From the label’s humble beginnings in a rundown London warehouse to its ascendance as a barrier-breaking cultural entity boasting over 15,00zero titles in its catalog, Trojan Records has performed a useful function in establishing reggae as a vital thread inside the cloth of widespread music. Founded in 1968 when the reggae style was nearly unknown past its Jamaica birthplace, Trojan Records issued hundreds of singles and albums from Jamaica and England’s most profitable reggae artists and producers, which had been enthusiastically obtained by Caribbean immigrants residing in England, in addition to skinheads, punk rockers and ultimately, the broader music loving inhabitants.
In celebration of their golden anniversary on July 27, Trojan Records launched an impressively packaged multi-format field set. Included are varied memorabilia (a poster, wood 7″ single adapter, turntable mat); a espresso desk e book, Trojan: Art of the Album, that includes full scale reproductions of 50 of the label’s most memorable album covers, written by label supervisor and longstanding Trojan archivist/historian, Laurence Cane-Honeysett; two three CD units, Trojan Mix of Rare and Unreleased Tracks, Labels and Hitmakers and Trojan Mix of Hits, Boss Sounds, Roots & Dub, Original Dancehall, with half of the 141 tracks showing for the primary time on CD. Four vinyl albums are part of the field set, too: Trojan Hits Volumes 1 and 2, Dancing Time and Reggae Goes Pop, collections of main U.Okay. hits and Jamaican best-sellers alongside uncommon releases, encompassing Jamaica’s rocksteady, reggae, dub and dancehall genres.
Laurence Cane-Honeysett additionally penned The Story of Trojan Records (BMG Books/Eye Books) a complete historical past of the label’s growth over the previous half century, bought individually from the field set and out there within the U.S. on Oct. 1. Additionally, Cane-Honeysett curated the Trojan field set’s musical choices. Meticulously researched, the gathering strikes an interesting stability between the label’s greatest hits and its lesser-known gems: landmark singles by Jamaican music legends Bob Andy (“Fire Burning”), Dennis Brown (“Money In My Pocket”) and Sugar Minott (“Ghetto-ology”) seem alongside such curiosities because the giggle inducing “Hysteriacide” by (the late) Count Prince Miller.
“We needed to do one thing very particular for the 50th anniversary and discovering unreleased tracks is an angle many individuals take. Whereas the brand new listeners need the hits, the long-time collectors need the rarities, so we needed to tick each packing containers,” Cane-Honeysett instructed Billboard in a Skype name from his London dwelling. “We’ve included novelty songs so not all of it’s wonderful reggae. Some may say ‘Hysteriacide’ is an terrible tune nevertheless it’s there to replicate all the pieces Trojan did to get the music on the market.” Also featured are the varied Trojan subsidiary labels (roughly 30, says Cane-Honeysett) created for particular person producers comparable to Lee “Scratch” Perry’s Upsetter, Bunny Lee’s Jackpot and Gayfeet/High Note for the lone feminine, Sonia Pottinger.
“The Trojan 50th field set is a grand, befitting presentation for Jamaican music as a result of Trojan Records was the only most essential reggae file label in England and maybe they nonetheless are,” feedback famend British reggae radio character/selector David Rodigan, whose radio packages had been additionally pivotal in increasing the music’s attain. Rodigan spoke to Billboard following his 40th anniversary efficiency at Spain’s Rototom Sunsplash with the 25-piece Outlook Orchestra, who performed elegant, symphonic preparations of Rodigan’s favourite Jamaican singles, lots of them Trojan releases. “Trojan did not actually signal and develop acts, they licensed tracks from producers and artists, making hundreds of nice Jamaican data out there to the U.Okay. inhabitants. They have an unimaginable again catalog, anybody can study so much about reggae from their compilations. Without Trojan Records it will have been a totally totally different panorama for reggae music,” provides Rodigan.
In July 1967, Chris Blackwell’s Island Records created an imprint, Trojan, particularly to launch productions by Jamaica’s Arthur “Duke” Reid. Reid, referred to as The Trojan (the identify of the British made flatbed truck used to hold Reid’s sound system, additionally referred to as The Trojan), was among the many first sound system house owners to start out producing his personal music; his modern, fantastically crafted productions dominated Jamaica’s rock regular period, 1966-1968. Reid’s hits included The Paragons’ “The Tide Is High”, which was coated by Blondie in 1980, and reached No. 1 on the Billboard Hot 100. Despite Reid’s profitable run in Jamaica, the U.Okay. subsidiary created for his music folded earlier than the top of 1967.
The following 12 months, Blackwell determined to mix Island’s Jamaican music catalog with the distribution firm Beat & Commercial (B&C), run by accountant Lee Gopthal, a Jamaican expat. The identify chosen for the B&C/Island endeavor was Trojan Records. The earliest releases for Trojan’s second manifestation had been by Jamaica born, London primarily based artist/producer Dandy Livingstone, whose efforts had been important to Trojan’s progress. Born Robert Livingstone Thompson, Dandy additionally launched music as The Brother Dan All Stars. The Trojan subsidiaries Down Town and J-Dan Records had been established to facilitate Dandy’s output, which included Trojan’s very first long-playing launch Dandy Returns. Dandy’s 1969 manufacturing, a reggae adaptation of Neil Diamond’s “Red Red Wine” by singer Tony Tribe, gave Trojan its first mainstream U.Okay. chart entry.
More nationwide chart hits adopted for Trojan in 1969 together with Jimmy Cliff’s “Wonderful World, Beautiful People,” Harry J All Stars’ “The Liquidator” and The Upsetters’ “Return of Django.” Trojan attained even higher success that 12 months with the introduction of their price range compilation Tighten Up, an album of widespread hits for the value of two singles. In 1971 Trojan scored their first U.Okay. No. 1 with Dave and Ansell Collins’ vigorous instrumental “Double Barrel.” Trojan’s constant chart placements, unprecedented achievements for a Jamaican music centered label, launched rock regular and reggae to hundreds of listeners and labored laborious to take the music into the mainstream.
“Trojan serviced the key sound methods, reggae golf equipment and pirate radio stations by way of their Musicland and Muzik City file retailers, which had been key to the corporate’s early success, as radio play remained a problem,” explains Cane-Honeysett. “The BBC, which had a monopoly on airplay on the time, thought-about reggae poorly produced ethnic music; solely often, very late at evening, would these early data be performed. Most of the UK retailers that bought reggae data did not register with the charts, so nobody actually knew what number of data had been promoting. It’s solely after they started shifting enormous numbers, and main file shops started stocking these releases, that the BBC, grudgingly, acknowledged and commenced taking part in this music.” In an try to make the music extra radio pleasant, Trojan overdubbed strings onto among the grasp recordings. Among probably the most profitable of those experiments had been Bob Andy and Marcia Griffiths’ inspirational cowl of the Nina Simone traditional “Young, Gifted and Black,” which reached No. 5 on the British charts in 1970.
That identical 12 months, Trojan issued Soul Rebels, Bob Marley and The Wailers’ first album launched outdoors of Jamaica. Now thought to be a masterpiece by Marley, Bunny Wailer and Peter Tosh, the Lee “Scratch” Perry-produced Soul Rebels obtained a tepid response upon its preliminary launch. By 1972, Blackwell withdrew Island Records’ curiosity in Trojan. Island went on to have nice success with reggae releases later within the decade, most notably with Bob Marley, a triumph partially attributable to the inspiration laid for the music’s acceptance by means of Trojan’s pioneering efforts.
Trojan’s preliminary progress was buoyed by the embrace of white working-class youths referred to as skinheads, who had been interested in Jamaica’s upbeat sound and rebellious spirit, and Caribbean expats who had migrated to England. However, one thing much more vital than rising file gross sales was going down. In a latest interview with Billboard in midtown Manhattan, Don Letts — BBC radio host, founding member of Big Audio Dynamite and a Grammy-winning filmmaker (for Westway to the World, a documentary about legendary punk band The Clash) — recalled Trojan Records’ emergence at a time of escalating racial tensions in England. Letts, the son of Jamaican mother and father who relocated to England in 1955, remembers a 1968 speech given by conservative Parliament Member Enoch Powell. In his divisive Rivers of Blood speech Powell strongly criticized mass immigration into England and proposed sending dwelling the immigrants who had been already there.
“Powell performed on the fears of outdated white of us, very like what is occurring now with Brexit, and it labored. When I walked to highschool there have been six-foot white letters painted on the wall: KBW, Keep Britain White,” recollects Letts. “While the outdated white of us had been afraid of immigrants, it was Trojan’s releases that united black and white youths, in colleges, on the streets and on the dancefloor. The music acted as a software for social change as a result of it introduced folks collectively in opposition to this racist backdrop and that was a giant deal.”
Letts, whose DJing at London’s Roxy nightclub established dub/reggae as an integral part inside the metropolis’s fabled 1970s punk rock scene, says Trojan Records ignited his lifelong ardour for reggae. In 2003 he curated Don Letts Presents The Mighty Trojan Sound compilation; in his 2007 autobiography Culture Clash Dread Meets Punk Rockers, he dedicates a chapter, Trojan Explosion, to the label. “When my mother and father arrived in England, they tried to Anglicize themselves to get by, form of denied their Jamaican roots and it was truly the Trojan releases that made them understand that tradition is a means ahead, not a means backward,” Letts continued. “So it empowered them and it actually empowered me, as a younger black child making an attempt to determine the place he slot in. When ‘Double Barrel’ hit No. 1, instantly I had musical fairness with my white mates.”
Letts is likely one of the interviewees within the forthcoming documentary, Rudeboy: The Story of Trojan Records, (BMG/Pulse Films), which can premiere on Oct. 12 as a part of the British Film Institute’s London Film Festival; the U.S. launch date/format roll out are nonetheless being negotiated.
Directed by Nicolas Jack Davies, Rudeboy options artists, producers, sound system selectors and Trojan workers commenting on the label’s growth, juxtaposed with reenactments of serious occasions between 1968-1975, Trojan’s heyday, when the label achieved 35 nationwide hits within the U.Okay. Gopthal, who handed away in 1997, bought Trojan in 1975; the label has modified arms 5 instances since then, with BMG buying the Trojan from Universal Music Group in 2013. “Because there’s so little footage and even images from the ’60s and ’70s, whether or not in England or Jamaica, Pulse Films recreated the footage that they did not have,” shares Max Norlin, advertising supervisor of Trojan Records.
Norlin additionally helms the just lately fashioned Trojan Reloaded imprint, which can difficulty remixes of songs from the label’s vaults along with signing and creating new acts, retaining the model alive, presumably for the following half century. “Trojan wasn’t actually a label, it was a lifestyle and in reflecting on 50 years,” Norlin gives, “it was actually the individuals who listened to and acquired the music who stored it going, so large as much as them.”
