THE ZINC FENCE MILLENIUM COUNTDOWN

WEEK TWO

 

Record of 1981, selected by Malvern Hills:


ALL KIND OF PEOPLE- SUGAR MINOTT

(BLACK & WHITE)

During those few years when the Seventies became the Eighties, Sugar Minott made some of the most sublime music of his career, records like Hard Time Pressure and Dance Hall Style. While less well known than these established classics, All Kind Of People ranks up there with the best the man has ever done. The lyrics on this 12" are an affectionate and humorous look at the variety of people who pack the Jamaican dancehall, smokers of the ku shung peng, local beauties modelling their dance moves, liquor drinkers, vendors of cane and cigarettes, drealocks with their "duaghters", even a little gaggle of foreigners. All Jamaican life is there and Sugar Minott's voice is at its sweetest.

Carlton Patterson, producer and owner of the Black & White label, gave all his tunes to the great King Tubby for the final mix and the bouncing, infectious rhythm, though lighter and sunnier than some of Tubby's more thunderous dub extravaganzas, has the master's fingerprints all over it.

Here's another bonus. Sugar Minott reprised these lyrics a year later in harder-than-hard dancehall style on the first and greatest of the live dancehall albums, Live At The Fish Wirl Club, live with U Roy's Stur Gav sound.

Another fine tune recorded by Sugar Minott just the year before on the Black & White label was Mr Fisherman. Other notable artists to appear regularly on Black & White were Larry Marshall, Dillinger & Mikey Campbell, each notable for fine vocal performances backed up by some of the most outstanding dubs that Tubby ever laid down. In fact, buy any tune on this label with confidence. There never was a bad tune laid on it, and to hear them is to feel all over again the great loss that Tubby's murder was to the music.

Malvern Hills

 

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