Bob Marley: One Love : Music Reviews : Rolling Stone

Album Reviews

Back in the days when people bought singles for the singer and the song, a few labels maintained a standard of quality and epitomized a particular musical approach so consistently, just about anything they put out was worth buying. Sun and Chess in the Fifties and Stax and Motown in the Sixties come readily to mind. At least one more record label from the same period certainly deserves to be included on this A list: the Studio One operation in Kingston, Jamaica.

Producer/label owner C.S. "Coxsone" Dodd was an innovator of the first rank, perhaps the single most important figure in the creation of a distinctly Jamaican style of popular music. He had the drive, ambition and high musical standards of Motown's Berry Wordy, and the gift for spotting new artists, then getting them to cut loose in the studio, characteristic of Sun's Sam Phillips. At various times, Studio One served as a launch pad for the cream of Jamaican musical talent: Toots and the Maytals, Lee "Scratch" Perry, Burning Spear, Bob Marley and the Wailers.

The Wailers were a teenage vocal group from the Kingston slums when Dodd first recorded them in 1963. Marley, Peter Tosh, Bunny Wailer and the soon-to-depart Junior Braithwaite all sang leads, but Marley was the performer of the group (replete with James Brown routines) as well as its most prolific songwriter. Several other singers were in and out of the Wailers during their Studio One years, which lasted until they formed their own label in 1966.

Heartbeat's double-CD reissue of the Wailers' Studio One output, One Love, is a stunning mixture of milestones and rarities, along with some surprises. While at Studio One the Wailers recorded covers of soul and pop hits and New Orleans R&B; on One Love, Marley sings Dion and the Belmonts' "Teenager in Love" and a version of Junior Walker's "Shotgun," retitled "Ska Jerk." The collection also contains early versions of such Marley staples as "Simmer Down," "One Love," "I'm Gonna Put It On," "Who Feels It Knows It" and "Bend Down Low."

One interesting discovery is that the Wailers' affinity for rock & roll began early; this forty-song collection finds Marley doing the Beatles' "And I Love Her," Bunny Wailer taking the lead on a much-revised "Like a Rolling Stone" and Tosh betraying Rolling Stones influences on "Can't You See." Throw in creamy doo-wop harmonizing and incendiary gospel raveups and you have the first balanced portrait of one of pop music's definitive groups in all its youthful glory.

Studio One's original house band, the Skatalites, virtually invented the ska sound, which developed into rock steady, then reggae. They were a formidable studio group, a Caribbean Booker T. and the MG's, but with much more overt jazz leanings. One Love includes jaw-dropping solo work from island jazz greats such as trombonist Don Drummond, trumpeter Dizzy Moore and saxophonists Tommy McCook and Roland Alphonso. These musicians and other, subsequent Studio One combos shine on the instrumentals that dominate the double CD Ska Bonanza. The set includes some riveting vocal turns as well – from the young Rita Marley, the Wailers, the early Maytals and the great Alton Ellis.

Imposing as they are, the One Love and Ska Bonanza collections didn't appear out of nowhere. Heartbeat, the Rounder-affiliated reggae label, has been collaborating with Dodd on an ambitious Studio One reissue project since 1983. So far, in addition to the ska and Marley sets, sixteen single CDs have been released. The Best of Studio One, Vol. One and its follow-up Full Up serve as fine introductions to the Studio One legacy, with selections by the Heptones, Dennis Brown, Marcia Griffiths, Culture and the brilliant, underrated Delroy Wilson and Slim Smith. The Slim Smith collection Born to Love may contain too many rarities and alternate versions to do this magnificent singer justice, but Best of Delroy Wilson wisely reproduces an original Studio One LP collecting his hit singles – it's an instant classic. The late Sixties/early Seventies compilation Fire Down Below, Lee Perry's Chicken Scratch, the Cables' What Kind of World and Alton and Hortense Ellis are also excellent.

The Studio One sides capture a cultural and musical flash point whose effects are still being felt worldwide. With this reissue series, you really can't go wrong.