Short and sweet today, and something to suit the Sunday mood.
Lovers Rock as a style of Reggae emerged in the latter half of the 70s and was prominent on the British Reggae scene, especially London. It borrowed heavily from soul music, especially the sweet and smooth Philly arrangements, the laid back feel of Willie Mitchell’s Hi output, and also many of the songs.
It was essentially a romantic and innocent sound and on Reggae’s scales provided a balance to the more confrontational vibe of the, equally prominent at the time, Roots style.
Talking of contrasts the Wiki entry for Lovers Rock made me chuckle. This is currently evidently a fledgling entry and the here you will find somebody’s simple, and I daresay accurate, description of the essentially warm and fuzzy subject of Lovers Rock has run headlong into Wikipedia’s editors cold and complex pursuit of accuracy. An antithesis if ever there was one. If you want a loving and eloquent summary of Lovers Rock you should go here. This is I am assuming the liner notes to Trojan’s Lovers Rock box set. You used to be able to pick these box sets up for a fiver in the shops not so long ago, but I’m not sure how available they are nowadays.
It is now generally thought that Louisa Mark’s “Caught You In A Lie” was the first Lovers Rock record, at least to make a big impression. It was only recently that I realised that this is in fact a cover of a Robert Parker soul original from 1966.
Louisa’s version has been getting a fair few plays on my deck recently. It was, I believe, originally released in 1975 on Safari (of course just before this in true micro-independent Reggae label tradition it may have appeared on another label). In any event this would have just predated the introduction of 12” singles. My copy featured here – on Voyage International – dates from 1979. Being a 12” it has of course a dub version tacked on at the end. It is incorrectly credited to Louisa Marks. So 10 out of 10 for the tune, 0 out of 10 for the spelling!
2 comments:
Been coming round here for a while, and wanted to tell you that posting one song at a time, somehow, the songs are always really good. I go to other soul/funk blogs and sometimes listen to multiple albums, and still get more good music from you. Thanks for the education. And thanks for the Supremes song. Fantastic.
Thanks for the kind words Egan, glad you like it around here.
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