Working a government job didn't suite Dennis Smith. It probably wasn't too rewarding, no one should blame him - I don't at least. And at the time - the late '60s - JA was flush with touring sound systems, parties and a new sing jay style, which was evenly split between chatty rhymes and sporadic, but well placed sung words, phrases, whoops and hollers. It can be said that U-Roy created this patchwork. And while he remained the main exponent of the style, there would be a number of folks who arrived on the scene equally adept at this kind of toasting. But Dennis Smith, who eventually became Dennis Alcapone and helped found his own sound system, shoot to stardom on his elder's coat tails.

Based on the strength of his live appearances, Dennis Alcapone was deemed suitable for not just Keith Hudson to record, but Niney Holness and Rupie Edwards as well. And considering that those folks found him talented enough to put in time for just those first few singles, it seemed that Alcapone was poised to take on anyone in JA music. The industry wasn't devolving into a system that only looked to dollar figures for success, but Coxsonne Dodd, who Alcapone would soon find in his company, wanted nothing more than to have his versions sit atop the charts.

The two worked together on Forever Version, which displayed Alcapone poised behind a canon. And while that disc did nothing but sell well and gain its due respect, the follow up, Guns Don't Argue ratcheted up the warfare. The cover of this 1971 disc shows the singer and toaster pointing a gun at some unknown target along with another firearm nestled in his pocket. And while these images don't necessarily seem out of step with goings on in JA, they'd not been displayed so prominently on album covers before. It was probably all just to solidify the image that Alcapone was working to create, but it would most likely inform future generations of performers on the island.

Regardless of what it looked like, it's what Alcapone's Guns Don't Argue sounded like and how it used samples from original tracks that made it such a heavy hitter on the scene. While versions had obviously been around and in the charts for a while, the use of a singles' music was mostly the way that it was exploited. Surely, pieces of the vocal had been left in as a hook, but here with Alcapone, he seemed to be interacting at some points with the vocalists.

"Too Proud to Beg" finds the singer echoing the chorus and continuing its sentiment on through the verse. And while Alcapone endlessly agrees with what's being said, it isn't either element that makes the track so fulfilling. It's both toaster and singer that make this a remarkable effort. The success of Alcapone's recordings can't only be attributed to the singer, though. Working with Dodd and Sylvain Morris, a much underrated producer and engineer, enabled the sing jay to reach the heights that he did.