Mick Hartley

This month Bob Marley would have been 60, which provides an excuse for Mojo (a sort of employment scheme for ageing rock critics) to run a lengthy profile by Lloyd Bradley (of Bass Culture fame).

I wouldn’t want for a moment to deny the importance of Marley and the Wailers in the history of reggae: they produced some great music (which doesn’t include “No Woman No Cry”). But it’s surely the case that Marley’s fame is to a considerable extent due to his photogenic good looks, and that his pre-eminence has tended to overshadow other in many ways more powerful artists. So, purely as a public service, and without a hint of self-indulgence, I present my top fifteen (it was going to be ten) reggae albums by vocal groups from the mid to late seventies: the golden age of reggae.

“Marcus Garvey” – Burning Spear
“Two Sevens Clash” – Culture
“The Heart of the Congos” – The Congos
“Conquering Lion” – Vivian Jackson (Yabby U) and the Prophets
“Message from the Meditations” – The Meditations
“Slave Call” – The Ethiopians
“Rasta Pon Top” – The Twinkle Brothers
“The Wailing Souls” – The Wailing Souls
“The Same Song” – Israel Vibration
“Rastafari” – Ras Michael and the Sons of Negus
“Right Time” – The Mighty Diamonds
“Madness” – Mighty Maytones
“Pick Up The Pieces” – The Royals
“Jezebel” – Justin Hinds and the Dominoes
“Party Time” – The Heptones

No reggae library would be complete, etc. etc..

I checked at allmusic, maybe the best web source for (non-classical) music information (if you can get their home page to appear). The Royals album is only shown as a recent release: I don’t believe it ever came out in the UK (I have a Jamaican “pre-release”). Ditto for the Wailing Souls (it seems that their eponymous debut on Studio One – the one I list here – is earlier than I’d thought). The Mighty Maytones are missing altogether: they list the Maytones – clearly the same group – but with nothing released before 1995. Nearly all of this stuff is still available, though not necessarily under the same title.

These are all vocal groups in the same “roots” area as the Wailers, and so could be regarded as rivals. In my opinion they’re all at least as good as the Wailers. I haven’t even mentioned the toasters/DJs, the direct precursors of New York’s early eighties rappers and hip-hoppers, or the dub cuts and other innovations by stoned genius producers like Lee Perry. Phew, what a period. For a while inspired music was just pouring out of Jamaica. Well….no mystery about what they were smoking.