V/A: Studio One Ska (2LP, red vinyl) [SOUL JAZZ RECORDS]

Why you'll love it

This limited 2LP set on red vinyl comes with full-colour inner sleeves carrying extensive notes, plus a download code. It reissues one of Soul Jazz's best-selling Studio One collections to mark 25 years of the label's work with the Studio One vaults.

This edition

• 2LP set
• Red vinyl
• Limited edition
• Full-colour inner sleeves with extensive notes
• Download card included

About the album

Every great music has an address, and ska's was 13 Brentford Road, Kingston. That was Clement "Coxsone" Dodd's Studio One, the label built on ska, the first major music to come out of newly independent Jamaica, and this set mixes the originators' classics with rarer cuts from the same vaults, recorded between 1962 and 1966.

The Skatalites are all over it, with "Addis Ababa," "Beardsman Ska" and "Exodus," and their horn players get the spotlight too: Roland Alphonso on "Look Away Ska" and "Scambalena," Tommy McCook on "Freedom Sounds," and trombonist Don Drummond on "Don Cosmic." Jackie Mittoo opens with "El Bang Bang," a young Wailers line-up turn up with "Put It On," and The Maytals march in with "Marching On." Ken Boothe and Stranger Cole, Delroy Wilson, Joe Higgs and The Ethiopians round out the cast.

It's the sound that later fed rocksteady, reggae and Britain's 2 Tone bands, played by the musicians who invented it. Seventeen tracks in, you may find you've been skanking round the kitchen for some time.

Also at Kops: more Studio One Ska on vinyl · browse Reggae & Caribbean

Tracklist

Listen

On Soul Jazz Records (cat# SJR LP85C2).