Here is my ultimate reggae playlist – drawn mostly from that golden period for classic roots reggae in the mid-Seventies but stretching back to the earlier eras of rocksteady and ska in the mid-Sixties, and edging into the dancehall era of the early Eighties.

I probably first fell in love with reggae when I heard Desmond Dekker sing The Israelites in 1969, though my main memory is the strange sound and bizarre lyrics of those two dub-like hit singles – Double Barrel and Monkey Spanner – by Dave and Ansel Collins in 1970 and 1971, and a hat-trick of smooth hits by Johnny Nash in 1972 – Stir It Up, I Can See Clearly Now and There Are More Questions Than Answers.

Then, like everyone else, it was Bob Marley & The Wailers singing No Woman, No Cry in 1975. Not long after that I moved to London – to Hackney – and began seeing the reggae bands that emerged in parallel with the punk scene: Misty In Roots, Steel Pulse, Aswad, Matumbi, Black Slate, The Cimarons and Linton Kwesi Johnson. Not to mention the ones who fell by the wayside like 90 Degrees Inclusive, who became friends when they were recording around the corner from my flat at Eddy Grant’s home studio, where I was a regular visitor, and Reggae Regular, about whom I wrote a two-page feature in Sounds.

At the same time I was spending my nights at a Dalston club called The 4 Aces, where its Jamaican owner Newton Dunbar took me under his wing, and where I  soaked up the heavy dub played by the sound systems with their ceiling-high speakers, and first heard the dub plates that I would later find in the reggae record store a few doors down on Dalston Lane, usually by singing the top line to the shop owner (who would instantly know it), and another one in Lower Clapton, where the owner would kindly give me handfuls of 12-inches which I would then review in my day job at The Hackney Gazette – probably to the bemusement of its core readership of old Cockneys.

Among my favourites: the instrumental King Tubby Meets Rockers Uptown by Augustus Pablo, You Don’t Know by Bob Andy, Fade Away by Junior Byles, Police In Helicopter by John Holt, Police And Thieves by Junior Murvin. Also: just about anything by Burning Spear and Culture and other vocal harmony groups like The Abyssinians, Gladiators and Mighty Diamonds, and toasters like I-Roy and U-Roy, Big Youth and Dillinger.

On this playlist there are some cases, where many different versions of the same song (or ‘riddim’) have been edited together to show the evolution of a tune like, for example, Dawn Penn’s No No No or Althea & Donna’s Uptown Top Ranking, from its original version – often back in the rocksteady era of the mid-to-late Sixties – through to the hit single, handed down like folk songs to different singers and different producers over the ensuing years. 

There’s a YouTuber called DJ Algoriddim who is especially adept at this, which required extensive knowledge – far more than I have – as well as technical expertise. So hats off to him in particular. And enjoy listening – no need to watch the videos; the tunes come from YouTube because the original 12-inch versions are posted there and the dub B-sides generally don’t get included on Spotify and other streaming services.

For best results I recommend playing it on Shuffle.