30/11/2023
Fat City Vinyl & Music Blog wrote some nice words on the Larry & Alvin album.
Larry & Alvin - Poor Man A Feel It (Jamaican Art, 2022)
Alvin “GG” Ranglin is a somewhat under sung reggae producer, yet his catalog - comprising crucial early works by Gregory Isaacs, the Maytones (a harmony group hailing from his home town of May Pen, Jamaica, and whom he was briefly a member of before focusing on the business side of music) - and many others stands proudly next to those of more celebrated names.
In a similar position is the late singer Larry Marshall, who got his start in the ska era of the early 60’s at Justin Yap’s Top Deck label. By the end of the decade - with a sometimes uncredited Alvin Leslie on harmonies - he recorded seminal hits like Nanny Goat at Studio One (rated by many as one of the first true reggae songs ever to be released). Marshall’s vocals graced a number of further hits, his mournful, downcast yet heartfelt voice and humble, working man persona (no act or accident as he was employed in construction in later years) immediately recognizable. He also became an apprentice engineer at Studio One, recording countless classics to tape but struggled to gain recognition or reward in either artistic or technical capacities.
By the time of these sessions for Ranglin Marshall had left Studio One, seeking more control over his music by moving into self production plus sides for other producers like Carlton Patterson. Backed by the supremely assured yet muscular playing of the Revolutionaries band at Channel One, the songs comprising this album were recorded around 1978, again with Alvin Leslie on harmony but for reasons unknown went unreleased, only one surfacing as a single in the early 1980’s. The Dutch Jamaican Gold label included a few more tracks on a various artists compilation in the late 90’s and now, at long last, the full album appears through a successor label, the Netherlands based Jamaican Art.
While the title track and Africa find Marshall in a conscious mood, the subject of romantic relationships makes up the balance of the album - sometimes joyfully expressed, as on Progress, but more often rueful or recriminatory tales of love gone awry, every turn of a phrase or lyric imbued with the singer’s feelings of vulnerability and wounded heartbreak - masculine, yet sensitive and easily bruised.
Kudos to Jamaican Art for presenting this previously unheard pairing of two icons of reggae music who both deserve more recognition…
