‘In these recordings without amplification I could hear the natural resonance of the instruments and the subtleties in the vocals. They also played songs not heard in the dance halls: haunting, sad songs.’

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.’

Stone cold murder. Archetypal, slow-mo, eastern-sounds post-ska from Jackie Mittoo, Dizzy Moore, Roland Alphonso and co, around 1965.

The bullion-clad masterpiece of these pioneers of Nigerian Funk and Afrobeat at their deepest and heaviest — tearing, wailing, mid-70s funk, heady with spirituality. Superbad from start to finish, no let-up.

Sanctified, southern soul — lost, crying, frank harmonising, and swaying horns and organ — recorded at FAME, Muscle Shoals, in 1964, by cousins Johnny Simon and Ervin Wallace from Atlanta. Lover’s Prayer is a scorcher.
The vinyl is a facsimile of the original LP (on Russell Sims’ Nashville label); the ‘Complete Sims Recordings’ CD from Kent adds ten more sides.

The recording of a performance at Studio 104, Maison de la Radio, recycling One for Juan from Jimmy Heath’s Love And Understanding LP for Muse, and Watergate Blues and Smilin’ Billy, both from the Bros’ recent Marchin’ On LP.

‘That was the first Heath Brothers album. Stanley Cowell had started the Strata-East label with Charles Tolliver, and they engaged us to do a record. It was a family affair, and we adopted Stanley because we thought he was amazing. That was a different type of record for us. We recorded it while we were on tour in Oslo, Norway. We used to get on the train and travel around Europe, and we’d be playing in these cabins on the train. Percy played a bass with a cello body that Ray Brown created, Tootie and I played flutes, and Stanley played a chromatic African thumb piano. People would stop and listen to us on these trains going from one country to the next, and it was something that they liked. It was like a chamber-music group. So we decided to include that sound on the record.’

The version of Smilin’ Billy is a show-stopper.

No-messing funk with whiffs of reefer, hooch and baize.
Eddie and Al Pazant came through with Lionel Hampton and Pucho. These are their locked-down, brassy, smoking, streetwise blends of R&B, soul, latin and jazz, from the late 1960s and early 70s.
Fab.

Live street funk at its hottest. Sizzling versions of most of the early singles; plus three vocal cuts from the fabulous Betty Barney, who continued to work with the brothers right through the 1970s.

VG+.

‘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.