King Tubby & The Observer All Stars – Dubbing With The Observer

King Tubby & The Observer All Stars – Dubbing With The Observer

Doctor Bird Records

2CD/DL

Out now

2CD set housing the classic 1975 Dub LP of Niney The Observer productions, with a welter of bonus tracks drawn from the same source. Ian Canty writes…

Osbourne “King Tubby” Ruddock’s repute as a visionary studio engineer seems to grow year on year, as a fresh band of listeners benefit from witnessing his extraordinary work. He got his start on Kingston’s sound systems in the late 1950s and thrived in this environment due to two talents – his aptitude for repairing electrical equipment and unerring instinct for knowing what was right in the sound mix. He soon established his own set-up Hometown Hi-Fi, which quickly became wildly popular with the city’s dancers. From there he moved into working for Duke Reid in equipment maintenance. During his employment with Reid, he stumbled across the possibilities of Dub while witnessing versions of popular tunes having the vocal removed for sound system DJs to chat over. By pushing the faders up and down, he found that one could virtually craft brand new tunes from the base material by “playing” the mixing desk.

In the early 1970s he purchased an old mixing desk from Byron Lee and set up his own recording facility at his home 18 Dromillie Avenue. King Tubby gradually built a system that could handle reverb, delays, echo and any other sound effect that he wished to conjure up in constructing his ground-breaking Dub plates. Tubby’s technical know-how put him ahead of the field in sound engineering and coupled with a bold imagination resulted in pioneering work. By the middle of the decade he was at the very forefront of Jamaican music after many fruitful collaborations with Kingston’s top producers. One of the many that sought out his services was George Boswell aka Winston “Niney The Observer” Holness…

Niney worked with Bunny Lee and Joe Gibbs before setting up on his own with much success, all starting with the famous Blood & Fire hit single/sensation. With The Soul Syndicate, who included George “Fully” Fulwood, Carl “Santa” Davis, Tony Chin and Earl “Chinna” Smith in their ranks, acting as his studio band The Observers, Niney was among the most successful of all Jamaican producers. Dennis Brown and Gregory Isaacs were just two of the top quality artists he recorded and given the strength of Niney’s production work, a link up with King Tubby for Dubs looked very much like a golden ticket.

It’s difficult to know what to say when faced with Dubbing The Observer to review. I know I’ve a tendency to be a little, shall we say, long winded, but do you really need to know any more than that this album is right up their where Dub recordings are concerned? From Rebel Dance’s echoed horns and skipping guitar inwards the LP is full of innovation. Casanova Dub is one of a number here that use Dennis Brown’s Cassandra as a jumping off point and Ken Boothe’s Silver Words gets a minimalist rejig as Silver Bullet.

Sang Hugh and The Lionelians’s Rasta No Born Yah becomes Rasta Locks, with the fast dance beats of Sir Niney’s Rock coming over a little like PIL three years early! Many Dub producers limited themselves to mostly dropping down to drums and bass, but Tubby opened up whole new vistas by highlighting the other instruments and this keeps the sounds fresh and distinctive. Another Dennis Brown tune I Am The Conqueror provides Youth Man Version with a structure that is gently teased out and My Mama Say is cut down on a racing rhythm as Corn Dub. The album ends with Rema Dub, originally another Brown tune Comma Comma. Here a deep, deep bass bounces of a piano and brass, putting the full stop on what is a triumph of a record with relish.

On this disc we get a further 12 Dubs from Niney productions of around the same time and unsurprisingly there is no real lapse in quality. Freedom Over Version is horn powered with sparkling echo and Tribute To Don Quarrie, credited to Bongo Herman & The Observer All Stars, presses Rasta No Born back into service with added percussion. Why Seek More is radically redone as Why Seek More Version, although Dennis Brown’s vocal occasionally comes to the front and is just about audible at the back of the mix for most of the way. The Soul Syndicate’s Dub Roots Of David is breath-taking and later on this disc they post another cut of Cassandra as Version 2.

Dennis’ Mount Zion is shot to the heavens with an effective use of drop out on Take A Dub and Grey Beard has a repeated vocal sample set on a tastefully cut back rhythm. Fire From The Corner, another Cassandra-based cut, has quite a lot of Brown’s singing treated with sound effects and the disc ends with Water Boiling, cut from the same rhythm and putting the spotlight on a wah wah guitar.

Entitled Dubbing With The Observer Chapter II, the second disc of the set acts as a follow up to the original album by collecting a further 25 Dubs. The familiar guitar intro to Cassandra sets the scene for Skatalites’ veteran Tommy McCook to blow some baleful sax on One Train Load Of Collie and Quiet’s vocal loops add to a cool drum and bass combo. Ras Bumper was the solid Dub flipside of Dennis Brown’s So Long that lets the original vocal float in and out and Straight To Bunny Lee Head aims it into jibe at a fellow producer on the back of Den’s hit Travelling Man.

A repeated guitar lick heralds Ad Dab, the B side reworking of Gregory Isaacs’ Bad Da, with Couchie Dub showing that Tubby was never afraid to start with just horns and build the thing from the ground up. Zinc Fence is a classic “Flying Cymbals” sound hewn from Cornel Campbell’s I Heart Is Clean and Rub Bald Head Dub moves at a dignified but cool pace. Special Dinner retains the Roots feel of the original and Dennis Brown gets a credit along with King Tubby & The Soul Syndicate on No Conscience, with his voice looming out of the mix in ghostly fashion.

DJ Clint Eastwood heads up a warm organ-led sound called Gate Number Version that stealthily warps out and 1/2 lb Drum & 1/4 lb Bass has an ominous sound to it and the drop out to just the voice is almost startling. Dubbing With The Observer finishes up with the brilliant echo overkill of I Soon Know and the dreamscape-style big horns and skank of Thinking Version.

Dubbing With The Observer is an effective and hugely enjoyable look at the work of King Tubby and Niney, where the talents of both are allowed to shine along with the musicians who played on the original discs. A bit more information about the Niney productions that provided the material for the Dubs in the liner notes would have been good, but I accept it was more important to shine the light on King Tubby. If you want to learn about Dub from a standing start, this is as good a place as any to commence your investigations.

More info on King Tubby & The Observer All Stars – Dubbing With The Observer can be gleaned here