Music
Here’s how reggae riddims evolve: nine versions of the same rocksteady riddim, from Roy Shirley to Ken Boothe via Big Youth and I-Roy. (more…)
This was probably the first Jamaican tune I ever heard – I was nine when it came out – and this amazing film, apparently, is the first music video to appear on Top of the Pops.
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The Equals were Britain’s first successful multi-racial pop group, and one of the few mixed-race bands in that era. The chart-topping Baby Come Back was their biggest hit. (more…)
Alton Ellis sings the original rocksteady version of the song that grew into multiple hits for artists from Althea & Donna to Sean Paul, way back in 1967. (more…)
Another rocksteady classic from Studio One. Dawn Penn was only 15 when she recorded this in 1967 – and in her 40s when it became a UK hit (as No, No, No) in 1994. (more…)
This is one of the signature songs of the Rocksteady era – the brief bridging period in the mid-Sixties between the bouncy urgency of Ska and the laid-back drum’n’bass grooves and conscious lyrics of Reggae. (more…)
Jack Sparrow (aka Leonard Dillon of The Ethiopians) puts the rude into rude boy with this ska classic from 1965 with innuendo-laden lyrics. (more…)
The Sorrows had this solitary hit single in 1963 and disappeared from view. Apart from singer Don Fardon, who had a solitary hit of his own with Indian Reservation in 1970. (more…)
The Moody Blues made arguably the first ever pop promo for Go Now in 1964, borrowed by Queen when they made their Bohemian Rhapsody video a decade later.
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