Thursday, January 03, 2008

Reggae before the caucuses

Tonight I will join the other reporters in covering the Iowa Caucuses. It will be a busy night.
I am relaxing a little bit this morning, burning some discs of music I have purchased over the years from iTunes.
I am putting together some discs of reggae music -- an ironic sound on a day like today, with the temperature hovering around 4 degrees above zero.
One song I "rediscovered" was the charmingly lo-fi "Stop Them," a 1967 single credited to Hazel & The Jolly Boys & The Fugitives and produced by the wonderful Sonia Pottinger.
Pottinger (pictured) became the most powerful woman in Jamaican music. She opened a record shop in the mid-1960s and began recording musicians in 1966. She worked with such stars as Delano Stewart, The Ethiopians and Ken Boothe during her career.

Fans of Jamaican music have probably heard about the mento ensemble The Jolly Boys. As best as I can make out, that rather well-known collective is NOT the same Jolly Boys as credited on this disc. I haven't quite figured out who Hazel was, either. As for The Fugitives, well... Who knows?
I love this song regardless of who performed it.
I characterized it as "charmingly lo-fi" because it sounds like it was recorded in a hallway. It might have been.

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