Featured record label- Bluebeat

I personally do not enjoy record banter. I find it tedious and utterly soul destroying. To be locked in room with two people talking about obscure British Psychedelia is something I can only compare to speed dating with Stephen Hawkins. An honest omission dear readers but full of earnest, I assure you! I find myself though in a tad of a quandary as my particular votes of music is steeped in the intellectualising of such. For example, Northern Soul is a fantastic music scene but plagued with men who could pass the time wearing mackintoshes either at Paddington Station or flashing middle aged woman. It is a fine thing to know the ins and outs of music, a vital thing to survive and beat the competition as it were, but when it becomes mind numbing and makes what is an exciting medium turn into slumber corned beef one has to put their foot down. But for enjoyment sake I turn myself to introducing Record Label of the Week/Month whichever is relevant at time of writing. This is not a lecture more a What Ho to instrumental providers of recorded sound.


Bluebeat is a label that excites me. In fact when I don a deerstalker and get to the task of sleuthing for records, Bluebeat feels me with a cocktail of joy, fear and confusion all in equal measures. The reason for this melodramatic sense of mixed emotions for this particular brand of Anglo-Jamaican music is one that defies the normal aspirations and text book rules of rare vinyl collecting. Bluebeat 45’s have a tendency to be rather beaten up. They seem to be the only vinyl where it is an expected thing. You wait on tenterhooks for each crackle and hiss like it was throwing a priceless bit of wooden tat on a roaring country fire, waiting for the crescendo of sound affects that only the ring of fire can produce. Goodness knows what those crazy cats in the 1960s did to them although we could blame the Skinheads.


Bluebeat was spawned from the partnership of Siggy Jackson & Emil Shallit. Shallit owned the Melodisc label which since 1947 released Jazz, Doo Woop and boogie. During the mass exodus from the West Indies it began marketing Calypso and Mento to the music starved arrivals of the Commonwealth. Back home in 1950s Jamaica an amazing newly found sense of self worth was forming, since the Island had gained its independence. Musically a new style was being formed that owed heavily on the American R&B that was flooding the country from Uncle Sam. Jamaicans began experimenting and trying to recreate the sounds of people like Sam Cook, The Flamingos and Fats Domino but instead of carbon copies, a curious sound developed that stamped a mark of genius on it. The sound was shipped over to England where Melodiscs new subsidiary took control and began to filter it through the West Indian London club scene. Bluebeat became not only the prime label but also lent its name to this new exciting dance music. The importance of this label cannot be overlooked as it laid the groundwork for SKA and Rocksteady and in turn opened the floodgates in the UK to new, ever changing sounds from Jamaica. A family tree that Dancehall, Jungle and more recently Dubstep can boast the membership to.


Bluebeat released in excess of 400 records, some proving more elusive to get hold of than others. Below are three wonderful examples.