Two terrific, previously unreleased excursions on the Amos Milburn.
The trombone holds it down like Giant Haystacks, but that’s a tenor saxophone solo.
Lovely stuff.

Take a pew, rude boys and girls, lest you faint. Don D’s legendary offering to the mental asylum where he died. Rampant and intense; burning up, inside and outside.

God’s own ska. Cornerstone of the Far East in reggae. (No Augustus Pablo without it.) We put a dubplate mix on Studio One Scorcher; first ever time out for the second take here.

Heavy, slowed-down Green Island excursion, revisited as a duet with the mighty Lennie Hibbert. Originally a Down Beat dubplate special.

Previously-unreleased takes of this ball of fire hurtling East with no survivors (from the second Ska Authentic). Pitiless, wondrous companion-piece to Last Call, from the same session.

Roland Al tearing up Louis Jordan in 1962; plus a tasty, doowop-derived ska shuffle.
Both sides previously unreleased.

Rudie gone soft. Irresistible love songs — with simmering brass, splashing cymbals on the A; classy sax on the flip.

The godfather, with a Tommy McCook. Two classy body-rockers.

Two Duke Reids: hard-swinging, emotionally distressed rocksteady from Mr Soul Of Jamaica himself, down on his knees, hand on heart; and a terrific version of Gene Chandler’s Duke Of Earl on the flip.

The greatest rocksteady instrumental of them all.
Haughtily cool and deadly; a stepping razor of a tune. (Just ask the ODB.)
Back in after a long absence. Hail the rebel sound.