Jamaican Halloween Spooktacular 2008 Track 22 - Beware Of The Vampire

Here we are a day away from Halloween and I can't believe how quick this month has blown by! I hope you've been enjoying listening to the mix as much as I enjoyed putting it together... this yearly marathon is truly a labor of love because if I didn't have such a weak spot for Halloween I wouldn't bother. But enough of that...

We're going back to visit Count Dracula this time with the help of Denzel Laing and an early Lee Perry production recorded somewhere around 1968-69 and it's called "Beware Of The Vampire." The track comes from the 1998 Trojan compilation CD of Perry productions, from the aforementioned late sixties period, and it's called Dry Acid.

Denzel Laing is probably better known for his percussion work for artists such as Toots & The Maytals, The Heptones and the Gladiators than for his vocals but nonetheless this is a great song. The subject matter is more of a warning to single young men about the "vampires" that they may encounter when looking for love than of the supernatural variety.

I added audio from a 7" by a man named Al Zanino called "The Vampire Speaks" and originally released on a record label called Al-Stan in 1957. Very few copies of the record exist today and "The Vampire Speaks" has been known to fetch as much as $200 at record shows worldwide... but luckily it was limitedly repressed in 1997 and also made available on a various artists CD featuring music recorded by artists from in and around the town of Reading Pennsylvania called Al-Stan Masters: The Best Of Reading's Oldies.

Track 22