Great value here
Jonathan M. Mason | Punta Gorda, FL USA | 09/21/2003
(3 out of 5 stars)
"I am one of those people who think that Marley's music improved immeasurably after he went to Island Records, after the split with Peter Tosh and Bunny Wailer, and with the addition of a guitar driven sound and the female backing group the I Threes. What you have here is a very generous collection of 42 songs from the earlier Jamaican era, encompassing, as far as I can make out material from Leslie Kong's The Best of the Wailers, as well as some Coxone Dodd and Lee Perry era cuts. (The sleeve notes have a short biography of Marley, but tell you little about the music. Since the sleeve notes refer to one of Marley's great albums as 'Kayo' (actually Kaya), one has to wonder how much the author knew about Marley's work.)The music runs the range from doo-wop through R&B to soul, and shows that even in this era of uneven instrumentation, Marley had a wonderful soulful voice, and a masterful way with a ballad. What you will not find here is any of the Rastafarian fuelled music or politically oriented material which turned the later Marley into such a prophetic figure. You will hear, though, Simmer Down, a best selling early effort appealing for an end to violence in the Kingston ghetto.Highlights on these discs for me are There She Goes on disc one, and Stand Alone on disc two.Many of the songs heard hear in proto versions turn up later in revamped versions on albums like Catch A Fire and Kaya, and I think it is probably true to say that these are the best songs of this bunch.Anyway, there are a lot of packages of early Marley material out there in the stores, but I honestly don't think you could beat this one for value for money. So if you want to hear the early Marley, you should probably get this, but if you are not familiar with Marley's music, you would probably do better with one of the Island Records era collections as a first buy.Here is my rating scale for albums:* Absolute {dud}
** Some good stuff, but some definite flaws*** Fans of the artist in question will like this.
**** This represents the best work of the artist.
***** An absolute masterpiece, a classic. Your collection starts here."
Track Listings (20) - Disc #1