a trailer for a rocksteady documentary that I didn't even know existed. "Rocksteady: The Roots of Reggae" looks like a humdinger. It follows a reunion of sorts, of the legends of the genre. There's quite a few familiar names (U Roy!), and if you dig early reggae, you would do good to check it out.

To the untrained ear, the differences in the styles of Jamaican music are sometimes subtle, particularly in the music of the 60's. It can be tough to peg what exactly it is that you might be listening to. Making the distinction is humbling, but worry not. I ran into a video of Bob Marley (who, one would imagine, knows a thing or two about Jamaican music), describing the evolution of the sound, in an incredibly succinct manner. If you like Jamaican music, consider it mandatory.

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Listen (inna haphazard chronological stylee):
The Duke Reid Group - The Rude Boy mp3 at Cubik Musik
Stranger Cole - Rough and Tough mp3 at Boogie Woogie Flu
The Paragons - The Tide Is High mp3 at Boogie Woogie Flu
The Jamaicans - Ba Ba Boom mp3 at Popop
Justin Hinds and the Dominoes - Carry Go Bring Home mp3 at Everybody Taste
Alton Ellis - Rock Steady mp3 at DJ No DJ
Phyllis Dillon - Remember That Sunday mp3 at Kiss Brooklyn
The Melodians - Sweet Sensation mp3 at Renan Maitre
Errol Dunkley - Black Cinderella mp3 at For the Sake of the Song
Cornell Campbell - Ten to One mp3 at Daniel Johnson Writes
John Holt - My Sweet Lord mp3 at Slang Editorial
Watch:
The Difference Between Ska, Reggae and Rock Steady -As told by Bob Marley This is as concise as they come. Recommended.
Further digressions:
Earlier reggae related posts here