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DELROY WILSON
THE BEST OF DELROY WILSON - THE ORIGINAL EIGHTEEN
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1964-1970 - Heartbeat - studio
- discs:1
Delroy Wilson was born in Kingston in 1948. He started to sing when he was very young and at 12 (in 1960) he visited Clement "Coxsone" Dodd's Studio One. He did not received the expected reception. After two years, in 1962, Wilson went back to Dodd. He recorded "If I Had A Beautiful Baby", a song for Dodd's Sound System, but it did not get much response. By the end of 1962, early 1964, Wilson recorded three tracks aimed to embarass Dodd's rival Prince Buster. The songs were "Prince Pharaoh", "Spit In The Sky" and "Joe Liges". After those tracks he kept recording Ska for Dodd with success: he was the first baby star. In 1966 Ska was slowly drifting to Rock Steady. After the Skatalites' enormous success with Dodd, the house band at Studio One were the Soul Vendors. This band backed Wilson through 1967 on Rock Steady songs. Most of the tracks Wilson recorded at Studio One were backed by them. After these recordings he moved elsewere, recording for Bunny Lee, Sonia Pottinger, Keith Hudson and Leslie Kong. In 1969 Dodd released "Original Twelve: The Best Of Delroy Wilson": a Rock Steady filled album that showed Wilson talent. This edition of that work includes six bonus tracks from the same period. The gems are the slow "Conquer Me" (1968), the classic and beautiful "I Don't Know Why" (1968) and the dark "Run Run" (1970). This is one of those sets to check out if you are interested in what happened immediately before the Early Reggae era.
yardie-reggae.com - 2007