Thursday, October 05, 2006

Halloween Mix Part 4 - The Wailers' Wanna Know Who... Is Mr. Brown

Quoting directly from Distinctly Jamaican Sounds October 25th, 2005...

"In 1969 or ’70 the Wailers who were working with Lee Perry at the time, caught wind of a strange story involving a crow. This crow was somehow given the name “Mr. Brown” and the story went that he had been observed traveling around Kingston on a coffin on its way to the cemetery. Days later the same crow, wearing a shirt and tie, was seen in a courtroom. The general populace was scared stiff thinking that the evil powers of obeah had been unleashed and had even gotten to the point that many were afraid to leave their houses at night. The story was even reported in the Jamaican newspaper the Daily Gleaner and added more fuel to the fire. The lyrics were mostly written by Glen Adams, the keyboard player in Aston “Familyman” Barrett’s Hippy Boys. Max Romeo of “Wet Dream” and “War Inna Babylon” fame was the Hippy Boys’ vocalist but I digress… The Wailers thought the subject matter would be appropriate material under Lee Perry’s slightly psychedelic control and recorded it. It was originally released on 7” single and because Lee Perry sold the rights to all the material the Wailers recorded over that 2 year period it’s available on hundreds of Bob Marley “Greatest Hits” cassettes and CDs you can pick up at a local gas station near you."

Damn that is some fine writing! Here is part four complete with crow calls and all...

Part 4 Download

2 comments:

Hearwax said...

Hey this is a fantastic series, looking forward to getting them all cued up on the ole ipod in time for halloween. Thanks for all your effort.
And guys, if you are sampling reggaexx's works, give the man some feckin' comments......

Peace.

John AKA Reggaexx said...

I'm glad to get such positive feedback - I've really put a lot of effort into getting this mix together and I'm hoping the end result is something worthy of breaking out every October!

Got some more great stuff coming up and so far I've narrowed the list down to about 20-25 songs so it should be a busy month.