The Heptones - (1967) Fattie Fattie

Studio One ‎– 9002

The Heptones, consisting of Barrington Llewelyn, Earl Morgan and frontman Leroy Sibbles, were one of Jamaica's definitive rocksteady vocal groups. They formed in Kingston in 1965 and in the late 60s and early 70s the trio recorded at Studio One under the helm of pioneering reggae producer Clement 'Coxsone' Dodd. They played a major role in the gradual transition between ska and rocksteady with their three-part harmonies.

The Heptones excelled at what the rocksteady period was famous for: sublime, soulful vocal harmonies layered over shuffling, easy-going, melodic rhythms. Leroy Sibbles was not only a blessed singer but also a session bassist at Studio One, and he penned most of the Heptones' music and lyrics.

"Fattie, Fattie" is a re-titled, reissue of the trio's first album, "The Heptones" and it includes two additional songs not on the original album. Released in 1967, the album collected many of their hit singles that were popular at the time, including the title track, "FATTIE, FATTIE." The single was a big seller in both Jamaica and the UK and was banned from the radio because of the song's "lewd and suggestive" nature.

The Heptones - (1970) On Top LP

Studio One ‎– 0016

One of the finest vocal groups of the rocksteady and early reggae periods of Jamaican music, the Heptones first drew attention for the singles and albums they cut for Clement "Coxsone" Dodd's Studio One label during the late '60s. Poised on the cusp of a cultural shift, Leroy Sibbles (also a bass-wielding session man for Dodd) and partners Barry Llewellyn and Earl Morgan tackled a combination of the sort of pained love songs then in vogue and fresher "reality" material, a mix arguably heard best on On Top. The album's first side in particular is a stunning example of the Heptones' craft. Backed by the Jackie Mittoo-led Soul Vendors, the group's growing social consciousness is voiced on a handful of pre-roots classics. Propelled by lively drum flourishes that resemble an update of the Rastafarians' nyahbinghi percussion, Sibbles makes direct reference to the lynching of African ancestors on the album-opener "Equal Rights," while one of his finest vocal performances is reserved for the side-one-closer "Soul Power." The band would return to equally sobering subject matter throughout their career on recordings for Joe Gibbs ("Hypocrites"), Jack Ruby ("African Children"), and Lee "Scratch" Perry ("Sufferer's Time"). This music established the Heptones as a reggae act of the highest order and the years have proven its timelessness.

The Skatalites Meet King Tubby - (1999) Heroes of Reggae in Dub CD

 Guava Jelly ‎– 80006

A whole 27 years ago, members of Jamaican legends The Skatalites recorded an album at Lee Perry's Black Ark studios. Dub supremo King Tubby got his hands on the tapes and the result is the audaciously funky dub album of your (and our) dreams. Mad, phasing drum breaks (Sealing Dub), rolling (acoustic) basslines, skewed-to-hell analogue synths (Starlight) and uplifting, infectious party-time business (Bottom Dub) - it's all here. Stone-cold classic 70s dub that will ignite any party lucky enough to have it - age not an issue.

The legendary all-star group gets beautifully spliced and diced. The sound is exquisite and the dubs are totally transfixing. .... this is a definitive dub selection that includes the scarce, anthemic, vocal bonus 'Starlight'. An unmissable history lesson.

Vintage dub gold, fresh from the vaults. Musicians from the greatest band ever to emerge from Jamaica: men like Tommy McCook, Roland Alphonso, Ernest Ranglin and bassie supreme Lloyd Brevett, mixed and blended by Lee Perry and King Tubby. Augustus Pablo, Ras Michael and Leroy "Horsemouth" Wallace are in there too. Tracks from these 1975 sessions have been released before but this is the most comprehensive collection from the sessions yet, including three previously unreleased tracks (most notably Tony Brevett's original Rastafarian vocal cut 'Starlight'). Nowadays dub is digital business, but listen to the blaring horns, slapping bass and niyabinghi drums of these recordings and hear how it should be done. Pure, organic and fresh from the roots.

The Skatalites - (2007) The Skatalites Play Ska CD

Kingston Sounds ‎– 011

Here's trivia tit-bit for you; The Skatalites are so named because they formed in the same week that the Soviet Union successfully launched a satellite into orbit around the Earth. Slip in the letter 'k' and there you have it! When that wins you the pub quiz, we want half... Comprised of musicians who honed their skills at the Alpha Boys School in Kingston, The Skatalites were prolific in the extreme - rustling up over 100 sides of music in little over two years and helping to mint the Ska sound which eventually evolved into what we now know as Rocksteady. With members including legends like Jackie Mittoo, Roland Alfonso, Don Drummond and Tommy McCook, there was never any danger of this collection being anything but nigh on crucial - as 'Wise Man', 'Gold Coast', 'Buddy Bye' and 'Cow Town Skank' all slink by with maximum Ska effect. Evidently put together by someone with real passion and knowledge of the subject, this is a definitive document of a band whose influence still pervades the music scene today. 

The Wailing Wailers - (1965) The Wailing Wailers LP

Studio One ‎– 1001 

Not only does The Wailing Wailers highlight the first major recordings of Bob Marley, but the happy, bouncy, optimistic sound is also the sound of post-independence Jamaica.

Legendary records are legendary for different reasons—some for the music and some for the musicians. In terms of The Wailing Wailers, it would be tough to locate folks who don’t know the song “One Love” or the name of the fellow singing this song. Bob Marley is enough of a worldwide superstar that his face and his later lyrics are as familiar to American college students as they are to Ethiopian teenagers.

The Wailing Wailers is not, by strict definition, an album—it wasn't recorded or sequenced as a whole. The Jamaican music industry has traditionally been shaped by singles, so this is effectively a singles bundle that was gathered up and released in late 1965. Not only does this highlight the first major recordings of Bob Marley (and it should be noted that most of the songs have Marley writing credits), but the happy, bouncy, optimistic sound of The Wailing Wailers is also the sound of post-independence Jamaica. It is the sound of a music that would soon reach out beyond the island and internationally through the remarkable voices of Bunny Wailer, Peter Tosh, and, most of all, Bob Marley.

In addition, The Wailing Wailers emerged from Clement “Coxsone” Dodd’s Studio One, one of the foundational, pioneering recording studios where Jamaican music is concerned. Operative from the 1950s through to the early 1980s, Studio One released ska, rocksteady, reggae, and dancehall over the years. The history of Studio One is key to the history of music in Jamaica and the rise of both reggae and Bob Marley.

Revisiting it now, you can also clearly hear the ways that popular music circulates and crosses borders. The influence of American R&B and pop is evident—there’s a version of “What’s New Pussycat?” here—but also a specificity that places the record smack in the middle of the ska and rocksteady period, a precursor to the reggae that propelled Marley into the stratosphere of fame he found himself in the 1970s. Patwa, the Jamaican language, is a Creole that brings together various linguistic elements and structures stemming from West African languages, such as Twi and Yoruba, English, Spanish, Dutch, and Native American sources. A Creole language brings together all of these elements. Similarly, the musical genres of Jamaica are creolized forms. As case in point, The Wailing Wailers brings together multiple influences, at times sounding like 1960s croony R&B as on “I Need You,” skank-ready ska on “One Love” and “Simmer Down,” and then Patwa-inflected proto-reggae on the slightly slower “Rude Boy.”

This past year novelist Marlon James became the first Jamaican to win the Man Booker prize for his novel A Brief History of Seven Killings. The book takes the attempted assassination of Bob Marley as its starting point and zooms out from there, taking in the scope of '70s Jamaica, extending forward to the 1990s. The panoramic scope of James’ book is a demonstration of Jamaica’s international reach and influence. The Wailing Wailers is another key piece of the artistic and creative juggernaut that is Jamaica, helping to demonstrate the narrative of reggae and of Bob Marley. With Jamaican creativity in the spotlight, it’s a perfect time to provide access to Studio One again.

The Wailing Wailers is the first reissue from Yep Roc Music Group, who have access to the Studio One catalogue, thanks to an agreement with Coxsone’s daughter Carol Dodd, and they are starting as they plan to continue—with reissues of foundational albums (some quite rare) provided in the form of their original release. The Wailing Wailers is one that has been available since its original 1966 release, specifically by New England’s Heartbeat Records. Heartbeat lovingly reissued a good number of Studio One releases from 1983 through to the mid-'00s, but changes in the music industry meant that Heartbeat petered out. Yep Roc appears to be ably picking up the trail and providing high-quality LP, CD and digital access as well as involving Jamaican native Chris Wilson, the former A&R manager for Heartbeat. The care that has been put into this reissue is obvious. It’s meant to provide a historical touchpoint by utilizing all original album art and providing the same track listing as the first time around, and now a legendary album will be consistently available to whole new audiences. 

Burlin Mud - (2011) Gourd CS

 Human Conduct ‎– 080

VA - (1995) Sounds & Pressure Volume One CD

Pressure Sounds ‎– 005 

 Tracklist
1 –Keith Hudson Barbican Dub 2:38
2 –Horace Andy Problems 2:49
3 –Augustus Pablo Ras Menilik Congo (Harp) 2:38
4 –Black Skin The Prophet Red Blood 3:24
5 –Prince Far I And The Arabs Mansion Of Invention 2:48
6 –Keith Hudson Black Belt Jones 3:12
7 –Little Roy Tribal War 3:09
8 –Keith Hudson Sinners 3:33
9 –Prince Far I And The Arabs Bass Ace 3:52
10 –Israel Vibration Same Song 3:59
11 –Augustus Pablo King Tubbys Dub Song 3:21

VA - (1996) Sounds And Pressure Volume Two CD

 Pressure Sounds ‎– 010 

Mostly raw edged low key tunes from a variety of top Classic era Reggae artists and a couple of tracks not readily available elsewhere make this a great intro to Pressure Sounds Reggae reissue label.
Sound mastering is mostly very good with some songs sourced from vinyl.

VA - (1997) The Best Of Ska! CD

 Boomerang Records ‎– none

Tracklisting
---------------------------------------------------------------------
1. Desmond Dekker & The Aces - Intensified [02:37]
2. The Ethiopians - Train To Skaville [02:55]
3. Don Drummond - Man In The Street [03:22]
4. Toots & The Maytals - It's You [02:05]
5. The Blues Busters - The Wings Of A Dove [02:38]
6. Dandy Livingstone - Rudy, A Message To You [02:33]
7. The Ethiopians - Come On Now [03:16]
8. Dave & Ansel Collins - Double Barrel [02:30]
9. The Blues Busters - Shame And Scandel In The Family [02:22]
10. Toots & The Maytals - Never You Change [02:30]

Playing Time.........: 26:53 

VA - (1998) 100% Dynamite CD

 Soul Jazz Records ‎– 040

"100% Dynamite" is the first in a series of 5 compilations of Jamaican music across time. While the other 4 jump from dancehall to dub and back to ska without any real regard for chronology, "100% Dynamite" focuses on the ska recordings which led to the style we all now know as reggae.

While this is a considerable boon to the fan of Jamaican music, those whose experience of ska is found in the ska-punk fusions of America and England will be sorely disappointed. Much of this disc is instrumental and, while it is very exuberant, the style is quite different to what passes for ska these days.

The first selections ("Armagideon Time", "Night And Day" and "Rock Steady") are all vocal cuts and not representative of the disc at all. "Armagideon Time" is an early rastafarian spiritual, while "Night and Day" and "Rock Steady" are both love songs - with the latter being voiced by a woman.
By the fourth track, the Upsetters' "Popcorn", the album takes off. Lee Perry, the man behind the Upsetters, can already be heard working his trademark studio magic that would later feature on recordings by artists as diverse as Bob Marley and Junior Murvin. The track is a deceptively simple bass, drum and guitar melody which varies ever so slightly and at the least expected moments.

Legendary saxophonist Tommy McCook also contributes a number, "Green Mango". McCook, a founder member of the Skatalites - the seminal ska band - leads from the front with the desire of a jazz player. "Greedy G", by the Brentford Allstars, which follows this performance is also a standout.

The rest of the disc is also very strong. Jackie Mittoo (Skatalites pianist) acquits himself admirably on "Stereo Freeze", and Phyllis Dillon's heartfelt "Woman of the Ghetto" could well be claimed as one of the first "sufferer's songs". Lloy'd Robinson's "Cuss Cuss" demonstrates a clear link to the reggae for which Jamaica would very soon become famous, his sweet vocals counterpointing with the important message of the song.

Overall, this album is a very useful collection of early ska and proto-reggae. Many of the artists are under-represented at best on the CD racks of the world, and these recordings are certainly among their best. Thus, from a serious fan's point of view, the compilation is very much worthwile.
The ska or reggae newcomer may also benefit from this disc, but this is slightly less likely. The sad truth is that, after all is said and done, many of the instrumentals do tend to blur into each other - no matter how outstanding they may be. The newcomer may be better served with a Skatalites greatest hits to begin with.

 Tracklist
1 –Willie Williams Armagideon Time 2:31
2 –The Maytals Night And Day 2:49
3 –The Marvels Rock Steady 3:05
4 –The Upsetters Popcorn 2:05
5 –Tommy McCook Green Mango 3:40
6 –Brentford All Stars Greedy G 3:37
7 –Lennie Hibbert Real Hot 2:27
8 –Johnny Osbourne We Need Love 3:36
9 –Jackie Mittoo Stereo Freeze 3:05
10 –Cedric Im Brooks Give Rasta Glory 4:21
11 –Sound Dimension Granny Scratch Scratch 3:56
12 –Phyllis Dillon Woman Of The Ghetto 3:22
13 –Lloyd Robinson Cuss Cuss 6:27

14 –Sound Dimension Drum Song 4:22

VA - (2000) Rare Reggae Grooves From Studio One CD

 Heartbeat Records ‎– 11661

Rare Reggae Grooves From Studio One is a follow up to HB 224, Studio One Showcase Volume 1. In the mid to late seventies in Jamaica, it became popular to extend each song by adding an instrumental reprise at the end of the vocal version. This allowed the producer to extend the song from three minutes to sometimes over eleven minutes, which ensured that if you had a hit, it would keep the dance floor filled for a good amount of time! At Studio One, this resulted in countless 12" mixes of some classic hits as well as many that were deemed suitable for extending because of their popularity.
Many of the songs on Rare Reggae Grooves From Studio One were originally released in the late sixties and re-released in their extended version ten years later. All the tracks were overdubbed from their two track origins and then remixed and released. Many feature the drumming of the legendary Leroy "Horsemouth" Wallace who was a member of the Studio One Band.

Tracklisting
---------------------------------------------------------------------
1. Lloyd Robinson - Cuss Cuss [06:25]
2. Peter Broggs - Sing A New Song [04:10]
3. The Gaylads - Love Me With All Of Your Heart [04:12]
4. The Silvertones - Take A Little Love [07:01]
5. Ken Boothe - Come Running Back [06:13]
6. the martinis - My Baby [06:12]
7. arthur robinson - Moments [06:15]
8. Going To Zion - Going To Zion [06:43]

Playing Time.........: 47:12
Total Size...........: 88.89 MB

The Archangelos Chamber Ensemble - (1999) Metamusic Masterworks CS

 Hemi-Sync ‎–  none

Enjoy inner peace and transcendent relaxation as the Archangelos Chamber Ensemble performs timeless gems.

Use Masterworks for expanding awareness through musical imagery and self-exploration; for deeper, more profound meditation; or simply for musical enjoyment.

It`s More Than Music … It`s METAMUSIC

Over thirty years ago Robert A. Monroe, a then successful radio producer, began a research and development organization to study the effects of sound on human consciousness. The result of that research is the world-renowned binaural beat technology called Hemi-Sync.

Hemi-Sync, an abbreviation for hemispheric synchronization, is a process which utilizes carefully blended and sequenced sound frequencies to synchronize the left and right hemispheres of your brain. This enables you to transform the diffused power of your brain`s hemispheres into a focused whole-brain state.
The ongoing research being done at The Monroe Institute is providing the world with state-of-the-art tools for a wide range of applications such as stress reduction, heightened creativity, pain control and meditation. Around the globe, doctors, psychiatrists, psychologists, as well as thousands of others, use Hemi-Sync in achieving these goals.

Masterworks for Relaxation is performed by the award-wining players of The Archangelos Chamber Ensemble. Feauring the inspired Baroque music of Bach, Vivaldi, Corelli, and others, the arrangements are designed to maximize the relaxing effect of this timeless music. Adding Hemi-Sync to the mix, Masterworks is the forerunner of the music of the future; classical art and high-technology combined for specific applications.

* Do not drive or operate machinery while using this product.

VA - (2001) Studio One Soul CD

 Soul Jazz Records ‎– 050

The story of the influence of US music on the development of Reggae has been versioned many times. For all the keen reception in Jamaica of radio stations line WINZ out of Miami and WNOE from New Orleans, and the regular appearance on the Caribbean circuit of such American stars as Aretha Franklin and Curtis Mayfield, it is from the beginning a history driven by the wayward magic of records, the expressive charge and allusive fascination of vinyl, covers, labels. An English chartbuster on the Mod imprint Immediate, for example: 'The First Cut Is The deepest', a Cat Stevens song covered by P.P. Arnold with proto-prog-rockers The Nice, cropping up here by Norma Fraser. This is the version excursion of composite musical cultures continuously recycling and renewing themselves, enmeshed with the biggest mass movement for social justice and civil rights of the twentieth century. It is the story of barriers broken down and new solidarities opened up: a kind of 'musical communion' as a Baba Brooks title puts it, patterned by the outernational hand-to-hand passage of records, its key setting the sound system dance.

Clement Dodd himself was an avid record-collector, a Jazz connoisseur. His father's job on the docks turned up records brought by American sailors to exchange for rum, maybe to pay off a pimp. As a migrant farm worker in the early fifties he would return from Florida cane fields with the best new R&B for his Sir Coxsone Downbeat Sound System, still buzzing with the excitement of local juke-joints. Soon he would be licensing records for distribution in Jamaica: and bulk-buying from warehouses in New York and Philadelphia, Chicago and Cleveland, to supply the Musik City Shop he set up in 1959. But exclusives - with scratched-out labels - were a must for Downbeat, and when the American public switched to Rock 'n' Roll it was the sudden shortage of killer R&B that spurred Coxsone into the studio. He organised local musicians to produce their own supply of Jump Blues and New Orleans R&B: and Ska evolved from the encounter between these interpretations, such native idioms as Mento, and other favourites like Bossa, Mambo and Merengue, Jazz and Big Band Swing. At first Coxsone would cut these sessions onto dub-plates solely for the use of his sound system, perhaps followed up by a handful of blanks for other deejays. This ideal medium of promotion and market research quickly gauged demand for releases to the public, and so in 1962 - the year of formal independence from Britain - Clement Dodd decided to build the Jamaican Recording and Publishing Studio, better known as Studio One. Behind this affirmation of new nationhood and international ambition is a motive echoed by the Hitsville USA sign on the Motown building in Detroit, and Soulsville USA on the Stax offices in Memphis, and by Motown's slogan 'The Sound Of Young America' where Studio One sleeves would announce 'The sound Of Young Jamaica': the power of music to transcend social difference

Unity and peace are the key themes of Curtis Mayfield, justly celebrated as the major Soul presence of the Rocksteady years 1966-68. (He nodded back with a production credit on the Epic album 'The Real Jamaican Ska'). His songs, arrangements and falsetto lead, his lucid and vulnerable sensibility, poise and sharp tailoring, and the ghost in him of long-time JA favourite Sam Cooke - all these made never-ending impressions. his group themselves stand over a fabulously rich Reggae tradition of vocal trios: here The Eternals stray further than The Techniques from The Impressions' 1962 hit 'Minstrel And Queen' - itself a re-working of 'Gypsy Woman' - as lead singer Cornell Campbell's license elaborates an enraptured reverie about musical inspiration. Curtis' sixties career epitomises the synthesis by Soul music of Gospel and R&B and also its vital and deepening inter-relation - which Reggae followed - with the freedom movement. Significantly, the Rocksteady years mark a period of artistic decline for Curtis himself, reversed by his last two singles for ABC-Paramount in 1968, during the months Rocksteady gave way to Reggae and soft Soul to more diverse influences. 'We're A Winner' and its version 'We're Rollin' On' were both still - in Curtis' words - "locked in with Martin Luther King". The civil rights leader had been acclaimed on his visit to JA three years earlier: in April he was assassinated. In Chicago, in the spring of 1968, Curtis founded his own independent Curtom Records: swapping classic suits and ties for pastel flares and leather trench-coats, he began to imagine a harder, more militant funk. In Kingston - where the new Black Power politics were more attuned than Civil Rights to the militant nationalism of Marcus Garvey - Bob Marley trimmed his locks and combed out an afro, to the sounds of Sly Stone and Jimi Hendrix. With an imitative, inaugural exuberance that harks back ten years to Coxsone's R&B, Leroy Sibbles versions Charles Wright's hippy celebration of the sixties' movement, 'Express Yourself'.

By the close of 1968, students had torn up Paris streets and American campuses, after the example of Black uprisings in US city after city; Tommy Smith and John Carlos had stood with clenched fists on the podium at the Mexico Olympics; American losses to the Tet offensive had at last swung a US majority against the Vietnam War. In Jamaica Peter Tosh and Prince Buster were arrested during a demonstration against the Rhodesian prime minister Ian Smith; and there was serious rioting when the Jamaican government blocked re-admission of the Black Power intellectual Walter Rodney. Several tracks on this compilation directly express political energies which were red hot in this first year of Reggae. Others make their soulful impact by encoding social discontent and political resistance in stories about personal grievance, almost to bursting. Sometimes the Reggae version follows Aretha Franklin's anthemic interpretation of 'Respect', and explodes these allegories : in this way - underlined by his new title, 'Set Me Free' - Ken Boothe utterly eclipses Diana Ross' vocal, and Alton Ellis darkens even further Luther Ingram's sublime classic. Though this genre of Reggae-Soul versions is conveniently viewed in weak, lightweight opposition to Roots Reggae, classic Soul made available in powerful and sophisticated form the key terms - loss and pain, hope and longing - of the diaspora consciousness usually assigned exclusively in Reggae to Roots. And at the same time themes based on Garveyite ideas of racial purity unravel along those more maverick routes opened up by cultural mobility and change.

Reggae music refreshes and re-invents continuously. Dub, toasting and juggling turn what is familiar into an ambush. These are techniques of resurrection developed for the dancehall which are themselves reworked in remixing and extended formats, rap and turntablism. A Studio One original like The Cables' 'What Kind Of World' courses through many versions before giving Morgan Heritage - its current worldwide hit 'Down By The River'. Such foundation rhythms have become casually synonymous with Studio One. Likewise nothing in Reggae comes close to the scope and quality of Coxsone's Soul coverage. This is in part a tribute to his own musical taste, but more importantly to his amazing roster of singers, arrangers like Jackie Mittoo, Larry Marshall and Leroy Sibbles, and to the solidity and longevity, inventiveness and technical brilliance of Studio One musicians. Coxsone was the first in Jamaica to hire a full-time studio band: over the years it is easily a match for such acclaimed American counterparts - all represented on this album - as the Funk Brothers at Motown, the Muscle Shoals Band at Fame, Booker T and the MGs at Stax. Many Reggae covers are routine and empty-handed, churned out quickly for easy cash and cheap thrills. This compilation is more like a series of responses: sophisticated and loving, ebullient and heartfelt, affirmative and searching. The music basks in its sources and influences, in a place all its own.

Tracklisting
---------------------------------------------------------------------
1. (00:03:33) Leroy Sibbles - Express Yourself
2. (00:02:49) Norma Fraser - Respect
3. (00:02:43) Leroy Sibbles - Groove Me
4. (00:02:50) Sound Dimension - Time Is Tight
5. (00:03:23) The Heptones - Message From A Black Man
6. (00:03:35) Otis Gayle - I'll Be Around
7. (00:02:49) Jerry Jones - Still Water
8. (00:02:01) Sound Dimension - Soulful Strut
9. (00:03:31) Richard Ace - Can't Get Enough
10. (00:03:58) The Chosen Few - Don't Break Your Promise
11. (00:03:23) The Eternals - Queen Of The Minstrels
12. (00:03:15) Norma Fraser - The First Cut Is The Deepest
13. (00:02:19) Ken Parker - How Strong
14. (00:07:05) Ken Boothe - Set Me Free
15. (00:03:13) Senior Soul - Is It Because I'm Black
16. (00:02:49) Jackie Mittoo - Deeper & Deeper
17. (00:03:31) Alton Ellis - I Don't Want To Be Right
18. (00:03:20) Willie Williams - No One Can Stop Us

Playing Time.........: 01:00:06
Total Size...........: 83.74 MB

Dennis Weaver - (1990) How To Spiritualize Business CS

 Self Realization Fellowship ‎– 2514

George Michael - (1990) Listen Without Prejudice Vol. 1 CS

 Columbia ‎– 46898 

Robert Goulet - (1982) Close To You CS

  Applause Records ‎– 1011