Fire! The Federal musical director walks it like he talks it. Blazing horns and jazzy brilliance all round.
The best of Ern’s sixties LPs. A lovely bunch of rocksteady instrumentals, featuring a cool and deadly Summertime, bumping versions of Hold Me Tight and Flamingo, a moody Story Book Children, some bluesy honky-tonk, and the far-eastern stylings of Sling Shot, to close.
Prince Buster rumpus.
Trump-card trumpet version of Joyride, aka Riding West.
Rollicking, mid-sixties, post-Skatalites ska thriller, led by Bobby Ellis and Roland Alphonso, with slightly different soloing to the original release.
Backed with a charming, forsaken, rare Summertairs: ‘I love you, Errol… come back today… but not too late… Errol, my dear.’
Dynamite, previously unissued rocksteady version of the monumental Skatalites scorcher from a few years earlier.
Scorcher. Ska at the threshold of rocksteady. Mittoo and Dizzy Moore do it to it.
With a sweet Hamlins on the flip.
A jewel-strewn glimpse of the couple of years it took this group to invent reggae, as the Studio One house-band from 1967 till the decade turned.
Mittoo and Robbie Lynn, Cedric, Horsemouth, Eric Frater (wielding a ‘Sound Dimension’ echo and delay), Sibbles, Ernest Ranglin and full crew.
Funkier than a mosquito’s tweeter.
A masterful, sublime cover of the Young Holt by the newly-formed Sound Dimension; backed with Roy Richards’ classic harmonica version of Summertime.