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Review written by Benoit Georges on Wednesday, September 06th 2006 - 8 100 views A major hallmark of Jamaican music, versions (later called riddims), the instrumental parts of songs, were at first the product of chance before becoming a major phenomenon of contemporary music with the advent of dub. This Studio One "Version dread", compiled by Heartbeat, takes us back to the origin of versions by bringing together 18 previously unreleased versions on CD, taken from the B-sides of famous 45s. As the story goes, in 1966 Byron Smith, an engineer at Duke Reid’s Treasure Isle studio, inadvertently pressed a record of the Paragons’ On the beach with the vocal part left off. Intended for Ruddy Redwood, operator of the Spanish Town sound system Ruddy’s the Supreme Ruler of Sound, the record became the highlight of a dance when Redwood played this instrumental right after the original track. The version was born. At Studio One, Clement "Coxsone" Dodd, who had owned a two-track console since 1965 that allowed him to separate vocals from instruments, rushed into the gap. The version then became the indispensable complement to songs and was systematically found on the B-side of 45s. Typically, the first line of the song (called the "punch line") is kept, often a cappella, and the voice reappears here and there, even though several versions are strictly instrumental. A few effects, equalisation or echo, are sometimes added in a marginal way. The version thus became the norm until the early 70s, when the young Osbourne Ruddock (the future King Tubby) would blow this straitjacket apart with a boundless creativity that gave birth to dub. This "Version dread" thus offers 18 instrumentals mostly mixed by Clement Dodd himself, which were no longer available except on the original 45s. The riddims compiled here are all classics, such as Creation rebel by Burning Spear, Armagideon time by Willie Williams (the 1982 version of the Real rock), Pick up the pieces by the Royals, Declaration of rights by the Abyssinians, Give me the right by the Heptones, Train is coming by Ken Boothe or New broom by Horace Andy. A fine selection that shows the full importance of this small musical revolution, which prefigures the practice of "versioning" in riddims and that of dub.

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