Cruise International Records,
Allerton Grange Vale,
Leeds,
LS17 6LS
Rasta Clean Zig Zag 7”
£8.95
Our commitment to music collectors – we’re constantly working with new artists to bring their music to an audience who’ll appreciate it, and equally committed to providing the best in older music across various genres including reggae, ska, rocksteady, dub along with anything else that takes our fancy.
Zig Zag Rasta Clean (Niney the Observer)
Born 7th December 1944, Montego Bay, Jamaica,West Indies
Winston ‘Niney’ Holness, aka The Observer, is one of the great characters of reggae music. Nicknamed ‘Niney’ when he lost a thumb in a workshop accident, he has been a singer, producer, engineer, DJ, fixer, arranger, manager and virtually everything else in reggae. Although Holness had organized bands to play at school dances in the 50s, it was not until he came under the tutelage of producer Bunny Lee in the late 60s that he achieved his entry into the professional music business. In 1967/8 he worked with Lee Perry for Joe Gibbs, taking over when Perry left in mid-1968 to start his own label. By 1970 he had set up his own operation, with his first production entitled ‘Mr Brown’/‘Everybody Bawling’ by DJs Dennis Al Capone and Lizzy. It sold modestly, but his next record, ‘Blood & Fire’, released in December 1970, was an immediate smash, eventually selling 30, 000 copies in Jamaica alone. The tune propelled Holness into the front rank of the new ‘rebel’ vanguard, establishing him as a producer fully capable of building original rhythms. The record bore a slight resemblance to Bob Marley’s ‘Duppy Conqueror’ but far outsold it, and the pair clashed when Marley heard the record.
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