Burning Spear: Man in the Hills/Dry and Heavy

This reissue of a pair of classic prime-era reggae albums by Winston Rodney's Burning Spear project on Island Records takes us back to 1976-1977, after the phenomenal Marcus Garvey and its dub version, Garvey's Ghost, which have been featured here before.  With Bob Marley and the Wailers justifiably achieving international renown, many great bands and individuals were given the opportunity to demonstrate their talent, including the awesome Burning Spear.  

Not as hard-hitting as Marcus Garvey, 1976' Man in the Hills is a reflection of Rodney's youth growing up in the same area (St. Anne's Bay) as Marley, as well as political and spiritual concerns.  Moreover, you can't miss with his band mates, Delroy Hines and Rupert Willington, the Riddim Twins of Robbie Shakespeare (bass) and Sly Dunbar (drums), not to mention Marley's great Wailers drummer, Aston "Family Man" Barrett and other great musicians like Earl "Chinna" Smith, Tyrone Downie, Earl "Wire" Lindo and horn players like Bobby Ellis, Vincent "Trommie" Gordon, Richard "Dirty Harry" Hall and Herman Marquis.

With Dry and Heavy, from 1977, Rodney mined his earlier recordings for the famed Studio One and re-recording the material with Shakespeare, Barrett, drummer Leroy "Horsemouth" Wallace, percussionist Uziah "Sticky" Thompson and many of the others who appeared on Man in the Hills.  This album was more of Rodney-directed project, with producer Jack Ruby dismissed, as were Hines and Willington, though there are backing vocals, and most reviewers view it as less successful as its predecessor.  For this listener, however, Dry and Heavy is a strong record, if mellower than Man in the Hills.

Burning Spear went to make Social Living, released in 1980, and we'll look to feature that in a future post here.  Meanwhile, interested readers might try and find this two-fer, as well as the two Garvey albums, and really delve into some of the finest music made during the essential reggae period of the last half of the Seventies, when there was far more to the music than Marley and the Wailers.

Burning Spear: Marcus Garvey/Garvey's Ghost

The great reggae act, Burning Spear, was originally a trio of lead singer Winston Rodney and backing vocalists Delroy Hines and Rupert Willington.  With Rodney's keening, smoky and powerful invocations and his partners' rough but highly effecting backing and the great instrumental support of many top-shelf reggae instrumentalists like bassists Robby Shakespeare and Aston "Family Man" Barrett, the latter of The Wailers; drummer Leroy "Horse" Wallace; lead guitarist Earl "Chinna" Smith; keyboardist Tyrone Downie, also a member of The Wailers later; among others, the group became one of the best-known bands of the genre's golden years in the 1970s.

The epitome of Burning Spear's long and memorable career is undoubtedly the classic Marcus Garvey, which was issued on Island Records' Mango subsidiary in late 1975.  Ten tracks move seamlessly from one to the other with the solid musicianship melding with the vocals and the lyrical concerns about Garvey's heroic status in trying to uplift the status of black people during his 1920s and 1930s heyday and other elements of Rastafarian religious issues, life in Jamaica, the history of its extinct native Arawak peoples and that of black slaves brought to the island later by the British; and other heavy themes.  There are no love songs or party anthems to be found here--this is pure consciousness and political music.  And, there isn't a weak track or filler in the bunch, with the title track, "Slavery Days," "Old Marcus Garvey," and "Tradition" being the highlights to YHB.

The 100th Anniversary CD release, commemorating the centennial of Garvey's birth paired the great record with the awesome dub version, released in April 1976, titled "Garvey's Ghost."  These versions mirror the running times of the original tracks and rate among the greatest dub pieces of all, right up there with the great Augustus Pablo's King Tubby Meets The Rockers Uptown, also from 1976 and Black Uhuru's mindblowing The Dub Factor (1983), both to be featured here eventually.

The trio recorded another record, Man in the Hills, released in August 1976, before Rodney ended the partnership and took the name Burning Spear as his own, going on to release such well-known albums as Dry and Heavy and Social Living.  He has continued to record and tour over the years since that 1970s peak, but it is hard to argue that Marcus Garvey was the pinnacle and that Garvey's Ghost is one of the great dub records of all time.