Prince Buster - She Was a Rough Rider (1968)

One of Prince Buster's finest albums and, thanks to the presence of both the much-covered title track and the oft-revisited "Whine & Grine," one of his most popular. As usual, the set itself was made up from then-recent U.K. singles, bolstered by a handful of tracks that had not made it out on Bluebeat 45s, and the scattershot approach does show. The clumsy honk-driven "Dreams to Remember," "Walk with Love" and "Bye Bye Baby" are weak fare by Buster's most rampant standards, and "Going to the River" really could have been left on the shelf. But "Scorcher" (the source for one of Madness' most distinctive intros, by the way), "Hypocrites" and "Can't Keep On Running" are the sound of the Prince at his most electrifying, while the caustic "Taxation" strikes a vocal chord that almost every listener will be able to identify with.~ Review by Dave Thompson