RE-ISSUED LONG PLAYERS UPDATE JUNE 07

WAILING SOULS - CLASSIC CUTS 78-84 (GREENSLEEVES)  Greensleeves are re-issuing quite a bit of quality stuff at the moment. This is a lovely little collection of the Wailing Souls material they put out mostly on the greensleeves 12‘s that do brisk business in the collectors arena‘s.  Starting off with ‘War’ and ‘Jah give us life to live‘, which Greensleeves re-issued on a 12 then carrying on with stand out tracks like ‘Fire house rock’, ‘See Baba Joe’ and ‘Upfront’ this is a must own collection. Lovely (mostly) Henry ‘Junjo’ Lewis sound. Amongst the planned Greensleeves re-issues is a collection of some of the other top-notch 12’s. Something to look forward to.

V/A - SUCCESS ARCHIVES VOLUME 3 (SUCCESS)  Nice to see these Rupie Edwards compilations out and about. There are a full series of them. This is my favourite. 14 top sounding instrumentals from the archives. Really nice early reggae/rock steady sound. Players of instruments include such dignitaries as Tommy McCook, Winston Wright, Vin Gordon, Ansell Collins and Carl ‘Cannon ball’ Bryan. It should be no 
surprise that these are very strong instrumentals. Hopefully reviews of some of the other releases in this series to follow in future updates.

JOHNNY OSBOURNE & THE SENSATIONS - COME BACK DARLING (TROJAN)  Its always baffled me why Trojan, which the catalogue which must be available to them, insist on releasing a stream of same sounding compilations. This release hopefully see’s a welcome shift of policy. This value-for-money re-issue see’s the original ‘Come back Darling’ long player as well as a massive collection of early  Winston Riley productions. 61 tracks in all! Too many tracks to name all the great ones, but ‘Warrior’ always stands out. Tracks from the Techniques, Sensations, Boris Gardiner & The Love People, The Shades and Alton Ellis this is one collection to seek out. Lovely early reggae sound from one of the most underated producers. Trojan have also just released I Roy’s ‘Presenting..’ long player with extra tracks. Hopefully in as much detail as this release. Review to come next update.

V/A - THE KINGS OF REGGAE -COMPILED BY RODIGAN & STING INTERNATIONAL  (BBE)  With so many compilations being released every month, it is easy to dismiss them, however some are worthy of further attention and this is one of them. Two albums of strong tracks, some old, some new. First lp is compiled by Ram Jam Rodigan and contains classic tracks like ’Satta massa gana’ by the Abyssinians, Burning Spears ’Marcus Garvey’, Junior Murvins ’Police & Thieves’ and ’Two Sevens Clash’ by Culture. Second lp is compiled by Sting International and has ‘Mi Have Fi Get You’ from Josey Wales, ‘Tempa’ by Anthony Rose, Tenor Saw ‘Roll Call’ and Revival pressure favourite ‘Work us so hard’ by Little John. A lot of good tracks on this double lp. Worth picking up

A couple of very good quality dub releases recently. CRUCIAL BUNNY V PRINCE JAMMYS - FATMAN DUB CONTEST (AURALUX) is a very good selection of dubs from the Fatman Hi-fi archives. 4 tracks on each side. The first side being from Prince Jammys and the other by Crucial Bunny. The Jammys side kicks off with a ruff dub to Johnny Clarke’s ’Play fool fe get wise’ and finishes with a hard cut on the ‘satta’ riddim. If that is not enough Crucial Bunny comes in with 4 tuff dubs. Very nice long player from the reliable Auralux label.

CARLTON PATTERSON & KING TUBBY - BLACK AND WHITE IN DUB (HOTPOT)  I haven’t lookd forward to a re-isssue release as much as this one for a while and I was not let down. Hot pot (who put out a couple of really good Ossie Hibbert dub long players a while ago) come back with a selection of Tubbys work with Carlton Patterson on the Black and White label who released some truly great music in the 70’s then into the 80’s. The Pressure Sounds ‘Psalms of Drums’ album took care of the vocals, this lp takes care of the dubs. Hard Dub after hard dub on this one. Starting off with ‘Psalms of Dub’ the dub to ‘Not responsible’ by Carlton & Leroy and the same riddim as the mighty, mighty ‘Psalms of Drums’, carrying on with ‘Watergate Rock’ , the dub to Larry Marshall’s ‘I Admire you’ and supposed to be the first record actually credited to King Tubby, ‘Black Lash’ is a particular favourite of mine and is the dub to Carlton Patterson’s ‘Dread locks power’, ‘King at the Controls’ the dub to Ray I ’Weatherman skank’. Every tune really is a killer, and no filla! If you only ever buy one more dub long player, make it this one.