Ranking Joe has a history going back to the mid 1970’s when he made his first recording under the name Little Joe for Coxsone Dodd at Studio One. His career continued with a mass of work for many of Jamaica’s leading producers including the Hookim brothers at Channel One, Joe Gibbs, Dennis Brown and many others, not forgetting some great self productions for his own label Ranking Joe music. He became one of the first Jamaican DJ’s to give UK audiences a taste of the Jamaican sound system experience when he toured with the legendary Ray Symbolic sound in the early 1980’s.
I first encountered him in the late 1990’s when he toured the UK along with U Brown & Trinity on the Blood & Fire sound system and I worked with all 3 artists for the 3 The Roots Way album.
I stayed in touch with Joe and a few years later he was visiting London so we linked up again for some more work. This time he voiced a number of tracks and I had the idea of doing some of them in a vintage 1970’s discomix style. During that era it was common for 12 inch singles to feature a vocal, followed by a DJ cut and then a dub on the other side. Producers would often work it so the DJ cut also featured a few choice lines from the vocal so the DJ could work around the singer and add an extra flavour. I’d used this approach on some tracks with U Brown and decided to do it with Joe as well.
From the sessions we did, one of the strongest used the riddim from a Peter Broggs tune I’d produced for the Jah Golden Throne album called I Put My Trust In Jah. We’d prepared the riddims in advance, with the vocal snippets recorded on a separate track so there was no need for any fading in and out. Ranking Joe arrived at Conscious Sounds and he’s a seasoned professional so he only needed to hear the tracks briefly and was then ready to go straight into it. I think it was all one take business with no mistakes and no need for any drop ins. That’s the way they’re used to working in the old school Jamaican way. Studio time was money for the producer and they couldn’t afford to mess about when the clock was ticking so any top artist would just take the mic and voice the riddim one time without mistakes, and that’s how it happened with these tracks.
The riddim had all been recorded at Conscious Sounds with bass and keyboards played by myself, Dougie on drums, Crispy Horns laying a full 3 piece horns section, Hughie Izachaar on guitar and Jonah Dan on percussion. To give it a little something different I took it to Disciples Studio and let Russ Disciples mix it. I think that was the first time Russ mixed any of my music and I was happy with the results.
The tune came out on a 10 inch single in 2007 and also featured Lutan Fyah with Things Better Now on a different riddim for the B side, so you had the old and the new from the JA school of DJ’ing. They were both very well received.

Produced by Jah Warrior.