Bob Bell Writes About Trojan Records
My dad was a clockmaker, and the motto that was always engraved on the faces of his clocks was the latin phrase ‘Tempus fugit'. Time flies. It was an apt saying to put on a clock face, given the nature of clocks, but of course, it can be applied to all our endeavours, all of our lives. Because it does. The minutes turn into hours, the hours into days, days into weeks, months into years, and bang, before you know it a half-century has passed.
This brings me to a project that was, and still is, very dear to me, one that first saw the light of day fifty years ago. That project was the three-LP set of ‘The Trojan Story’, the first anthology of Jamaican music, which was first released in 1971.
In 1971 Trojan was the world’s largest record company releasing Jamaican music, and was the main player in popularising what has become to be known as reggae.
I was working for the company back then, going from production manager to label manager, and pushed the concept of this anthology because I was continually annoyed by the lack of respect shown to Jamaican music by most disc jockeys, critics and writers. Reggae records had charted in the UK and Europe, and the rest of the world quickly followed suit, but their success and the obvious talent of the artists did little to win over the derision of the ‘tastemakers’. It was a situation paralleled by the emergence of rock and roll in the mid-fifties when the established media failed miserably in understanding and getting to grips with the style.
I had embraced American rock and roll and rhythm and blues in those days, and after arriving at Island Records in 1965, I could see the similarities between the post-war American rhythm and blues scene and the growing Jamaican music business, with its plethora of small labels, mostly flying well under the radar, but proof of a vibrant and rapidly expanding musical culture. By the end of the Sixties, by which time I had left Island and joined the company’s partnership with B & C, Trojan Records, one could go into any decent record store and find dozens of anthologies of the same blues and r&b recordings that had previously been snubbed, and now were accompanied by lengthy and reverential liner notes. In other words, the music was accorded a degree of respect. Didn’t mean you couldn’t dance to it, didn’t mean you couldn’t have fun with it.
I certainly was no expert on Jamaican music, and still am not. But I had watched the music evolve from mento to Jamaican r&b and doo-wop, and heard the beat increasingly change to the offbeat, and the evolution of ska, and then rock steady and then to reggae, and it was obvious to me that a reasonably lengthy LP setting out these changes would not only make for enjoyable listening, but might actually make a start on educating some of those ignorant jerks who decried the music as ‘boring and monotonous’. I never envisioned the collection to be a Greatest Hits sort of thing — we already had the ‘Tighten Up’, ‘Club Reggae’ and ‘Reggae Chartbusters’ series to cover all that. The emphasis here was to be more on art than commerce.
By 1970, I was label manager at Trojan and was able to sell my idea, and the 'lengthy LP’ ended up as a three-LP set. I spent a couple of days writing a rather earnest liner note, derived mainly from looking at the labels of the original records and trying, by some sort of record collector osmosis, to absorb vital information. There was no internet back then, no books on reggae or Jamaican popular culture, no fan magazines that I knew about. Jamaican producers never sent us any biographical material on their artists, nor photos. So mostly, I simply wrote a little about the song, the performance, and what little I might know about the artist or producer. Such was the paucity of information back then that I noted, with much amusement as the years passed, that often an article about Jamaican music would appear in the popular music press that included, verbatim, a paragraph or two of my limited prose.
Despite an inexorably awful rear cover — the typeset on the back was a pale lime green printed on grey and was thus just about totally illegible — ‘The Trojan Story' was very well received, and was re-issued in 1980 in a real box (with much-improved graphics). A bit of confession here is in order. At the time I put the thing together in 1971, Trojan had access to Island’s wealth of Jamaican releases, dating back to 1959 if you count Chris Blackwell’s first releases in Jamaica. Plus, we used a few titles from labels such as Blue Beat, Caltone, Jolly, Giant, Ska Beat, Halagala, and so on. The total amount of tunes that actually had been released initially on Trojan affiliated labels probably amounted to fewer than a third of the tunes on the set, if that. So, truth be told, it should have been titled ’The Story of Jamaican Music’ or something similar. But it wasn’t. I was a company man and thought there was nothing amiss with a bit of cultural appropriation. It’s business, right? Branding and all that. So ‘The Trojan Story’ it was, and still is.
So that was then and this is now. Tempus fugit. Over the years I kept in contact with Trojan Records, and the fellow that oversees the old catalogue is a dear friend of mine. For some time, he had been asking me if I would consider revisiting ‘The Trojan Story’, rewriting the liner notes and generally updating the thing.
I’m pleased, fifty years on, to have the opportunity to have had a second shot at the compilation. I enlisted the help of my good friend, musician and musicologist Rusty Zinn to choose a few additional and replacement tunes, and also to help me flesh out the notes. Rusty has known, talked with, and played with many of the musicians on these cuts, and I can’t think of a more knowledgeable and enthusiastic partner for a project such as this.
The company that owns Trojan these days is BMG and they are putting a major marketing push behind the release, both in the UK and in the USA. It is being packaged as a three-LP set in a fifty-page book, complete with period photos and graphics, with a cover with very similar artwork as the original - with a much improved back of course! And as a two-CD set with a smaller booklet.
The music covers the period from the late fifties when the first Jamaican tunes were being recorded, which were basically home-grown attempts to capture the essence of American R & B, which then evolved into ska, rock steady and then ending in the classic reggae period in 1971. Most of the tracks are the same as the first release apart from nine to which Trojan has lost have the rights. The substitutions are from the same period, and a couple of extra tunes have been added, bringing the original 48 up to 50.
As I think I mentioned in an earlier piece, I was known as Rob Bell in the UK music industry - when I started at Island in 1965 there was already a Bob working there, and I became Rob to avoid confusion. As I had been called Rob as a youngster at home, it was cool, but the effort to avoid confusion all those years ago has actually caused a bit of confusion as the time has flown by - am I Bob or Rob?
Well, one or the other. Or maybe both. Perhaps time will tell. Tempus narrabo….
Trojan Records Sets 50th-
Anniversary Reissue of ‘The
Trojan Story’
Historic 1971 anthology helped introduce world to Jimmy Cliff, the Maytals, Desmond Dekker, Lee “Scratch” Perry, and other reggae greats
By
DANIEL KREPS
Trojan Records is set to reissue its legendary 1971 collection The Trojan Story — a three-LP set that helped introduce the world to artists like Jimmy Cliff, the Maytals, Desmond Dekker, and Lee “Scratch” Perry — for its 50th anniversary this June.
Long out-of-print, the 50-song anthology — due out June 18th — will be reissued physically and digitally with its original tracklist intact, along with a 50-page illustrated booklet featuring liner notes for every song by Trojan’s label manager Rob Bell — who helped curate the original release — and musician Rusty Zinn.
In addition to influential reggae tracks like the Maytals’ “Do the Reggay” and “Pressure Drop,” Perry’s “People Funny Boy,” Daddy Livingstone’s “Rudy, A Message to You,” and Alton Ellis’ “Rock Steady,” the anthology featured Trojan standouts the Continentals, Jackie Edwards, the Ethiopians, the Tennors, Duke Reid’s Group, and more.
The Trojan Story 50th-anniversary edition is available to preorder now through the Trojan site.
