Vintage Wackies, and — spun out of Horace’s all-time greatest album — unmissable.
Appearing originally on the Solid Groove label out of Croydon in South London, Exclusively is sometimes misconstrued as the UK issue of Dance Hall Style. The tracks from both were recorded at the same sessions - with Bullwackie joined at the controls by Junior Delahaye and Prince Douglas - and issued close together in 1982-83, Croydon first.
Half of Exclusively non-exclusively versions four tracks from the Stateside release - three are re-titled - and also Eating Mess, which appeared on the first pressing of Dance Hall Style, though unlisted on the sleeve. The mixes are all different (and without dubs). Five further specials include the funky Musical Episode, a superior Bob Marley tribute, and a version of Rougher Yet.

Three front-rank reggae singers — with extensive credits for such producers as Coxsone Dodd, Augustus Pablo and Glen Brown — whose work at Wackie’s without question includes their very best. Originally two 10s.

Deep, rootical lovers, darkly seething with one-step-at-a-time hurt and steely, vengeful self-esteem. Hypnotic, stripped and disconsolate, with implacable drums and bass, dubwise from the start, the production is classic, unmistakable Wackies, featuring Fabian Cooke’s scattered, abrupt organ stabs and minimal guitar-work, Ras Menelik’s masterful nyabinghi drumming, and harmonic commiseration by Sugar Minott and the Love Joys (with a strangled sob at intervals).
Over six minutes, the extended mix is different to the Love Power LP; and the additional dub, released here for the first time, is unmissable for its extra rawness and dubbed-out emptiness.
Plus thirteen minutes of blissful disco-reggae on the flip: two contrasting dubs of the Giorgio Moroder/Irene Cara/Flashdance cut from Love Power, both previously unreleased and a bit sick.

Originally out in 1983, Love Power is co-produced by Fabian Cooke (from Itopia) and Lloyd Bullwackie Barnes, with assistance from Prince Douglas. Cooke plays most of the instruments himself, with his drumming centre-stage, though Ras Menelik puts in a brilliant shift on congas, and backing vocals are by Sugar Minott and the Love Joys. Cooke’s own well-crafted compositions are joined by covers of Irene Cara and the Four Tops, infectiously bridging roots, lovers and synthy, soulful eighties boogie.
Betrayed is solid-gold, signature Wackies. He’s My God is a tasty sip of low-slung, grooving gospel-reggae. Evoking Michael Jackson, the jamming album-closer Drums is top-notch disco-reggae, opportunely poised for revival.
Terrific stuff. Transgressive; full of personality and charm.

Out originally mid-70s on the Aires label, in a plain, stencilled sleeve, this is based around three cuts of the dreader than dread Free For All rhythm.
The music is Melvin ‘Munchie’ Jackson and Lloyd Barnes productions begun in Jamaica and finished at the Sounds Unlimited studio in New York. Several surfaced at different stages as sevens on Bullwackies’ Aires imprint, and in JA on the Tafari label which Munchie ran with his brother Maurice and Little Roy, in the Washington Gardens district of Kingston.
The title track was recorded at Randy’s, and came originally on The Heptones’ Hepic label, featuring Family Man Barrrett on keyboards, and - on the deejay cut here, Meditation Dub - sounds like Charlie Ace. There are dubs of Little Roy’s Tribal War and Black Bird; Stranger Cole’s My Application, later re-voiced by The Heptones, turns up as Dis Ya Dub; and if things weren’t smoke-filled enough, Roots is the rhythm of K.C. White’s All For Free.

Out originally in 1979, on the Wackies’ imprint Hardwax. (The original cover celebrated the first year of Honest Jon’s new reggae shop Maroons Tunes, Bullwackies’ UK distributor.)
Leroy Sibbles and Joe Auxumite, Drifter and Skylarking… Sibbles guides a tough selection, as well as sharing bass duties. There are versions of his classic composition Guiding Star and stylish Wackies heavyweight, This World; and Tribute To Studio One reworks Heptones Gonna Fight / Hail Don D. as modern steppers, with the kit-drums — as throughout this album — supplemented effectively by the in ting from Japan. Drifter and Skylarking put in appearances; and two full Joe Auxumite vocals from the solo album scheduled for release around this time, but abandoned when most of the tapes were lost. A dub version of Delroy Wilson’s Rain From The Skies rounds out proceedings.

‘Politics have failed.’
Stone-classic Bullwackies (as excursioned by Rhythm & Sound for Burial Mix), sensationally throwing in two unreleased dubs, newly extracted from the master reels. Both are equally unmissable but quite different, with contrasting effects: the second dub adds ninety seconds, including whip-dem spring reverb. Drawn from the Selective Showcase LP, the vocal mix is more open and dubwise than the Sing & Shout LP offering, with less keyboards.
Asked whether it should be mash or march, after some pondering Bullwackies replied: ‘That’s a good question.’

A fresh iteration of the mid-eighties LP (itself a compilation of recordings from the previous five years or so), replacing two tracks — Dancing In The Rain and All Things — with their full 12” versions.
This is a deeply personable, expert, limber blend of roots and lovers, kicking off with an exclusive mix of the deadly Mash Down Babylon; dropping classic, lush, spaced-out Wackies dub science to close; and taking in reworkings of Lickshot, Billie Jean and The Righteous Flames’ I Was Born To Be Loved, along the route.
The moniker ‘Chosen Brothers’ is Lloyd Barnes’ spiritual way of sharing the credit for his solo projects. “Anyone in the studio at the time could be a Chosen Brother,” he says. In this case a full crew includes Sugar Minott and Prince Douglas at the desk; Jah Batta, Milton Henry, Wayne Jarrett and Junior Delahaye all on backing vocals; and such dream-team Bullwackies instrumentalists as Clive Hunt, Jerry Johnson, Fabian Cooke and Ras Menelik.

Visions Of John Clarke was a little thrown together for its original release in 1979. Still, its sleeve carried a ringing endorsement from Bullwackies himself — ‘President of the John Clarke Fan Club’.
Visions attracted the early interest of no less than Studio 1 boss Coxsone Dodd, whose bid for distribution-rights was thwarted when the Brooklyn label Makossa quickly put in for a full licence. Out soon afterwards, the new version - entitled Rootsy Reggae - duplicated five tracks, but with markedly different mixes, fresh edits, and sometimes new instrumentation. This CD presents both albums complete with the original track order.
The singer — not to be confused with Johnny Clark — had been running with the Wackies operation for the past six years, ever since moving from Jamaica to New York. He’d cut memorable sevens with co-founder Munchie Jackson for the Tafari label — like In Search of The Human Race and Recession — and with Lloyd Barnes for such Bullwackies imprints as Versatile and Wackies. Several are collected by these two albums, with another layer of modification: for example, on Wasn’t It You Lloyd Barnes and Prince Douglas give a new treatment — and adding guitar — to the Jumbo Caribbean Disco twelve; on Pollution they remove the horns from the Wackies seven (though generally Baba Leslie is in full effect here).
The tracklisting rounds out with a Johnny Osbourne cover; several New Breed jams, featuring the likes of Jah Scotty, Clive Hunt, Harold Sylvester, Jah Hitler, Jerry Johnson, the Love Joys, even Mickey Mouse apparently; and on a handful of done-over rhythms Clarke takes the mic from brethren like Joe Auxumite, K.C. White and Wayne Jarrett.

Milton Henry’s handful of classics — like his version of Gypsy Woman, or This World and Follow Fashion over the Upsetter’s Fever rhythm (under the handle King Medious) — made him a natural Wackies’ recruit.
Soon after moving from JA to NYC in the late seventies, Milton was fully involved in the day to day business of the operation, supervising sales and promotion, making deliveries, even holding spare keys to the studio for whenever Bullwackies himself was away.
He appears in this activist role on the front-sleeve photograph, just up White Plains Road from the Bronx HQ: by its title, though, and first and last songs, this album also hints heavily at the past musical accomplishments of its mystery hero.
The record was released first in London, in 1984, during the first months of Wackies Dean Street office, in north Soho.
The band is basically Itopia. Sly Dunbar gets a credit — though neither he nor Robbie Shakespeare ever set foot in the studio — as acknowledgement for his rhythm recycled here as No Dreams. Jackie Mittoo and Bagga are pon the corner, from Studio One; Jerry Johnson and Neville Anderson on brass; also Sugar and Max Romeo; and Sonia from the Love Joys performs a duet.
No Dreams is the true story of Milton sleeping in the attic above the studio when the rough drum and bass track came on to the desk, waking him, pulling him to the mic; Them A Devil is aimed at certain producers passing off the singer’s property as their own; Good Old Days was written for a poorly Junior Byles, remembering times shared.

Previously unreleased but killer.
Jah B’s singing is softly sublime; discreetly channeling Bob Marley. People have wondered whether it’s a young Jah Batta; but insiders say it’s Al Moodie, from the same session as Bull Bay Jumping.
Both dubs are genius Wackies: trenchant Utopia rhythms, with shimmering, majestic brass.

Upful dancehall vibes address topics such as vegetarianism, skin colour, school, good old-fashioned rocking the mic. One toast laments Batta’s girlfriend running off with Sugar Minott.

A graduate of soundsystems like Gemini and Volcano Hi Power, Little John was twelve years old when he voiced this tune, shifting its sights from snitches and stoolies, straight to the head of all party-poopers. It appeared in 1983 during Sugar’s stay in London after Good Thing Going was a national pop hit in 1980, coming on the Stoke Newington label M And M - presumably named after Minott and his then-partner, Coxsone Dodd’s niece Maxine Stowe. Appearing first with Wackies’ pink-to-orange labels, Batta’s cut is a different mix again to the version on his album. He bows to U-Roy at the start, before switching to a more contemporary delivery. Sugar is in attendance throughout, almost as if the pair were taking turns at the mic, before the dub takes over.
Two versions, different dubwise mixes of Sugar Minott’s massive Informer rhythm — both choca with living dancehall vibes and Channel One-style deadliness.
Warehouse find; last box.

Taking its name from Jezreel, the Biblical city founded by the tribe of Issachar, where God is said to have cursed Ahab for his greed, this singing duo’s debut Wackies album is steeped in rasta spirituality.

The Love Joys’ first album, initially released in 1981 on the Florida-based Top Ranking label. Ten tunes produced and recorded at Wackies NY, ranging from lovers rock and uptempo dance vibes to roots and reality.

Four songs and their dubs — lovers, bubblers, rockers, and well-charge dub, with great playing and Sugar brilliantly focussed throughout — originally a 1983 picture-sleeved ten-inch on his own Black Roots imprint.

Rudie will recognise Bobby Sarkie from The Tartans and The Immortals (not to mention his solo roots killer Better World). His singing here is expertly reined in by desolation, numbness and regret, over a hollowed-out, mesmeric rhythm, with some nasty synth-work and nonchalantly brilliant effects on the drums. The vocal cut is more than a minute longer than the version which opens the Jah Son Invasion album with such a flourish; and the mix is different, with more prominent keys, and toned-down bass. It’s previously unreleased, like the dub.
The B-side is booby-trapped with sensational instrumental excursions on Junior Delahaye’s Working Hard For The Rent Man and Jackie Mittoo’s almighty Drum Song, which conclude the same original tape-reel as Over And Over. Rent Rebate features masterful, boppish soprano saxophone-playing by Roland Alphonso, and restrained guitar interjections by Barry Vincent, with a Spanish tang. The superb hand-drumming on Mount Zion is by Ras Menelik; and it’s Mittoo himself on organ (or just maybe Clive Hunt, Wackies can’t quite remember).

Magnificent dub album out originally on the Senrab label in 1976, drawing on a series of brilliant sevens and twelves on labels like City Line and Wackies, and sister imprints like Upton, Versatile, and Munchie Jackson’s Earth label. Core rhythm tracks from Jamaica — Treasure Isle mostly, with Tubbys mixes — worked over at the Sounds Unlimited studio on E 24th Street in Manhattan, given the full treatment by Lloyd Barnes alongside Prince Douglas and Jah Upton, in the first months of the White Plains Road headquarters.