Throwback 45s: Joy White – Dread Out Deh

ARTIST: Joy White
TITLE: Dread Out Deh
LABEL: Eagle
YEAR: 1974

Joy White’s voice has a softness to it that pulls you in right away. Sweet, soulful, and full of emotion, she’s one of those singers who quietly left her mark on Jamaican reggae in the early 1970s.

Like many singers at the time, her early beginnings started with an audition. She tried out at Duke Reid’s Treasure Isle studio and soon after recorded a few gospel sides for Studio One around 1971. But things weren’t really moving the way she hoped. So, like many determined artists in Kingston at the time, she kept moving.

Her next stop was the Black Ark studio, working with the one and only Lee “Scratch” Perry. With him, Joy recorded Lady Lady and Joy Ride, two tracks where her soft, melodic voice floated perfectly over Perry’s rootsy sound. Both songs carried Perry’s unmistakable sound. Deep basslines, swirling echoes, and that hypnotic atmosphere he was famous for.

After her time with Perry, fellow singer Keith Poppin introduced her to producer Lloyd Campbell. The result was Dread Out Deh. When the tune dropped on Campbell’s Eagle Records label, it didn’t take long to catch fire. Within two weeks it shot straight to number one on the Jamaican charts.

But as reggae history has shown many times, chart success didn’t always mean fair reward. Even with a number-one hit, Joy wasn’t earning anything from it. So, she decided it was time to move on.

Not long after that, she started working with producer Donovan Germain, whom she had met in Lloyd Campbell’s house. He helped her take the next step in her career by producing her first album, Sentimental Reasons. The 1978 album has The Revolutionaries providing the backing. Most of the record leans into cover versions of love songs.

And there’s also an interesting touch. The album also brings back Dread Out Deh and First Cut Is The Deepest, the two tracks Joy had recorded a few years earlier with producer Lloyd Campbell.

For a singer whose voice had already traveled through some of reggae’s most legendary studios and producers, it marked an important new chapter in her career.

Read the review of Dread Out Deh