Back when I was working as a record buyer in a Greenwich Village store, I thought I had a pretty good handle on the steady influx of cool reggae/dub/ska reissues thanks to Blood and Fire, Heartbeat, Trojan, etc. who released classic reissues at a regular rate, even in the days when Soul Jazz hadn't started pumping out its monumental slab of cool redux packages. Then, Coxsone Dodd, the legendary proprietor of the Studio One empire (and who lived and continued to sell records here in NYC until his death some years ago), would pull up in his van and invite us to scrounge around at the boxes of vinyl he brought to sell to the store, and you just realized that the surface hadn't even been scratched in terms of the massive amount of Jamaican music that hadn't even reached public mass consciousness. Thankfully, all these reissue labels mentioned and more continue to stream great sounds out, and recently our own Mr. Friday Morn, Doug Schulkind was sent a huge amount of obscure/rare tracks on MP3 from Norwegian listener Hugo for our library. Doug reports that this muthaload itself is going to take ages to get through in terms of listening, but he kindly offers up five great tracks he's unearthed so far to share with us. Click below and soak 'em up! Thanks, Doug, Hugo!
Solomon Jones "Wake Up In the Sunshine" (MP3) Released in 1970 on Bullet, a subsidiary of British reggae label Pama. Produced by Derrick Morgan. Can't find any other info on this one.
Roy and the Invaders "Fat Dog" (MP3) Released in 1972 on Coxsone Dodd's Studio One side label Iron Side. This is the instrumental version of Roy and the Invaders' "Maga Dog" which was a cover of Peter Tosh's tune of the same name (produced by Joe Gibbs). "Maga" Is patois for skinny or mangy. The boice heard is that of Larry Marshall.
Lascelles and Dimples "Love Or Be Loved" (MP3) Lascelles Perkins and Shirley "Dimples" Smith were one of a number of moderately successful firl duo acts produced by Coxsone Dodd. This track features the lush and lovely saxophone of Skatalites sideman Roland Alphonso. Not sure when this was released, but another Lascelles and Dimples track "Mighty Organ" featuring trombone legend Don Drummond came out in 1961.
Claris Brown "Where the Healing Water Flows" (MP3) Released in 1966 on Coxsone Dodd's gospel label Tabernacle. The flip side of this 7" single was "Why Me Lord" by artists credited as Brother Freddie and Brother Ernest. I don't know anything about Brown, but Google reveals that Alexander and Claris Brown are pastors at the Church of God of Prophecy in S. Catherine Parish, Jamaica. Same Claris Brown?
Enid Cumberland "Town and Country Cafe" (MP3) Released in 1971 on Sight N Sound. This track sounds to me like an old Tom T. Hall-styled country/pop ditty. A screen shot of the 7" vinyl shows the composer listed as "J. Drummond". Cumberland released a few other singles as a duet with Keith Stewart under the name of Enid and Keith (their sentimental number "Worried Over You" is reportedly one of the top-selling Jamaican singles ever).
SWEET...YOU JUST MADE MY DAY....
Posted by: bopst | July 16, 2006 at 04:26 PM
More, please...
Posted by: Mark | July 16, 2006 at 04:45 PM
Trojan releases a lot of good stuff.
Roy and the Invaders reminds me a lot of King Horror.
This is one of my personal favorites by the......
http://www.4shared.com/file/2548609/a1dff584/09_loch_ness_monster.html
Just click on download at the bottom of the page.
Posted by: Phillip Ventura | July 16, 2006 at 07:29 PM
Awesome. I'm going to pay the highest compliment I can: I'm going to put these on mixtapes for my friends and pretend I discovered them myself.
Posted by: Ford MF | July 16, 2006 at 08:02 PM
wow some Coxsone stuff I've never seen before! Great find, Brian!!
Posted by: Steve PMX | July 17, 2006 at 03:31 PM
Wow! Thank you SO MUCH! Keep em' coming...
Posted by: Disco Stu | July 18, 2006 at 12:34 AM
Thanks listener Hugo! And to the passionate purveyors at WFMU like Brian and Doug.
Posted by: bob | July 18, 2006 at 06:15 AM
Someone has got to talk sense into the present label owners... Bring these beauties back to life!! Last time i ordered from Jamaica i got a reply: 'Are you serious?' Yeah!
What a great collection this. Thank you, thank you, thank you!
Posted by: poesboes | July 18, 2006 at 01:28 PM
THANKS! I love all 5 of these!, especially "when the heaking water flows". please share more : )
Posted by: quinn | July 18, 2006 at 07:42 PM
to do yourself a favor would be to
listen to Kingrene on Shoutcast. so many non-usual tunes...
Posted by: abomb | July 23, 2006 at 07:44 PM
Question Please
Great tracks posted here, thanks
Where to find more Old Skinhead Reggae rarities???
TIA
cmc
Posted by: cmc | August 03, 2006 at 03:55 PM
thanks for the kingrene tipoff
Posted by: dweller | August 05, 2006 at 03:41 PM
I found this page a year back have listened to these tracks with a smile ever since, the reason Im back is I have tried lookin gfor CD version but to no avail any ideas....great stuff thanks a lot
Posted by: Gavin Stokes | April 29, 2009 at 04:02 AM