Joe the Boss: UK Rock Steady Productions

It’s been mentioned more than once that a great deal of the rock steady catalog eschews horn charts for the stripped down sound of those trebly guitar chords. But if you’re a producer and find that Rico Rodriquez (the Skatalites, the Specials, general awesomeness) is at your disposal, there’s no reason to not include that trombone. None.

Joe the Boss, aka Joe Mansano, a Trinidadian by birth, showed up in the UK to attend college. His journey, though, was waylaid when hocking records out of a store front wound up taking the lion’s share of his time.  And seeing as the world works in bizarre and mysterious ways, Joe eventually become such a well known figure on the British reggae scene that he was offered his own imprint through Island Records, still a relatively new imprint during the late sixties.

Taking the opportunity, Joe began an association with a house band that would work on most of his recorded output, which comprised mainly single shots of instrumental gems. The producer did work with a few toasters of note, but Joe the Boss is still most associated with instrumentals – much to the pleasure of an emergent skinhead scene then just coming to fruition.

Mostly given over to variations on Joe’s Allstars and various Rico Rodriquez led ensembles, The Productions of Joe Mansano is an oddly tracked, incredible long playing double disc compilation. Most common are songs credited to Rico & Joe's All Stars. But there’s also Rico & the Rhythm Aces as well as Joe the Boss & Joe's All Stars. The minute differences between each line up is probably not worth going into. But seeing as each group doesn’t have it’s selections set aside one another here, either programming a playlist or some other variation on that proves most educational when working through the more than two hours worth of music here.

No one’s going to figure the tracks here as beyond the work of the Hippy Boys or some other historically insurmountable figure. But considering the fact that these tracks were laid down in Britian for the JA music diaspora, there can’t be too much issue taken with anything.

Tracks like “The Proud One,” worked around Rico’s horn line might sound a bit less tough than Upsetters stuff from the late sixties, but that’s what a few thousand miles between recording studios will do. Joe the Boss isn’t second class, but surely for those tired of replaying other Trojan boxed sets.