The two Hits discs extend to Studio One’s ’70s output, including performances by DJs such as Sugar Minott, Lone Ranger, and Michigan & Smiley, flowing “talk-over” style atop well-worn riddims. And though newcomers were re-licking these same riddims at the same time, Studio One always had the original tapes. Indeed, the discs’ sequencing occasionally calls attention to Studio One’s own practice of versioning, as when Lone Ranger’s “Love Bump” follows Slim Smith’s “Rougher Yet,” the former gleefully riding the riddim of the latter.
Wilson recognizes that Studio One’s legacy is built on the foundation of the riddims underlying the songs. Subsequent producers — from “Junjo” Lawes to Bobby Digital, Sly & Robbie to Steely & Clevie — have re-licked Studio One’s biggest riddims hundreds of times. The “Real Rock,” for example, which underpins Willie Williams’s “Armagideon Time” on Full Up, might be the most versioned riddim of all time, accounting for upwards of 500 subsequent recordings and — when you take into account the black market of “dubplates” — probably a lot more. To highlight this aspect of Dodd’s legacy, Heartbeat collected a good number of Studio One’s most popular and influential riddims on Killer Instrumentals.
The fourth release in the series is a double-CD comp of tracks Bob Marley and the Wailers recorded during their formative years at Studio One. The early, big hits are here (“Simmer Down”), as are older versions of familiar — or overplayed — songs (a gritty, uptempo “One Love”), while a cache of more obscure recordings (Bob Marley singing about Jesus?!) rounds out the set. With a wide palette of voices in Bob, Bunny, Peter, and Junior, and the day’s best arrangements by the day’s best band, the music bursts with exuberance. It’s soul, gospel, doo-wop, and rocksteady all at once. In the strict sense of the term, there’s actually very little reggae (as a formal style, it didn’t emerge until 1968). But the familiar elements are all here: heavy bass, snapping snares, sweet voices, and, sometimes, guitars strumming or horns bleating in between the beats.
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Chatting with Grow songwriter Matt Odabashian and resident rapper Sneaktechniks about their livin lovin learnin debut and upcoming CD release party, it was clear that the band has taken an admirable and ballsy approach to their music.
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Music Features
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, Entertainment, Music, Bob Marley, Jazz and Blues, Blues Music, James Brown, Ska, Reggae, Willie Williams, Lee "Scratch" Perry, Less
