When it gets hot and muggy, some of the surefire ways to adjust to the severity of climate include shedding all unnecessary clothing, raising the intake on cold beverages, and even submerging oneself in a cool body of water. All no brainers, I know. But along with attempting to beat the heat, a person can also just get into the spirit of the season, and one of the best avenues to that goal is a musical one; simply crank up some prime Jamaican reggae. Natty Cultural Dread, the 1976 LP from the man known as Big Youth, is a particularly fitting soundtrack to sweating it up in the summertime.
The collecting of Jamaican music, especially on LP, can be a rather daunting endeavor. I’ve mentioned this before in relation to other forms/styles, but it bears repeating here; there’s just so much Jamaican material of quality and in so many different, equally enticing subgenres, that getting a handle on the whole heap is at this late date basically beyond anyone not slinging a slush-fund of downright spectacular proportions, to say nothing of the deluxe hutch needed to house all those records once they’ve been acquired.
To continue retracing a theme, it’s situations like this one that expose the completist urge, at least when it’s combined with a diverse musical interest, as sheer folly. But hey, there’s no need to get into a funk about it; just shoot for the essentials, and after that, let the chips fall where they may.
In terms of personal collecting (in contrast to extensive libraries, which have their own allure), it’s the uniqueness of those fallen chips that makes checking out the contents of specific collections so enlightening; a person’s record stash, whether large with experience or small but growing with budding enthusiasm, is as individual as a thumbprint and yet (hopefully) in a state of perpetual growth.
And just as interesting will be the varying responses to the nature of the “essential.” Writers and gabbers on music (and art in general) often employ the term as an objective truth that’s in accord with the dictionary definition of the word, but no matter how much writing and gabbing gets done, there’s no denying the inherent subjectivity of art. Everybody responds to music differently, which is why so much ink and breath accompanies its creation.
Take Manley Augustus Buchanan, for example. The man renowned far and wide as Big Youth is commonly regarded as an essential reggae figure. At least I’ve yet to encounter any quibble with this assessment of his overall significance. For in the toasting deejay development arena, there’s really no argument; guys like U-Roy, Dennis Alcapone, King Stitt, and I-Roy may have been the pioneers, but after some early chart struggles, Big Youth achieved a massive commercial breakthrough in the 1970s.
The era of this good fortune has additionally taken on a retrospective critical evaluation as the “essential” period of Big Youth’s career, and that’s where the situation gets a bit stickier. For while ‘72’s brilliant debut LP Screaming Target and ‘75’s killer Dread Locks Dread album (featuring the outstanding Skin, Flesh & Bones band) inspire a lot advocacy, most of his other work from the decade has been doled out on compilations.
On one hand that’s no shocker, for the cat released a whole mess of singles and in a relatively short span. And a few of those comps have done a very nice job of corralling his prolificacy into one easy to access location, multi-disc sets like Tell it Black and Blood & Fire’s exquisite Natty Universal Dread specifically, but in the 21st century it seems that only Ride Like Lightning, a selection of recordings from ’72-‘73, has made it onto vinyl.
And on the subject of the original LPs, a few of Big Youth’s major statements from his prime, while not heinously neglected, have also suffered a bit beside Screaming Target’s first-album status and Dread Locks Dread’s higher than usual profile (it received a lot of distribution, including pressings from Epic and Virgin.) I’m thinking mainly of two discs issued by cornerstone reggae imprint Trojan in 1976, the very spiffy Hit the Road Jack and the even better Natty Cultural Dread.
While the former goes down smooth as a mid-July gin-and-tonic and includes a handful of strong reggae-fications of sturdy sources (not only the Percy Mayfield-penned Ray Charles-derived monster that supplies the LP with its title-track, but also Marvin Gaye’s “What’s Going On” and Harold Melvin & the Blue Notes’ “Wake Up Everybody”) plus a slick reading of the Marley-Tosh warhorse “Get Up, Stand Up” in the bargain, to these ears Natty Cultural Dread surpasses it, mainly because it’s a weirder album.
It also possesses a humid thickness right out of the gate with opener “Wolf in Sheep’s Clothing.” While loaded with sly horn lines and some very welcome touches of piano, there is also a tough, dense, and mildly echoing rhythmic orientation, the track hitting a spot that’ll satisfy fans of reggae’s in-the-pocket instrumental approach along with massaging the muscles of those who like to dive deep into the steamy oceans of dub style.
And this sets side one’s overall tone. The title-cut holds a considerable level of appealingly spacey vocal effects, but the playing that accompanies Big Youth, while also lightly kissed with out-there studio-technique, never plunges full-on into the strange sponginess of uncut dub. Which makes a lot of sense; this is a toaster’s record, after all.
But if lacking the zonked-overload of dubbed-out kingpins like Lee “Scratch” Perry and King Tubby, Natty Cultural Dread, as stated, is still mightily oddball at times. Unlike reggae ambassadors Marley, Tosh, and Cliff, Big Youth’s widespread popularity, at least at this stage, resided mainly at home and in the UK (I’m not positive, but I think all his ‘70s work was an import-only affair in the US), so this lacks the constraining mellowness found on some of the genre’s crossover successes.
Instead, “Hell is For Heroes” has a bass line that’s as deep as it is slinky, a stream of vocals that are both catchy and loose (and yes, occasionally echo-ed out) in delivery, spry sprinkles of chukka-chukka guitar, and rich keyboard comping, and a horn fanfare that intermittently floats in from left field to spice up the atmosphere. The end result is a warm groove with a wide palate, and things don’t falter from there.
Actually, the situation gets considerably more whacked-out. “Jim Squashey” (also known as “Jim Screechy”) finds Big Youth lyrically ruminating in a rather bent manner over the death of John Coltrane, and after a long personal relationship with the song, I’m still far from sure exactly what he’s on about. But that’s not a bad thing, for it’s the exploration of twisted terrain such as this that helps make reggae such a fulfilling musical form.
You wanna slow dance? Hey, who doesn’t, right? Well, “Touch Me in the Morning”’s got a whole lotta something for just that jones, Big Youth landing smack dab in a love-spot with some superb crooning. That ends side one, but the flip opens with some righteous uplift via a cover of “Every Nigger is a Star,” a deep-soul obscurity (unsurprising, given its title) by Jamaican singer Boris Gardiner that’s sourced from a little-known Blaxploitation film of the same name (well, ditto.)
Femme backup singers slide onto the scene in a grandly unwinding dialogue with the vocalist that lacks the original’s lush conception, and the track enhances Big Youth’s rep as a socially-motivated artist in a major way. From there, “I Love the Way You Love” continues the singer’s exploration of romantic concerns, and it’s one of the album’s sprightliest numbers that tosses in some ginchy guitar burn for good measure.
But Natty Cultural Dread’s biggest gesture in the direction of lovey-dovey stuff comes with a cover of Leon Haywood’s “The Day I Laid My Eyes on You.” Sporting the record’s most popish vibe along with tasteful harmonica and a crisp-and-clean little guitar solo, the song adds to Big Youth’s range and without doing any harm to the disc’s overall cohesiveness; there’s something here for just about anyone that ranks themselves a reggae fan, but the LP is still a tidy statement from a deejay that held court in a plethora of packed halls.
“Keep Your Dread” diverts back into more dub-friendly (and socially relevant) environs, but the most notable aspect of the tune (at least instrumentally) is the arrival of some choppy organ playing. “I Light and I Salvation” continues on this route until it hits the album’s end groove. And I’ve never been able to decide if it’s harmonica or melodica on the cut (my Trojan LP isn’t exactly rife with liner info), but no matter; an enriching Augustus Pablo-like scenario does unravel and provides a sweet concluding statement to a classic record.
But is Natty Cultural Dread as classically scaled as the more celebrated Screaming Target and Dread Locks Dread? In a word: no. However, this record makes up for its lack of historical heftiness with an everyday reliability directly related to Big Youth’s firing on full creative cylinders, so don’t be surprised if it sneaks up and hands you your keister.
And right about now, when just thinking about taking a stroll in the sunshine is enough to make me perspire like a pig in a serious pickle, Natty Cultural Dread feels pretty damned “essential” to these ears.
GRADED ON A CURVE:
A
