1960
WHAT MAKES HONEY * DUKE REID'S GROUP * BLUE BEAT BB 19 * GB
One of the earliest Duke Reid recordings, issued in Great Britain in 1960, the story of impresarios like Duke Reid, and Coxsone Dodd, releasing that there was a commercial possibility in selling records under their own imprint, has often been told. During the mid 1950s the favored sound, American R&B, played at dances run by Reid, Dodd and others, was drying up, and the Rock and Roll that was replacing it in the USA was not going down so well with audiences in Jamaica. This prompted Dodd to have local 'road bands' record R&B style tunes which would be transferred to, so called, 'dub plates', a few of these would be pressed up strictly for use by the Sound System DJ's at dances (Dodd run three or four dances at a time). It was only after some time that the Sound System operators, after constant demands by the public to sell copies of these very exclusive tunes, decided to tentatively press a few copies of the popular numbers as regular discs, the first of these was Easy Snapping by Clue J. and His Blues Blasters, in 1959. It was an instant successes, and very soon other Sound System owners, like Reid, were recording and pressing their own material.