Dub Kings: King Jammy at King Tubby's

Personnel: Earl "Chinna" Smith (guitar); Lennox Brown (alto saxophone); Tommy McCook (tenor saxophone); Bobby Ellis (trumpet); Vin Gordon (trombone); Ansel Collins (piano); Winston Wright, Bernard Touter Harvey (organ); Carlton Barrett, Sly Dunbar, Carlton "Santa" Davis (drums).
Recording information: King Tubbys Studio.
Climbing in distinction from merely Prince Jammy to King Jammy, this student of King Tubby started out as Lloyd James, learning the tricks of dub production from one of the masters over the course of working on countless reggae productions throughout the '70s. Dub Kings collects some of Jammy's standout mixes, rugged rocksteady rhythms with a focus on sharp horn sections, especially notable on cuts like "Wreaking Dub" and "Pride and Ambition Dub." These 18 tracks were all engineered at King Tubby's studio by King Jammy in the late '70s, and have an especially swimmy quality to them, awash in the type of echo trails, reverb, and generous negative space that made the sounds coming out of Tubby's studio worthy of royalty. ~ Fred Thomas