When harmony band, The Travellers, first approached Prince Jammy in the ‘70s, they only had a small repertoire of songs, so Jammy asked them to “just sing, create something on the spot”. “And it was good, so I decided to record the album,” Prince Jammy, now elevated to King Jammy, recalled. “These songs of sufferation, hope, love and classic Jamaican storytelling were all completed within a month, utilising Jammy’s existing rhythms and new bespoke recordings, all of which were mixed at the legendary King Tubby’s studio,” a VP Records release notes.
The line-up of The Travellers (also known as the Mighty Travellers and the Black Aces) comprised Neville Morris, Leroy Hoffman, Ashley Fray and Wesley Codner. What was once living in “glorious obscurity” has now received the reissue treatment it so thoroughly deserves, with fully remastered audio, restored artwork, updated credits and extensive sleeve notes from King Jammy’s specialist Angus Taylor. “Collectors’ enduring fascination with ’70s Jamaican reggae stems partly from the sheer volume of good music generated from an island of less than three million people.
The competitiveness of Kingston’s studio scene, with queues of aspiring singers arriving for auditions and sessions musicians knocking out rhythm after rhythm every week, meant even releases that didn’t cut through at the time could become greatly loved by aficionados years later,” Taylor writes in the extensive liner notes. “So it w.