Studio One remains Jamaican music’s mother ship. Clement “Coxsone” Dodd’s label and studio was where the sound of young Jamaica was minted in the 1960s and 1970s in the shape of ska, rocksteady, dancehall and dub.
There was plenty of shaking and jumping in Kingston before Dodd opened his doors and this compilation traces the mix-up evident on those early Studio One recordings, with traces of calypso, mento, blues and r’n’b as they began to morph into something new.
There's much here to stir the senses, be it the ska barrage of Go Jimmy Go from Bob Marley and the Wailers or Hip Run from the Jiving Juniors. But listen to Don Drummond and Roland Alphonso's Heaven and Earth, from 1964, and you can hear that roots reggae flavour begin to exert its influence.
An essential trip back to the source of a sound.
