TRACKLIST
Side One
The Cyclones with Count Ossie – Meditation
Cornell Campbell – Natty Don't Go
Freddie McGregor – Africa Here I Come
Bunnie & Skitter – Lumumbo
Side Two
Willie Williams – Addis A Baba
L Crosdale – Set Me Free
Leroy Wallace – Far Beyond
Lennie Hibbert – More Creation
Side Three
Alton Ellis – Blackish White
Winston Jarrett – Fear Not
Devon Russell – Drum Song
The Gaylads – Africa
Side Four
Black Brothers – School Children
Linton Cooper – You'll Get Your Pay
Sound Dimension – Congo Rock
Zoot Simms – African Challenge
DESCRIPTION
This is the new 20th anniversary edition of one of Soul Jazz Records’ classic Studio One releases, now available as a one-off special blue vinyl very limited-edition pressing (2000 copies worldwide).
Studio One Roots set the standard for Soul Jazz Records’ long-standing series of Studio One collections and features many of the classic artists from Clement 'Sir Coxsone’ Dodd’s mighty roster of reggae. This album includes Freddie McGregor, Willie Williams, Cornell Campbell, Alton Ellis, Devon Russell alongside some of the defining crack-session men groups of Jamaican reggae history – The Sound Dimension, Brentford All-Stars, The Skatalites, New Establishment and more. As ever the album is filled with a mixture of seminal cuts and super-rarities from the vast vaults of 13 Brentford Road. Stand-out tracks include Alton Ellis’s Blackish White, a surreal and powerful Afro-centric dream, Count Ossie Nyabinghi and Rastafarian drummers genre-defying interpretation of Booker T and The MGs ‘Meditation’, Willie Williams awe-inspiring versioning of the Skatalites seminal Rastafari anthem Addis Ababa and many, many more.
This album has been fully digitally remastered, analog cut and packaged complete with the following: Original sleevenotes by Lloyd Bradley (author of When Reggae Was King), compiled by Mark Ainley (Hones Jons), high-quality Soul Jazz mastering, wicked images of Count Ossie and the Mystic Revelation of Rastafari on the cover, and a rare image of Clement Dodd and musicians inside the studio at Studio One on the full colour inner sleeves.
“The music of this compilation is of a rare, rare beauty and is essential to anyone's reggae collection” All Music