VA - Funky Jamaica (2025)

Rock A Shacka presents the long-awaited third release of Prince Buster's secret recordings!

This album contains 12 tracks, covering everything from Jamaican funk to rocksteady and early reggae. The selection of songs is funky, as the title suggests, including 7 unreleased or alternate versions.

One of the noteworthy tracks is the original long take of Prince Buster's 1967 recording of "A Tribute To The Toughest" (probably the basis for one of the rocksteady classics, "Ghost Dance"). This is an unreleased song dedicated to the rude boys who surrounded Buster.

In addition, Buster's alternate version of James Carr's soul classic "Dark End of the Street," Ernest Laingrin's "Come Get Me," and Winston Samuels' beautiful rocksteady number "I'm Still Here" (with Larry Marshall on chorus) are unreleased takes. You can enjoy a solid finish like a dub plate.
Also included are many covers of classic songs that Buster loved. These are interpretations that only Buster could do, such as James Brown's "Bring It Up (Clap Your Hand)," a bold arrangement of Beginning Of The End's "Funky Nassau" called "Funky Jamaica," and The Clovers' "Don't You Know I Love You So."
In addition, Lee Perry appears on "Call On Me," a song with a memorable line: "So get my number - 6453708, just ask for the whup whop man!..."
The album is packed with content, including previously unreleased treasured recordings by Prince Buster and Teddy Charmer, "Got To Be Free" and "All My Life" (both recorded in 1969), the only Gregory Isaacs recording from Buster Productions, "Dancing Floor," and the 1969 release of "Black Soul," a model for skinhead reggae.
Buster chose the ghetto cemetery, where the rude boys who had passed away rest, as his venue for the album. He was a legendary man who never forgot his rude boy spirit until the very end.