Double 12″ Spin #85 – Gregory Isaacs & Dennis Brown / Michael Prophet & Lee van Cleef –

A. Gregory Isaacs – Sunday Morning
B. D. Brown – Running Around
Label: Solomonic – SM002

More info @ Discogs

This one’s a genuine scorcher. A 1980 pressing on Bunny Wailer’s own Solomonic imprint, and it pairs two of the biggest voices reggae has ever produced, Gregory “The Cool Ruler” Isaacs and Dennis “Crown Prince of Reggae” Brown. Wailer produced the session himself, though you won’t find his name on the label credits, a quiet-hands approach that was pretty typical of how he ran Solomonic. The single hit the streets in standard black wax, but it also came pressed on clear green vinyl, which is the exact copy sitting on the turntable today.

Gregory’s contribution, Sunday Morning, is a beautifully judged cover of Bunny’s own rocksteady original, a tune he’d cut with the Wailers back in the sixties. Gregory doesn’t try to reinvent it, he just leans into that trademark smoky delivery and lets the song breathe. Who’s actually playing behind him is a bit of a mystery. Bunny was deep into sessions with the Roots Radics around this period, so that’d be the obvious guess, but he was also still working with Sly and Robbie at the time, so it’s genuinely hard to call without label documentation. The other side of the disc hands things over to Running Around by Dennis Brown, rounding out a single that’s really a showcase of Solomonic’s reach into the era’s two most important vocal stylists.

Worth remembering just how central Bunny Wailer is to this whole story. He co-founded The Wailers back in 1963 with childhood friends Bob Marley and Peter Tosh, and as singer, writer and percussionist he had a direct hand in shaping ska, rocksteady and roots reggae as we know them. He stepped away from the group in 1973 to focus on Rastafari and his solo path, launching Solomonic so he could self-produce on his own terms. His debut, Blackheart Man (1976), is rightly considered one of the cornerstone albums of the roots era, and he followed it with Sings the Wailers (1980) and Rock ‘N’ Groove (1981). Bunny trod on to the ancestors on March 2, 2021, in Kingston, age 73.

Gregory Isaacs, born July 15, 1951, in Fletchers Land, Kingston, built one of the most prolific careers Jamaican music has seen, over 100 studio albums across four decades, which is a staggering output by any measure. He got his start in local talent contests and early vocal duets in the late sixties, and by 1973 he’d co-founded African Museum, both label and record shop, with Errol Dunkley, giving himself real independence early on. By the back half of the seventies he was a bona fide star, moving comfortably between hard roots and lovers rock. Tracks like Slave Master and Mr. Cop showed his conscious side, cut with producers like Alvin Ranglin and Lee “Scratch” Perry, but it was the romantic material like My Only Lover and Love Is Overdue, that really broke him wide.

His 1977 album Mr. Isaacs cemented his status as a proper album artist and opened doors internationally, first Virgin, then Island’s Mango imprint. Night Nurse in 1982, cut at Compass Point, became his biggest commercial statement worldwide and is still the record most casual fans know him for. Even when personal troubles hit him hard in the mid-eighties, he came roaring back in the digital era with Gussie Clarke’s production of Rumours in 1988, and he kept touring and recording right through the nineties and 2000s. Isaacs died of lung cancer in London on October 25, 2010, aged 59.

And then there’s Dennis Brown, born February 1, 1957, in Kingston, a singer so gifted he was already cutting records as a child, with his Studio One years yielding two full albums before he’d even reached adulthood. He moved through sessions with Phil Pratt, Derrick Harriott and Prince Buster before landing the partnership that really defined his career, Joe Gibbs, from 1977 to 1983, a run that gave us albums ilke Visions of Dennis Brown (1978), Words of Wisdom (1979) and Joseph’s Coat of Many Colours (1979). His work with Niney the Observer was just as vital, tunes like Africa, West Bound Train and I Am the Conqueror remain essential listening. And the first half of the eighties gave us two Dennis Brown classics that still hit hard today, Revolution and Promised Land.

Like Isaacs, Brown moved freely between hard roots and lovers rock without ever sounding like he was slumming in either lane. Over his career he put out more than 70 albums and 700-plus singles, and his influence runs straight through singers like Luciano, Junior Reid and Barrington Levy. He also ran his own outlets, DEB Music, Yvonne Special and Emmanuel Music, staying independent much like Bunny and Gregory did. Brown died at University Hospital in Kingston on July 1, 1999, at just 42. The reported cause was a collapsed lung tied to serious respiratory illness, though the full picture behind his death has never really been pinned down beyond that.

A. Michael Prophet – Lady Friend
B. Lee Van Cleef – Teacher For The Class
Label: Selena – SD002

More info @ Discogs

Second selection we’re pulling out of the bin today, Lady Friend backed with Teacher For The Class, is a 1981 pressing on the UK’s Selena label. Michael Prophet handles the A-side vocal, while deejay Lee Van Cleef rides the same riddim on the flip with his toast. Production duties were handled by veteran singer and producer Al Campbell. Campbell played it smart during the early dancehall era by working both sides of the mic, releasing material through independent UK labels like Selena, rather than going through the bigger Jamaican houses. No credits on the label for the band, but it’s safe money that this is Roots Radics work, and the voicing almost certainly happened at Channel One, where both Michael and Lee cut so much of their material around this time.

Al Campbell’s story goes back to the late sixties, when he cut his teeth with vocal group The Thrillers before stepping out on his own. He proved just as comfortable in roots as he was in lovers rock and the dancehall sound that followed, racking up hits and full albums along the way. Beyond the mic, he built a reputation as a producer and writer too, cutting sides for Michael Prophet, Barrington Levy and Freddie McGregor among others. And he’s still out there working today, which says something about the man’s staying power.

Michael Prophet, born Michael George Haynes on March 3, 1957, in Kingston, carved out a name for himself with that instantly recognizable crying tenor, a voice that could carry real weight even on lighter material. He came up singing on local sound systems in the late seventies, and his break came when Vivian Jackson, better known as Yabby You, spotted him, handed him his stage name, and steered him toward the Rasta and ghetto-reality themes that would define his early work. That partnership gave us Praise You Jah Jah and Fight It To The Top, and led to his solid debut set Serious Reasoning in 1979.

Once dancehall took hold in the early eighties, Prophet found his footing with Junjo Lawes, a run that produced the autobiographical Gunman along with two strong albums, Righteous Are The Conqueror (1980) and the self-titled Michael Prophet (1981). He kept moving through the decade, cutting for Don Mais, Sugar Minott and Winston Riley, and self-producing sets like Love Is An Earthly Thing and Blood Stain. A move to England in the late eighties put him alongside deejay Ricky Tuffy, and together they topped the UK reggae chart with Your Love in 1990, following up with the album Get Ready in 1991. He stayed busy right through the nineties and 2000s, Bull Talk from 1993 among the highlights. Prophet died of cardiac arrest on December 16, 2017, in Bedford, England, aged 60.

Lee Van Cleef—who also went by Lee Van Cliff, Leevan Cliff, or Lee Van Cliffe—took his moniker straight from the famous American Western actor, a common enough move for deejays of that era looking for a stage name with some punch. Born Devon Perkins, son of singer Lascelles Perkins, he cut his teeth in the Kingston sound system scene and became one of the more distinctive toasters of the early eighties dancehall wave.

His voicings turned up on singles and compilations for the top producers of the day, Junjo Lawes, Joe Gibbs, Donovan Germain and Linval Thompson among them. Probably his best remembered cut is Bam Salute, his fierce toast over Leroy Smart’s She Love It In The Morning, another Junjo production. On the album side, there’s Reggae Sunsplash from 1982 on Penthouse, where the publishing credits list Devon Perkins as writer, confirming what a lot of people already suspected about who was really behind the pen. Sad thing his career got cut short so early. Official records confirm he was shot and killed in Brooklyn, New York, back in 1987.