Lee Perry and the Early Seventies

There are certainly many devotees quite convinced that the Lee Perry-produced recordings made by Marley with McIntosh and Livingston in 1970 and 1971 are his finest ever. It's a strong argument - they are undoubtedly among his very best; the only major problem I have with that view is simply that it makes the last decade of Marley's life an artistic anticlimax. However, in terms of Marley's overall career the true significance of those recordings is that they are when Perry's studio band, The Upsetters, defected to become The Wailers, the world's toughest and tightest backing band formed around the core of Carlton Barrett on drums and his brother Aston on bass, the rhythm powerhouse that stayed with Marley until the end.

The Perry recordings were also of some of Marley's strongest songs, songs that became familiar to a far wider audience when Marley reprised and reinterpreted them later in his career. At the same time, traces of the Wailers' earlier soul influences can still be heard echoing ghost-like through the mix. In fact, part of the fascination with these sessions is that they are quite pivotal; you can simultaneously hear Marley's future and past wheeling around his then present even as that present first fully manifested itself into a glorious and powerful sound.

The Lee Perry productions have been available for years in various forms, principally as a pair of releases by London's Trojan Records, Rasta Revolution and African Herbsman. Trojan later combined about half the tracks from these two albums into a double album, Soul Revolution 1 and 2, which duplicated their original Jamaican album release complete with the instrumental rhythm tracks, previously only available on a next-to-impossible-to-find, limited-edition Jamaican pressing.

Many of the same tracks, vocal and rhythm, along with a decent selection of others are also available on a pair of French CDs on the Lagoon label, The Upsetter Record Shop Parts I and II; Part I being also entitled The Complete Soul Rebels, Part II called Rarities. Rebel Revolution - The Extended Mixes, on the Jamaican Gold label and another double CD, features yet another appearance of substantially the same material, this time with the vocal tracks mixed into the rhythm tracks providing a slightly peculiar but not unpleasing sense of discoification.

Frankly, it's all a little confusing and unless you're a stone-cold completist or absolutely have to have the rhythm instrumentals, which truth be told can be a little dry and often strange with a faint vocal guide track to be heard wispily in the background, you might well be happy enough with the old Trojan releases, Rasta Revolution and African Herbsman.

These tracks or variations of them along with an assortment of other early Marley recordings can also be found on a seemingly endless series of usually budget releases usually called something like The Best of Bob Marley or All The Hits or Greatest Hits or King of Reggae or something else equally tasteless. To put it mildly, there is some debate about the provenance of most of these releases. It seems almost certain that at best they reflect the artist-unfriendly copyright situation of the Jamaican record industry in the 1960s. At worst, they are blatant rip-offs of both Marley and you, the music-hungry consumer.

There are very few legitimate collections of the Wailers' earlier work. Most of the pre-1972 material has been repackaged so many times that any serious collector has multiple copies of most of the tracks already and should beware of unnecessary duplications. Unfortunately, much of this mess is due to the near interminable squabbles of various of Marley's heirs about who was going to get what, as well as Lee Perry's free-and-easy interpretation of the deal he made with The Wailers, resulting in a lot of back-door, under-the-table licensing deals. It's all a bit of a blotch on Marley's legacy.

However, the situation has recently dramatically improved with the release of the first two volumes of the JAD label's series, The Complete Bob Marley & The Wailers 1967 To 1972. Firstly, these are legitimate releases with royalties going to Marley's descendants. Secondly, the care and attention to detail of the restoration of these archival tracks is highly commendable. The sound quality has been brought up to contemporary standards without being turned into some horribly digital glossy sheen while there are extensive sleeve notes by noted archivists and writers Roger Steffens, Leroy Jodie Pierson and Bruno Blum (who actually initiated the project) discussing the individual tracks and their relevance to Marley's career along with a generous selection of label and sleeve shots, photographs, interviews and other memorabilia.

Part II is particularly strong being once again a collection of those magical mysterious Lee Perry productions. In fact, regardless of my comments four paragraphs ago, this triple CD set is the one to get over the Trojan releases. Those may make you happy enough but the JAD release will make you both happier and wiser! Having said that, several of the most crucial cuts of the time are still missing "for legal reasons" (most of them are to be found on the quadruple CD set from Island, Songs of Freedom, and will apparently and ironically remain captive there until 2001). Both the Trojan titles also include a few songs not found on this JAD release (they'll be on the next volume, due out in spring 1999, which includes the last of the Perry sessions and the first of the Tuff Gong productions, long generally unavailable).

Part II of the JAD series, however, includes plenty of the instrumental rhythm tracks sounding distinctly superior to any of their previous excursions along with one CD, More Axe, packed full of alternate takes and other extreme rarities. So often alternate takes tend to be rather dull and mostly of academic interest but these sparkle, revealing new facets of the songs, taking them into added dimensions and simultaneously casting luminous reflected splendor on the more familiar versions. Most interesting from the historical point of view is that the tracks are sequenced in the order of actual recording according to the best recollections of Bunny Wailer, once known as Neville Livingston, who lent his personal assistance to the project. All told Part II is an absolutely crucial package and should be considered for your collection even before you have every Island release.