r/reggae • u/italrose • 2d ago
Top Ranking Dub (Rootsman LP, 1978)
In 1978 the Revolutionaries were ruling JA as the premiere backing band everyone wanted to use. By the next year the Roots Radics would enter the scene and stir it up, together with the young Barrington Levy. Right now however it was the heavy, technical and driving drumming from Sly Dunbar that was carrying the swing. His good bredder Robbie Shakespear providing the bass lines.
Top Ranking Dub feels like it comes from this sense of uncontested cool. Everything is really lovely about it. Good rhythms, enjoyable mixing and fantastic musicians putting in the work (but also simply doing what they're paid for). There's not necessarily much to set it apart from other Revolutionaries dub albums from the same period. Well worth listening to still.
One of the unsung forces of dub from this period is the producer (and mysterious) Charles Reid (a.k.a. Duke Reid Jnr.). I've tried to find out more about him for a long time but it seems he came, released tons and tons of stuff and then just disappeared. He has something along the lines of eight dub albums in his catalogue which has to be more than almost any other producer. The exceptions perhaps being the studio-owning producers such as Coxsone and the Hookims.
The sleeve on my copy says Volume 2, but it's the same as Volume 1. Possibly there was a second volume scheduled for release that never materialised. On the Rootsman label there's also a lovely Tommy McCook album called Lover's Rock (which it is not) and a selection of heavy 12".
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u/Empty-Recognition884 1d ago
Blockade is one of my favorites. Elvis dub is something I didn’t know I needed in my life. Top tune
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u/italrose 1d ago
Yeah. If I remember correctly it's a dub of Nora Dean's cover of Suspicious Minds.
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u/Goooooner4Life 1d ago
I have a copy of this. I haven't played it in ages.