Lord Tanamo & Friends Festival Jump-Up (Expanded Edition)

• 1. Disc 1 Festival Jump – + 11 Bonus Tracks
• 2. Disc 2 The Best Of Gaydisc & Sep Records – 28 Tracks 1963/64

By the mid-1960s, ska was in full swing, but while the driving, energetic sound dominated Jamaica’s musical landscape, other genres, such as rhythm & blues, calypso and thLordfe home-grown style of mento were also widely popularised by local acts. And of these performers, few proved more popular and versatile than Joseph Gordon, a singer-songwriter who, as Lord Tanamo, had been at the forefront of the island’s music scene since the Fifties.

Yet despite his popularity, it was not until mid-Sixties that a long-player dedicated to his output finally saw issue. Released by leading Kingston-based producer Lindon Pottinger, the musically varied “Festival Jump-Up” provides the focus for disc one of this collection, with its original 12 tracks augmented by Tanamo’s best-loved ska recordings from the period, including his oft-imitated rendering of the standard, ‘I’m In The Mood For Love’

Disc 2 collects 28 of the most popular ska and r&b sides issued between 1963 and 1964 on Pottinger’s revered Gaydisc and SEP labels, their number including numerous significant Jamaican hits by the likes of Jimmy James, Roy Panton & Millie Small, Winston Samuels and Dobby Dobson.

The result is a musical cornucopia of rare, high quality authentic early-Sixties Jamaican sounds, many of which have remained widely unavailable on any format until now.