Tough, thumping Jammys from 1989, with expert falsetto singing from CT.

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.