Studio One Soul

by

Various Artists

Edit

studio one's coxsone dodd produced some of the best reggae albums ever. this isn't one of them. there are some choice cuts on here (e.g., express yourself by leroy sibbles, no one can stop us by willie williams). there are some other nice tracks (e.g., groove me by leroy sibbles). there are a few weak tracks, where the production and performance sounds as if the song wasn't really intended as a major release. this is pretty much expected, as much of the classic studio one tracks have been picked up by heartbeat records.

key to note is that the tracks are all (or pretty much all) covers of motown or american soul hits. i'm not a real fan of reggae covers of motown or other genres as it usually just waters down the best of each genre - and this is pretty much the case here.

the album also comes with a truly excellent set of liner notes -more of a booklet - that gives a pretty nice explaination of the whole studio one thing as well as most of the songs/covers. great pictures. very, very well done.

if - like me - you're desperate to have every classic track mr. dodd produced and/or you're willing to shell out the price for the liner notes (they're really that good), then by all means plunge in and pick this up. but don't expect to want to listen to it straight through all that often.

if you're on anything resembling a budget and just want to get a solid set of great reggae records, however, look for the studio one reissues by heartbeat records - e.g., hit bound the revolutionary sound of channel one (which is still studio one) and the best of studio one volume one.