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Out originally mid-70s on the Aires label, in a plain, stencilled sleeve, this is based around three cuts of the dreader than dread Free For All rhythm.
The music is Melvin ‘Munchie’ Jackson and Lloyd Barnes productions begun in Jamaica and finished at the Sounds Unlimited studio in New York. Several surfaced at different stages as sevens on Bullwackies’ Aires imprint, and in JA on the Tafari label which Munchie ran with his brother Maurice and Little Roy, in the Washington Gardens district of Kingston.
The title track was recorded at Randy’s, and came originally on The Heptones’ Hepic label, featuring Family Man Barrrett on keyboards, and - on the deejay cut here, Meditation Dub - sounds like Charlie Ace. There are dubs of Little Roy’s Tribal War and Black Bird; Stranger Cole’s My Application, later re-voiced by The Heptones, turns up as Dis Ya Dub; and if things weren’t smoke-filled enough, Roots is the rhythm of K.C. White’s All For Free.
Four songs and their dubs — lovers, bubblers, rockers, and well-charge dub, with great playing and Sugar brilliantly focussed throughout — originally a 1983 picture-sleeved ten-inch on his own Black Roots imprint.
Out originally in 1979, on the Wackies’ imprint Hardwax. (The original cover celebrated the first year of Honest Jon’s new reggae shop Maroons Tunes, Bullwackies’ UK distributor.)
Leroy Sibbles and Joe Auxumite, Drifter and Skylarking… Sibbles guides a tough selection, as well as sharing bass duties. There are versions of his classic composition Guiding Star and stylish Wackies heavyweight, This World; and Tribute To Studio One reworks Heptones Gonna Fight / Hail Don D. as modern steppers, with the kit-drums — as throughout this album — supplemented effectively by the in ting from Japan. Drifter and Skylarking put in appearances; and two full Joe Auxumite vocals from the solo album scheduled for release around this time, but abandoned when most of the tapes were lost. A dub version of Delroy Wilson’s Rain From The Skies rounds out proceedings.
The key Black Victory album, produced by Bullwackies and Sugar Minott: a devastating, chilled, dread run of King Tubby’s Tempo rhythm. Surely the greatest one-rhythm LP of all time, with unforgettable versions of the Red Rose classic.
Three front-rank reggae singers — with extensive credits for such producers as Coxsone Dodd, Augustus Pablo and Glen Brown — whose work at Wackie’s without question includes their very best. Originally two 10s.
Jah Upton joins Lloyd Barnes and Prince Douglas at the desk for another must-have Bullwackies dub set, originally released in 1977. From tapes recorded at Tubby’s with the Soul Syndicate band.
Magnificent dub album out originally on the Senrab label in 1976, drawing on a series of brilliant sevens and twelves on labels like City Line and Wackies, and sister imprints like Upton, Versatile, and Munchie Jackson’s Earth label. Core rhythm tracks from Jamaica — Treasure Isle mostly, with Tubbys mixes — worked over at the Sounds Unlimited studio on E 24th Street in Manhattan, given the full treatment by Lloyd Barnes alongside Prince Douglas and Jah Upton, in the first months of the White Plains Road headquarters.
The Love Joys’ first album, initially released in 1981 on the Florida-based Top Ranking label. Ten tunes produced and recorded at Wackies NY, ranging from lovers rock and uptempo dance vibes to roots and reality.
A Bullwackies masterpiece — spooked, reeling roots, saturated in hurt, confusion and resistance, with a knockout Baba Leslie-led dub.
Wicked early-eighties Wackies, unsteady and moody, with a Hudson connection.
Taking its name from Jezreel, the Biblical city founded by the tribe of Issachar, where God is said to have cursed Ahab for his greed, this singing duo’s debut Wackies album is steeped in rasta spirituality.