Ah, yes… takes you back to 1968… and sultry Kingston nights loungin’ downtown with Madame Wasp (that’s her on the cover), to a chilled cocktail of rocksteady, calypso, pop, jazz, mood and bossa.

Lovely trodding-on steppers.

The monumental Treasure Isles.
Your ace from space, with version from creation.

What a record. The studio debut of the mighty Daddy U-Roy in 1969, sparring with Val Bennett over Old Fashioned Way, both of them wigging out like a couple of beboppers, with the ghost of John Holt on the backing tape. “The studio is kinda cloudy,” reports U-Roy — and everyone sounds lit but utterly inspired. Pure vibes.
“My first tune I ever do was Dynamic Fashion Way with Keith Hudson, and then I do Earth’s Rightful Ruler for Scratch. Those tunes didn’t get very far, them sell a couple hundred.”
Cornerstone stuff. Show some respect and chuck your bootleg.

Wildly creative and exuberant, and seismically innovative, here are all Daddy U-Roy’s Treasure Isles — the two LP collections Version Galore and eponymous U-Roy from back in the day, plus seventeen well-chosen bonus tracks, including the spare sevens, alternate takes, studio chat, and a bunch of deadly instrumentals. Deliriously great music; absolutely indispensable.

Tough Niney rhythms — for the likes of Dennis Brown and The Heptones — laid down by Soul Syndicate, Philip Smart and Errol T, mixed by King Tubby.
(Castro Brown added a couple of Cimarrons dubs, courtesy of Syd Bucknor in Chalk Farm, when he let off a couple of hundred whites in 1977: the last two tracks here.)
Santa Davis on drums — those flying hi-hats copped off Earl Young in Philadelphia — and Tubbys at the controls…
Pure fire.

Niney and Tubby’s dubs from 45s, 1976-1978. Total murder. Heavyweight genius.

Brilliant, heavyweight, daft-as-a-brush Niney. Genius.

Tough dub counterpart to The Heptones’ Better Days set.

A staggering haul. One Train Load of murder.
Fire bunn!

The Ethiopians’ Slave Call LP and two Freddie McGregors — Mr McGregor and Showcase aka Lover’s Rock Jamaica Style — plus a dazzling haul of singles from 1978, revealing Niney at the peak of his genius, and easily worth the dough by themselves.

Unmissable rocksteady: a magnificent version of the Curtis; and a hard-rocking Never Let Me Go.