MUSIC
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A1. RAIN DUB (feat. KAZUFUMI KODAMA)
A2. NON STOPPA DUB (feat.MISS RED)
B1. DIVISION OF THE WORLD DUB (feat. ADDIS PABLO)
B2. SHINE DUB (feat. HOLLIE COOK)
Additional Production and Remixed by MAD PROFESSOR@ARIWA SOUNDS STUDIO, LONDON
‘Conquering Lion’ stands as one of the few truly essential albums of the roots era. As devotional as anything by Burning Spear, as polemical as Bob Marley, and as militant as the Mighty Diamonds, the album also communicates a haunting spiritual quality that is uniquely its own. Amazingly, for such a coherent work, the tracks were recorded over a period of at least four years, yet come together to present a single coherent vision. The album was first issued in Jamaica by Micron, and in the UK with a different tracklisting as ‘Ram-A-Dam’ on the Lucky label in 1976. Here the album is presented for the first time in expanded form, together with its dub counterpart.
Vivian ‘Yabby You’ Jackson is often portrayed as a strange, otherworldly figure. Yet his life was filled with two opposing forces, the spiritual and the earthly. Even as Yabby was yearning for a higher plane of existence, he was scratching out a difficult living in the ghetto. Whilst warning of sinful secular behaviour, he was working at the race track taking bets. As well as creating some of the most powerful and heartfelt music to come out of Jamaica, Yabby was busy cutting deals with studios and musicians, and hustling round the record shops to sell his products. And these contradictions seem to have fuelled some of his best music, pushing him into places that other artists shied away from. When I had a couple of lengthy phone conversations with Yabby shortly before his death, his religious musings were frequently interrupted by the loud squawking of the chickens in his yard. If the theology he espoused seems stern and prescriptive, he could also be charming and generous in conversation.
‘You have the rasta business, like the rastamen believe Emperor Haile Selassie is the creator who create people. I used to try to show them he is just another man like anyone of we. I show them Jesus Christ is recorded in history as a great individual and him also great. So with God now: I was trying fe educate them and I feel like if I use music I will be able to spread out all over the world, spread out and reach those type of people, for them have a zeal for godliness.’
So Yabby’s religious views put him immediately at odds with rasta orthodoxy, and he often wore his belief as a shield against the world, certainly against the more ruthless side of the record business. Indeed Yabby’s personal dogma was sometimes deployed as a tactic to clinch a negotiation, by wearing down his ‘less godly’ opponent to the point of compromise. And the unshakeable strength of his beliefs gave rise to some of the deepest of roots music.
Run Come Rally + Rally Dub
The album opens with an immensely powerful call to turn away from the earthly wickedness of ‘the land of the sinking sand’ before the upcoming apocalypse. ‘The sun shall be darkened / And the moon shall be turned into blood / One of these days.’ ‘Run Come Rally’ was recorded by Lee Perry at his Black Ark Studios, and the dub contains typical disruptive Perry touches, like cutting in and out on isolated syllables of the voice.
Jah Vengeance + Tubby’s Vengeance
Amazingly the album’s second track intensifies the sentiments of the first: ‘Jah Vengeance surely will come down on anyone / Who still insists to stay in wicked Babylon’. Its release as a single was backed by a stark King Tubby’s dub which perfectly highlights the end of days sentiments of the vocal, but Yabby explained that the backing track was again recorded at the Black Ark: ‘Black Ark was a great studio and Lee Perry is really a great producer with a great sound. You know the tune named “Jah Vengeance” and the one named “Run Come Rally” and the first song Wayne Wade do named “Black Is Our Colour”? Well I did those three tunes at Black Ark. Them times there Bob Marley used to be up there. Lee Perry have a unique sound when you recording. Is a pity him turn to the mad business, but between me and you I don’t really think him mad, you know, him just turn to that business. Him had to keep off certain artists who come pressure him for money. But sometime me think him take it too far.’
Conquering Lion + Conquering Dub + Big Youth Fights Against Capitalist
One of the most devastating debut singles of all time, the vision recounted in ‘Conquering Lion’ gave the young Vivian Jackson his nickname of Yabby You. Yabby told me the history of how he created this classic, expanded here with two of its most imaginative versions, a mix from the ‘King Tubby’s Prophesy of Dub’ album, and the brilliantly named B-side of Big Youth’s ‘Yabby Youth’. ‘I recorded the riddim down at Dynamic – the drum, the bass, the riddim guitar and the organ. From the day it do at Dynamic everyone know say it going to be a hit. Waterhouse and Gullybank was an underworld place, where most of the sufferers come from, and they never expect someone from Gullybank would make that quality or make that type of riddim. So all of them things there add together a lickle bit. “Chinna” did play the guitar, Aston “Familyman” Barrett play the bass and Leroy “Horsemouth” Wallace play the drum. I never have the experience to know say well I must get a 4 track tape so we just use 2 track tape. So after we put on the riddim pon one track, we only had one track left and “Familyman” dub the organ onto that second track. The rest of the instrument them me dub on afterwards at Tubby’s. We dub on the horns, the voices – like the lead and the two harmony. And then that inspired you as a singer now to sing pon it comfortable, you know.’
Covetous Men
A stinging denunciation of greed, Yabby’s lyrics here move from attacking avarice in general to exposing the exploitation of the poor, ‘The big fishes feeding on the small ones’. Sadly no dub version exists for this track, which balances its message of condemnation with the optimistic conclusion that ‘Just through our faith, that’s why we overcome’.
Anti Christ + Anti Christ Rock
Yabby rails against dissembling and hypocrisy on a track renamed ‘Dem-A-Wolf’ on the ‘Ram-A-Dam’ album. ‘See them there / Them favour Christ but them a Anti-Christ.’ The dub shows King Tubby masterfully emphasizing the ‘flyers’ drum pattern.
Carnal Mind
This is probably the closest Yabby ever came to invoking the sound of a Pentecostal church meeting, as verses from the Books of Romans and Psalms are quoted in an uplifting devotional. With no dub existing for this track, we can only speculate on how Tubby might have transformed it.
Jah Love + Jah Love Dub + Warning Version
Originally released as a single with the title ‘Warn The Nation’, the lyrics call for an escape from the mental chains of slavery: ‘No shackles on our feet, no whip on our back / Yet I and I must realize we are still being enslaved’. The two Tubby’s dubs bring out different nuances of the backing track, particularly the heavy one drop drums and their repeating hi-hat pattern.
Love Thy Neighbour + Love Thy Neighbour Version
Yabby casts himself as a preacher addressing his flock after a unique intro featuring Richard ‘Dirty Harry’ Hall playing the fife, a simplified flute that originated in medieval Europe, and in Jamaica is usually made from bamboo. ‘Me used the fife, and people always wonder where me get that sound. Well sometimes we used like three fifes, like lead, tenor and alto, and that fife thing was a unique special sound. Tommy McCook would play one fife and you had this brother named “Dirty Harry” who used to blow tenor sax too, and then me would dub back the third one on top. You see, horns take a lot of time and very expensive. And those days reggae music was very poor, and so most producers try fe avoid using horns.’
Love Of Jah + Love Of Jah Version
A simple song elevated by strong harmonies and a plaintive lead, the dub version is sparse and stripped down, highlighting the insistent percussion.
The Man Who Does The Work + Work Without Pay Version
Like ‘Love Thy Neighbour’, this version is mixed without clean drums and bass. Both versions are compelling nonetheless: here echoes on the organ catch the ear, and both versions show varying degrees of high pass filtering across the mix. ‘Tubby’s have that precise timing like with all the echo. And him have that high pass filter – him have that sound inside of the board, and him did arrange it. Him was one of the greatest engineer, and him was a technician too, and him develop the sounds, like all the bass – him have resistors and things there and him make it become more round.’
Yabby’s music is both intense and warmly human, both militant and yet strangely fragile, a quality it shares with some of the greatest instrumentals by Augustus Pablo, who appears here on piano. The songs are defiant and strong, but at times seem almost translucent, inviting the listener in to share the vision of their composer. With King Tubby’s dub mixes reassembling the songs into fascinating new patterns, ‘Conquering Lion’ is a timeless classic of Jamaican reggae.
Diggory Kenrick
In the early 1970s the island of Jamaica, and in particular its reggae musicians, developed a love affair with small Japanese motor bikes. Honda bikes were eulogised in Big Youth’s ‘S90 Skank’ and Dillinger’s ‘CB200’, whilst their rival was lauded on Shorty The President’s ‘Yamaha Skank’, to name the most obvious examples.The plot of the film ‘Rockers’ revolved around how transformative a motorbike could be, providing a livelihood whilst projecting an image of success in the ghetto.
Vivian ‘Yabby You’ Jackson had been fiercely independent as a singer and producer, and the success of his early self-pressed productions, mostly on the Prophets or Vivian Jackson labels, had given him a sense of hard earned autonomy. A motorbike was one of the fruits of his labours, acquired as a way of zipping around the capital’s roads to deliver records and organise recording sessions. His wife Jean could often be see hanging on to the back. Twelve years after his death, she remembers various exploits on the pot-holed roads of Kingston.
Jean Vencella Williams: ‘His first motorbike was a Honda 50 and then a 100, a Yamaha. I remember the Yamaha, it was a dark blue colour, it must have been from the mid 70s til the early 80s. I used to ride around on the back and we ride all over, like we go to the country cos his mother lived in Clarendon.And he had a little carrier thing for boxes of records, so we go to Mandeville in Manchester, sometimes to Spanish Town fe sell records. Most of the time he sell them to the shops, like Randys, and the people them buy it from there. He had pressing plants like Byron Lee and later Tuff Gong, so when the records pressed we find out the time when we get back the records, which usually was at least a couple of days or about a week.And later when we living in Clarendon we come into Kingston to pick them up at the pressing plant.And when he book the studio he might book two or three days and we come in and usually stay til late.
‘He used to carry the records from the different pressing plants on the bike, but because of the rain and weather you know it not so good for the records, and also the sun beating down.Then Wayne Wade had an accident on the Yamaha, and he was hurt quite bad, and he had to go to the hospital for quite a while. Well Yabby didn’t ride it after that, cos it was getting dangerous with so many cars coming in. So he gave up the Yamaha and bought a Toyota Carina, and that car was very good to him.Then the Carina become a little shaky, so he got a Toyota Corolla which he drove until his death.’
This album presents a sample of the best of those ‘Dubs and Versions’ that Yabby was ferrying around town, whether rarities, B-sides or tracks culled from albums that showcase the breadth of Yabby’s productions between 1975 and 1982.
Tribal War Dub and Creation Rock Version.
We open with two make-overs of Studio One rhythms,‘Death In The Arena’ and ‘Rockfort Rock’.Yabby is rightly lauded for his well worked original rhythms, but the same care and attention is on display here.Slow and hypnotic,‘TribalWar Dub’ was recorded at the Black Ark but mixed and overlaid with syndrum sound effects at King Tubby’s. ‘Creation Rock Version’ was issued on 7-inch as the flip to a storming vocal by Michael Prophet: the dub is pounding and relentless, aimed straight at the sound system.
United Africa Dub
Tommy McCook’s delicate flute leads an instrumental dub of Yabby’s haunting song ‘Jah Over I’.The master saxophonist was a key collaborator with Yabby throughout the 70s, and often switched to flute or fife for atmospheric classics like the mighty ‘Death Trap’. Here his sublime melody floats over a solid steppers drum pattern from Sly Dunbar, with syncopated snare fills.
Lord Of Lords Dub, Black Is Our Colour Dub, Now I Know Dub and Man Of The Living Dub
Four dubs all taken from singles featuring the teenage singer Wayne Wade. Jean remembers Wayne Wade as ‘a very brilliant singer, really the first one that Yabby spend a lot of time on as he get more confident as a producer’.Wade recorded extensively for Yabby, and went on to cut the awesome ‘Poor And Humble’ for Linval Thompson and a couple of albums for Willie Lindo. ‘Lord of Lords’ is a reworking of Yabby’s signature tune ‘Conquering Lion’,‘Now I Know’ is a recut of Dennis Brown’s ‘Baby Don’t Do It’, and ‘Man Of The Living’ is one of the deepest tunes recorded by Yabby’s young protégé.The ‘Black Is Our Colour’ rhythm was recorded by Lee Perry at the Black Ark studio, with horns and flute by Tommy McCook added after the original release, as heard on this, the version side to Jah Stitch’s cut ‘African Queen’.
Dub U So and Yabby U Sound
Two tracks from an LP named ‘Yabby U Meets Sly and Robbie Along With Tommy McCook’ released in 1982, in which Yabby revisits some of his older rhythms with new dub mixes by Professor and Scientist.‘Dub U So’ focuses in on some stirring but plangent horn parts.An album track by Byron Otis of The Blackstones named ‘Set Me Free’ uses the same rhythm track, seemingly because its producer Jah Larry was living in Clarendon alongside Yabby. ‘Yabby U Sound’ is a minimalist remix of the anthemic ‘King Pharaoh’s Plague’, originally released five years earlier.
Vengeance In Dub, Repatriation Rock and Warrior No Tarry Yah Version
Three version sides to strong DJ records, with Ranking Trevor’s toast over a recut of ‘Jah Vengeance’, Jah Stitch’s DJ piece to ‘Zion Gate’ aka ‘Judgement On The Land’, and Tony Tuff ’s chant over his own ‘One Big Family’, riding the Paragons’ ‘Man Next Door’ rhythm.All were mixed at King Tubby’s, probably by Prince Jammy, and all three dubs show the standard Tubby’s practice of recording the DJ’s clean voice and the full dub mix onto separate adjacent tracks.This meant that the flip side of the record would not need to be mixed separately, the dub mix being the same as that behind the voice on the A side.You just pulled down the fader on the DJ’s vocal and your B-side dub was already mixed. Not a second was wasted in the studio!
Heads A Roll Dub, Mash Down Rome Dub and Turn Me Loose Dub
Michael Prophet was Yabby’s most successful and prolific artist. Jean remembers Michael’s recruitment:‘Michael Prophet came to him as part of a trio,andYabby liked Michael but for some reason he didn’t take the other two, and decide him better as a solo artist. So Michael was taught from scratch and him would come in the evening and practice and practice, until Yabby feel he was ready for the studio.’ These three tracks are from the confusingly named ‘Michael Prophet – Vocal and Dub LP’, which is actually a full dub album mixed by King Tubby, with extended vocal passages. It’s a very musical set that was obviously conceived as a coherent album, with new mixes to existing singles and subtle sound effects overlaid throughout.
Dub U So and Yabby U Sound
Two tracks from an LP named ‘Yabby U Meets Sly and Robbie Along With Tommy McCook’ released in 1982, in which Yabby revisits some of his older rhythms with new dub mixes by Professor and Scientist.‘Dub U So’ focuses in on some stirring but plangent horn parts.An album track by Byron Otis of The Blackstones named ‘Set Me Free’ uses the same rhythm track, seemingly because its producer Jah Larry was living in Clarendon alongside Yabby. ‘Yabby U Sound’ is a minimalist remix of the anthemic ‘King Pharaoh’s Plague’, originally released five years earlier.
Vengeance In Dub, Repatriation Rock and Warrior No Tarry Yah Version
Three version sides to strong DJ records, with Ranking Trevor’s toast over a recut of ‘Jah Vengeance’, Jah Stitch’s DJ piece to ‘Zion Gate’ aka ‘Judgement On The Land’, and Tony Tuff ’s chant over his own ‘One Big Family’, riding the Paragons’ ‘Man Next Door’ rhythm.All were mixed at King Tubby’s, probably by Prince Jammy, and all three dubs show the standard Tubby’s practice of recording the DJ’s clean voice and the full dub mix onto separate adjacent tracks.This meant that the flip side of the record would not need to be mixed separately, the dub mix being the same as that behind the voice on the A side.You just pulled down the fader on the DJ’s vocal and your B-side dub was already mixed. Not a second was wasted in the studio!
Heads A Roll Dub, Mash Down Rome Dub and Turn Me Loose Dub
Michael Prophet was Yabby’s most successful and prolific artist. Jean remembers Michael’s recruitment:‘Michael Prophet came to him as part of a trio,andYabby liked Michael but for some reason he didn’t take the other two, and decide him better as a solo artist. So Michael was taught from scratch and him would come in the evening and practice and practice, until Yabby feel he was ready for the studio.’ These three tracks are from the confusingly named ‘Michael Prophet – Vocal and Dub LP’, which is actually a full dub album mixed by King Tubby, with extended vocal passages. It’s a very musical set that was obviously conceived as a coherent album, with new mixes to existing singles and subtle sound effects overlaid throughout.
Death To All Racist and Aggression Dub
Yabby took a pretty relaxed attitude to naming tracks, especially on his dub albums, which today causes some confusion among the ranks of record collectors.These two neglected tracks are both from LPs with contradictory information.The various pressings of ‘Yabby You Meets Michael Prophet And Scientist At The Dub Station’ use the same track names for totally different dubs, but ‘Death To All Racist’ on the original 1981 release is the dub to Michael Prophet’s ‘Stop Throw Stones’. Meanwhile the tracklisting on ‘Michael Prophet – Stars In Disco Showcase’ does not match between the sleeve and the label, so ‘Aggression Dub’ may actually be named ‘Falkland Crisis Dub’. Whatever, it’s a great version, probably mixed at Channel One, although strangely the only known vocal on this rhythm, ‘Come Make We Rally’ by Willie Williams, was produced by Sugar Minott.
Babylon A Fall Dub
‘Babylon A Fall’ was released as a Discomix 12” on the Grove label, with the dub segueing from Yabby’s vocal. Here the dub is presented on its own, with instrumentation led by trombone and a slightly tentative flute, again probably mixed by Prince Jammy.
Time Changing Dub and Chanting Version
These are the version sides to singles by Samuel Patterson (‘Time Changing’) and Errol Alphonso (‘Chant Jah Victory’) respectively, two talented singers who sadly seem to have recorded only one or two tunes each, and exclusively for Yabby. Both dubs have the musical weight so typical of the music mixed at King Tubby’s. ‘Chanting Version’ has a great intro guitar lick, probably played by Earl ‘Chinna’ Smith, and brilliant use of the famous hi pass filter to alter the whole perspective of the mix half way through.
Although drawn from disparate sources, hopefully this collection presents a coherent overview of the drum and bass music produced byYabbyYou from the late 70s to the early 80s.As Jean remembers:‘Yabby really loved dubs, I think he put special care into them. And he loved what he did.’
Diggory Kenrick London UK 2022
