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The second in Soul Jazz Record's Studio One compilation series, officiallyendorsed by Studio One main man and Jamaican music giant Clement 'Coxsone' Dodd (check also the brilliant Studio One Rockers set), Studio One Soultakes up the well versioned story of American r&b and soul music's foundinginfluence on the formation of Jamaican ska, reggae and dub. As is welldocumented, American radio drifting across the Caribbean was the staplestuff of Jamaican music lovers approaching the middle of last century, andthe first sound systems (including Sir Coxsone's Downbeat Sound System)
built up around the imported sound. When American tastes switched to rock & roll, Coxsone was spurred into recording his own locally producedinterpretations of jump blues and r&b, somewhere along the line taking oninfluences of native mento, mambo, jazz and big bands, and creating the new, truly Jamaican sound of ska. The rest, as they say, is history. However,
throughout the following decades as a powerhouse of reggae and dub music, Studio One continued to revisit and reversion the hits of American soullabels including Motown, Stax and Fame, and the best dozen-and-a-halfresults are collected together here. That's right, the hit singles ofAretha, Otis, Barry White, The Impressions and The Supremes are covered byStudio One's stars singers like Leroy Sibbles, Ken Boothe and NormaFraser, or instrumentalists Jackie Mittoo and Sound Dimension. Culture clashnever sounded so good, as the voices of Black America meet the sound ofBlack Jamaica in a smooth soul shakedown. |
