Linval Thompson: Sorry for You and You...

The stable of players that Bunny Lee worked with over time should be thought to possess roughly the same talent as folks associated with Studio One, Randy’s or any other top tier recording company. Time hasn’t granted Lee a huge amount of fame, being overshadowed by any number of the island’s ‘supa producers.’ But the work of Lee’s singers, who are properly touted by those more than passably familiar with the genre, have aged as well as anything from the Marley, Tosh and Wailer axes of the reggae world – that’s not debatable.

Arguably, a cut rate session leader, but impeccable producer, Linval Thompson had his hand in any number of recording sessions with the Scientist, the Wailing Souls, Cornell Campbell and King Tubby amongst a litany of others. With all of the session work in varying capacities, it’s not too surprising that Thompson’s work on the mic easily fits into a general sound being disseminated over the island during the middle of the seventies. That’s not good or bad, it’s fact. What makes Thompson’s singing worth a listen or two, though, is the fact that Lee tosses in some pretty astounding production work for the time.

The tracks offered up on Ride on Dreadlocks (1975 - 1977) can’t be said to sit far outside of popular taste for the time, but on occasion it’s easy to forget who one’s actually listening to when studio trickery overshadows the vocal work.

Not to denigrate Thompson’s work – he was an impassioned singer – but “12 Tribes of Israel” is more notable for its musical component than the singing. The song pushes on towards seven minutes, but between Thompson’s pontificating on religious concerns and the various breaks in music where reverb and echo over take the proceedings, there’s not a moment that seems wasted. Its drum and bass is passable even if the guitar voicing comes off as something more tied to a latter portion of the decade. The song’s odd warbling and what sounds like sticks clanking together, though, taking over a significant portion of one of the breaks is odd even for dub stuffs. The song can’t be marked as the genre’s crowning achievement – that needs to be reserved for the Scientist. But a single song so deftly encapsulating a musical movement demands its proper place amongst the canon.

Despite the rather startling production work here, a great portion of Thompson’s lyrics focus on concerns one should correctly tie to a roots tradition. There’s a great deal of positioning Rastas above other people, which is not only kinda ridiculous, but seems to fly in the face of religion’s base in Judeo-Christian negotiation of life. Either way, there’s some talk about money being the root of all evil, which is still better expressed through Horace Andy’s work. But whatever the case might be, with all the mining of singles and the like, it’s refreshing to hear a spate of extended cuts from a singer that impacted JA music more from behind the boards, but wasn’t too shabby on the mic.