Bob Marley and The Wailers – Catch A Fire

Description

Already big names in their native Jamaica, it took until this 1973 release for Marley and Co. to finally go global. This was due, in no small part, to the intervention of the man once dubbed a ‘vampire’ by Lee Perry (the former Wailers producer) – Chris Blackwell. It was the label boss (who’d made his initial fortune importing Jamaican hits to these shores) who recognised that, while Marley, Tosh etc. had song writing and performing skills in abundance, they needed to be put through the equivalent of a ‘rock’ blender to make them palatable to UK ears.

Thus, when the tapes were handed to Blackwell he saw to it that the keyboards of John ‘Rabbit’ Bundrick and guitar of Wayne Perkins bolstered the righteous skank of Catch A Fire. And it worked! Perkins’ steel combined with Bundrick’s washes (and a whole host of contemporary studio filters) to flesh out the originals perfectly. From this point on Marley would be the hippest name to drop in reggae.