Well, U Roy is another alltime favorite. iirc I played one of his tracks at one of the 313 parties in Detroit.
He is another elevated master if you ask me, but he's not a dub producer. He started as a DJ (record announcer in Jamaican parlance; what we call a DJ is the "selector") with Duke Reid's sound system and King Tubby in the 1960s. Tubby was already developing the early version (non-vocal B side) cut-and-mix dub techniques that underlie all modern dance music. U Roy melded with that approach and did sing-jaying for remixes of a long list of Duke Reid's rock-steady and early reggae hits. He was enormously popular in Jamaica throughout the 1970s and cut innumerable tracks with most every major producer there. Although many people "took the mike" to introduce and talk over records in previous times, he more or less invented the modern form of toasting or chatting with a string of huge JA remix hits in the late 1960s through mid-1970s. Dub provided the mixing methods for modern dance music, and Daddy U Roy provided the vocal techniques for dancehall, hip hop and jungle. In a nutshell, dub came from version and merged with DJ and turned the whole world upside down :) There are many U Roy compilations, the three I like the most are Crucial Cuts, Dread in a Babylon and Natty Rebel. U Roy has a MySpace page now. Among others showing up to pay respects this week are Michigan & Smiley. Too too much :) http://profile.myspace.com/index.cfm?fuseaction=user.viewprofile&friendid=61923224 I saw U Roy here in Portland in about 1985 as the by then nearly- forgotten opening act (!) for a long list of reggae stars-of-the- moment on a barnstorm US tour. He appeared in a white suit with a white bowler hat and utterly charmed the crowd :) fh ----------------- >That weatherhall mix is s**t though yeah? Has anyone mentioned U-Roy >yet...dunno...he's cool though.... >
