The young Frederick "Toots" Hibberts honed his vocal skills in the church. No surprise then that the music he recorded with The Maytals is largely gospel-tinged and very effectively backed up by the fervent, energetic rhythms of ska, the sound of the era in which much of it was recorded. Concentrating on their most productive period (between 1966 when Toots was released from jail on a cannabis ...
Talk about high concept: Dub Side of the Moon features the house band of noted New York reggae label Easy Star covering Pink Floyd's Dark Side of the Moon in the same sequence and in recognisable but reggae fashion. Here, the All Stars turn Floyd's strangely surreal world even stranger and more surreal, adorning the band's dark psychedelic music with slow reggae beats and ...
Even as greatest hits packages go, Legend is an utter gem. Every song is inspired, in a class of its own, whether the real version of "I Shot The Sheriff", the hymnlike "No Woman, No Cry" or the sheer joy of "Jamming". Even allowing that Marley never wrote any bad material, Legend is still the crème de la crème, the heart and soul of the Jamaican people packed into one five-inch ...
Jamaican filmmaker Perry Henzell made reggae an integral player in The Harder They Come, his gritty 1973 saga of a renegade Kingston singer who becomes a modern Robin Hood, casting one of the style's earliest stars, Jimmy Cliff, in the lead, and filling this soundtrack--here presented in a remastered version--with classics from Toots & the Maytals ("Pressure Drop", "Sweet and Dandy"), ...