Various – Black Solidarity Version Excursion LP

Repressed Records Verified independent store

→

At the beginning of the eighties, reggae music became increasingly in tune with what was happening in Kingston's dance halls... probably more so at any time since the sound system operators had started to make their own shuffle and boogie recordings in the late fifties. The international audience and the critics were too busy looking for a new Bob Marley to appreciate what was happening downtown and failed to acknowledge that this was a return to the real, raw roots of the music. Brash, confident young record producers who were totally in tune with the youth audience stepped forward and seized the moment...Oswald 'Ossie' Thomas began his apprenticeship in the music business at the age of fourteen, and served his time as a record salesman for Bunny 'Striker' Lee and Winston 'Niney The Observer' Holness before moving on to Miss Sonia Pottinger's Tip Top Records."I ended up working in three record stores on Orange Street from 1976-1981... Yeah man! Me deh 'pon me bicycle till I buy my motorcycle! Them days records were coming out left, right, and centre... every day!" - Ossie Thomas.It was during his time with Miss Pottinger that Ossie began to produce records for himself and in 1979, Ossie and Phillip Morgan began the Black Solidarity label, based deep in the Kingston ghetto on Delamere Avenue. Morgan initiall inspired Ossie to start the label and soon Triston Palma, Phillip Frazer and a "youth named Gary Robertson" joined, although Robertson later left for Canada.The Soul Syndicate rehearsed in the Delamere Avenue area and Tony Chin gave Ossie a cut of a rhythm that he used for Triston Palma's 'A Class Girl', the label's inaugural release. The record was a sizeable success and paved the way for hit after hit after hit on Black Solidarity. Ossie worked with just about everybody who was anybody during this critical period of the music's development, including vocalists Robert French, Little John, Sugar Minott and Frankie Paul.For this release, we have compiled some of the version sides to these releases. Dub still being an integral part of the Reggae Sound System Sound. So sit back and listen to what Black Solidarity, one of the most important and often overlooked labels, were bringing to the dance, dubwise, back in those heady 80s times. - Jamaican Recordings Show more