Bob Marley & The Wailers - The Best Of The Early Singles (2024)

Arguably the best music Bob Marley & the Wailers ever made was with legendary Jamaican producer Lee "Scratch" Perry. The collaboration between Perry and the Wailers began in the summer of 1970 and ran at a white heat through 1971 into the early part of 1972, and the body of work produced is impressive for both its quantity and quality. This two-disc set features the A- and B-sides of some of the Jamaican-only singles that emerged from these sessions, most of which took place at Randy's (a few tracks were also done at Byron Lee's Dynamic Sounds) with Errol Thompson engineering, and include Wailers classics like "Duppy Conqueror," "Mr. Brown" (which was inspired by a local ghost story and featured lyrics written by keyboardist Glen Adams), Marley's artful reworking of Richie Havens' "African Herbsman," and Bunny Wailer's lovely "Dreamland," which was originally written to be an organ instrumental. The second disc presents the B-sides, which consisted of proto-dubs (generally just the backing tracks with the vocals removed) and "versions" of the A-sides. All of these tracks have appeared countless times on countless collections, but this set at least offers brief but informative notes on each song, which is enough to lift it a nod above most of the similar sets floating around out there.

Review by Steve Leggett