Daily Archives: December 6, 2010

JAMAICAN AND CARIBBEAN MUSIC, THE RECORD SHELVES

You’ll Never Know – 18 track Caribou label Ska Selection

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As rare as rocking horse shite

Typically, Drum and Bass / Rock A Shacka Records excel themselves pour une autre fois with this Cd.

YES it’s a little expensive, at about £18 in the UK for a bona fide copy (cheaper than D&B records in the past though it has to be said).

Baba (or Dada) Tewari was a Jamaican executive producer and one of the founding fathers of the Jamaican record industry, siring as he did Caribou records, which initially put out homegrown Mento on 78rpm and later both Mento, Calypso. Boogie, Shuffle, R&B and Ska.

His productions are generally rare and difficult to find and this cd groups together some doozies. All good tunes and some killer minor key scorching hot Ska.

Drum and Bass are based in Japan and have for some time offered some of the best Roots, Rocksteady and Ska to be found being revived and repressed on the planet.

The quality is extremely good and though the tunes are very hard to find, the copies they have sourced and the restoration must have been of the highest order. Though grouping what are in the main commercial sounding Calypso tunes (only one or two though) alongside what is truly some of the best Ska you will hear, seems a little odd; until of course you remind yourself of just how rare Caribou sides are in the first place, and then it makes perfect sense to group as many as you can find in one place.

You can get a copy direct, or in the UK from Honest Jon’s (A great label in their own right of course) Here > http://www.honestjons.com/shop.php?LabelID=16369 Check out some of their other product too, the collection of Alton Ellis productions on his own All Tone label is particularly fine also. As were the Buster’s Record Shack collections out a number of years ago. you can seek out the original website and label here Drum and Bass UK Version.

Listen to the links and check out the other tunes..

Tracks include:

Comes highly recommended by yours truly.