The Best Reggae Albums of the '70s

Recorded in London exile after gunmen raided 56 Hope Road in December 1976, and Time magazine still called it the best album of the twentieth century in 1999. Natural Mystic opens the record by fading up from nothing, Family Man Barrett's bass arriving before the song does. Side one prays; side two throws a party. Spotify's plain ten-track 1977 edition survives — take it.

The high-water mark of Lee Perry's Black Ark: three voices — Cedric Myton's falsetto, Roydel Johnson's tenor, Watty Burnett's baritone — melted into one instrument by tape saturation. Fisherman opens on a bass figure that never quite lands where you expect, the harmonies surfacing out of the murk behind it. Island passed on the record in 1977, and the 1996 Blood and Fire reissue rebuilt its reputation. Spotify carries the original ten-track configuration.

Chris Blackwell flew the Kingston tapes to London and had Muscle Shoals guitarist Wayne Perkins overdub rock leads — the calculated crossover move that took reggae to the album market. Concrete Jungle carries the experiment's best result, Perkins soloing over a bassline he reportedly couldn't find the one in. Only the 50th Anniversary edition holds the original nine-track Island sequence here, trailed by Jamaican mixes and 1973 live cuts.

Winston Rodney came from St. Ann's Bay, the same town as Marcus Garvey himself, and producer Jack Ruby built these Ocho Rios sessions around that lineage. Slavery Days turns a question — do you remember the days of slavery? — into a congregation chant over the Black Disciples' horns. Island infamously sped up and remixed the album for its UK release, a decision Rodney has grumbled about for fifty years.

Joseph Hill heard a prophecy that the sevens would clash and built an apocalypse record around it — on 7 July 1977, plenty of Kingston reportedly stayed home just in case. The title cut, Two Sevens Clash, bounces its doomsday over one of Joe Gibbs and Errol Thompson's springiest rhythms, dread lyrics on a dancing beat. Spotify's plain ten-track edition spares you the anniversary bloat sitting on Culture's artist page.

Quitting the Wailers freed Peter Tosh to make the bluntest protest record of the decade, released on Columbia in 1976 with a Lee Jaffe photo of Tosh in a ganja field on the cover. Legalize It states its whole argument in the title and then wins it with that unhurried, herb-thick groove. Jamaica banned the single; the album sold anyway. Spotify's plain edition tacks one Ketchy Shuby instrumental onto the original nine tracks.

Credited to his Upsetters house band, this is Lee Perry using the Black Ark's four tracks as an instrument in themselves — everything smeared, reversed, dropped out and doubled. Dread Lion drifts by on flute, chant and a rhythm that seems to breathe in slow motion. Spotify's plainly titled listing runs thirteen tracks, the original ten plus three single versions, and beats the deluxe clutter on the artist page.

Augustus Pablo supplied the melodica and the rhythms; King Tubby stripped them for parts at his Waterhouse studio. The title track, King Tubby's Meets Rockers Uptown, is Jacob Miller's Baby I Love You So turned inside out — voice reduced to ghost fragments, drums crashing through reverb. Widely rated the finest single dub album ever cut. The current Rockers International edition adds two extra dubs to the original ten.

The gentlest of the three founding Wailers made the most patient album of them all: a 1976 solo debut on his own Solomonic imprint through Island, with Peter Tosh and both Barrett brothers in the sessions. Dreamland floats his highest melody over a horn line that takes its sweet time arriving, half hymn and half lullaby. Nothing else in the roots canon moves this slowly on purpose, or sounds this sure of itself.

Max Romeo's Black Ark statement pairs him with Lee Perry at the exact moment the producer could do no wrong. Chase The Devil puts on an iron shirt and sends Satan into outer space — a line the Prodigy later lifted wholesale for Out of Space. Island released it in 1976 as part of Perry's astonishing run. Note the credit: Spotify bills the album to Max Romeo & The Upsetters.

Three-part harmony as scripture: the single Satta Massagana was cut at Studio One in 1969, shelved by Coxsone Dodd, then issued on the group's own Clinch label — the title is Amharic for give thanks. On the album version those voices move in slow parallel over a two-chord rhythm that reggae has borrowed ever since. Spotify's plain listing is the expanded 1993 Rounder edition, fourteen tracks against the original ten.

A falsetto Curtis Mayfield would have recognised, run through Lee Perry's Black Ark until it shimmers. Police & Thieves itself arrived as a single during the violent 1976 election season, soundtracked that year's Notting Hill Carnival riot, and got covered by the Clash within months. Take the ten-track 1977 Island album here — Spotify also carries a fifteen-track twin under the same plain title, stuffed with disco mixes.

Toots Hibbert sang like Otis Redding raised on Pentecostal handclaps, and the title track Funky Kingston is his rawest studio sermon — band dropping out so he can testify, then slamming back in. Buyer's note: Spotify's ten-track listing is the 1975 US Island configuration, which pulls in Pressure Drop and a John Denver cover, filed under the 1973 date of the Jamaican original.

Joe Gibbs produced the record that made the crown prince case: Dennis Brown was barely 21, a decade into his career, when Visions arrived in 1978. Milk And Honey glides where other roots tunes stomp, that honeyed tenor floating just behind the beat. Bob Marley named Brown as his own favourite singer. Spotify's copy is the VP reissue dated 2007 — the music underneath is the 1978 album.

Where the Pablo collaboration is a duet, The Roots Of Dub is Osbourne Ruddock solo at the desk: Bunny 'Striker' Lee's Aggrovators rhythms dismantled in a converted bedroom studio on Dromilly Avenue. Dread Locks Dub keeps cutting the drums out entirely and letting the bass carry the room alone. Spotify's listing wears a 2009 Greensleeves date; the album itself is from 1975.

Uptown Kingston conservatory kids playing roots — Third World caught flak for polish, and answered with their second Island album in 1977. 1865 (96º In The Shade) sets the hanging of Morant Bay rebellion leader Paul Bogle to sunlit keyboards and one of the decade's great choruses, horror delivered smiling. Border case flagged: this is where roots reggae shakes hands with soul and points toward the crossover '80s.