'Twas a fun day at the ol' thrift store today. I came home with a Sergio Leone boxset, a copy of Abel Ferrera's "The Driller Killer", "The Queen Is Dead" and "Nigeria Afrobeat Special" and Grant Green's "Standards" and THIS slice of JA nostalgia. It's super early Lee Perry...the Upsetter, Pipecock Jackson, King Scratch, y'all. And I'm a fuggin' sucker for anything involving the Master of the Black Ark.
This here represents a sampling of singles released on C And N Records, Coxsone Records, Rolando & Powie, Mu-Zik City Records, Worldisc, and Supreme Records in the mid 60s. The credits list reads like a Hall of Fame of Jamaican music. Coxsone Dodd and Graeme Goodall engineered the tracks. The Soulettes and the Wailers provided backing harmonies. The likes of Jackie Mittoo, Roland Alphonso, Lloyd Knibbs, and Tommy McCook, whether under the Skatalites band name or ungrouped, make up portions of the backing band. The liner notes by David Katz are incredibly thorough; he literally wrote the book on Lee Perry, so it should be expected, but is still welcome.
This originally got released in 1989, collecting 12 cuts that'd never before appeared on CD. Twenty years later, Heartbeat reissued that compilation, adding seven tracks that'd previously only been available in their original 45 release. It's a dynamite collection, capturing Perry in his first years as an impresario, and the Skatalites as
the top backing band on the island. It blows my mind that someone would donate this, but I was happy to plunk down my $2.99 for this one.
