4.
Various Artists – Reggae Chartbusters Vol. 1
It’s a great album, a seriously good album. Someone like Desmond Dekker is amazing – he took Bob Marley under his wing, do you know that? He’s very under-respected and underrated. What a shame he’s dead, too. What an artist. And this album as a whole is nothing but pure gems. As a kid, I’d listen to this back to back, I’d put it on at parties the way my Mum had put on that Ray Charles album at parties. All our big brothers were pretending to be in Pink Floyd. But I don’t think they really were, I think they were just trying to be because all the college kids were into it. I certainly could never get my head around that stuff.
It’s great just how popular reggae was in the UK, around the late 60s, 1970. Even going back to ‘My Boy Lollipop’ in 1964. It was so immediate. At this point it was about sex, it was about fun, carnival songs, rebel music – and they had a great gimmicky quality that appealed to young people. You put on songs like ‘Dancing Mood’ by Delroy Wilson from 1966, it immediately makes people happy. And the distribution was great, you had companies like R&B records – that was a Jewish couple called Rita & Benny who had a shop dedicated to nothing but reggae and Irish music. Prince Buster and Lonnie Donegan on the same label! It was a wonderfully naïve time. Funny, reggae doesn’t exist in the charts any more in that traditional form. It’s had its day in a way, but it could come back because the form and the vibe are so inventive. Also, it’s evolved into things like dubstep. Its little bastard sons and daughters are running about all over the place.
