VA - Once Upon A Time At King Tubbys (2009)

This strange and fascinating album documents one of the greatest reggae rivalries of all time: the extended duel between deejays Prince Jazzbo and I-Roy, both sides of which were carried out on recordings produced by the always commercially astute Bunny "Striker" Lee. Supported by top-notch rhythms by the Aggrovators and the Revolutionaries, the two chatters swipe at each other over the course of six singles (alternated here with dub versions and, strangely, a vocal cut of one rhythm by the great Johnny Clarke as well as a me-too toast by Derrick Morgan). The conventional wisdom is that the ultimate winner of this fight was Lee, who raked in the cash when the record-buying and radio-listening public got caught up in the fight. But as for the fight itself, it's hard to come away without the clear impression that I-Roy bested Prince Jazzbo hands-down; Jazzbo was a perfectly fine deejay, but while he did come up with the fine couplet "I Roy, you a bwoy/Imitate the great U Roy," his responses tended more along the lines of this lame and shapeless pronouncement: "So you tell the crowd that Prince Jazzbo is very ugly/But if I didn't ugly you wouldn't have the opportunity to call my name in your tune to get promotion." (Er.. snap?) The real stars here are the rhythms: "Rough Rider" and "Love I Can Feel" both make appearances, and the dub versions are excellent. This compilation is idiosyncratic enough that it will probably be of interest primarily to reggae specialists, but for them it constitutes a handy document of one of reggae's strangest episodes.

“All of those things happened up at Tubby’s” Bunny Lee

‘Once Upon A Time At King Tubby’s’ captures from start to finish the full story of the most well known, and certainly the wittiest, of all the wars of words that the highly competitive Kingston recording scene ever produced. I Roy and Prince Jazzbo were the principal players aided and abetted along the way by an assorted bunch of onlookers and minor characters who all helped the drama to unfold. Bunny ‘Striker' Lee was the catalyst that started this particular schism and the producer of all but one of the tracks.

Ever the entrepreneur ‘Striker' hit the musical jackpot once again as he goaded both artists into making records that went ‘straight to the head’. What had begun as a joke grew into an entire series of seven inch singles that set the Jamaican recording scene alight in the mid seventies. All but one of the tracks on this set were voiced and mixed at King Tubby’s Waterhouse studio; I Roy voiced ‘Padlock' at Channel One “because the competition a get so crabbit” and this gave veteran vocalist Derrick Morgan an opportunity to enter the fray. Johnny Clarke, Dirty Harry and Prince Far I also make cameo appearances.

Insults and ‘head’ games are nothing new in Jamaican music but this album is the first to ever compile all the tracks from one of the best examples ever of these feuds here remastered and complete with full sleeve notes featuring interviews with the main protagonists.