The Blues Busters - I Won't Let You Go

Blues Busters / Byron Lee & The Dragonaires - I Won't Let You Go mp3

Phillip “Boasy” James and Lloyd “Lloydie” Campbell started their careers duetting on the showboats that anchored in the harbours of Jamaica. Working up a brassy style that owed more to the blues shouters than the Inkspots-style doowop, it was inevitable that such talent caught the ears of one C.S. Dodd Esq.

Linked up with Byron Lee and his super-tight Dragonaires, massive hits lit up the dancefloor : "Behold", "Wings of A Dove", but it was the Dragonaires' journey to the International World Fair in New York that really created it all. While there, they laid down the tracks for their debut LP in Atlantic Studios, engineered by the legendary Tom Dowd.

And this session is where our track comes from. Magnificent, strident soul that starts off like a theme for a lost Western, and then breaks into glorious harmonies, utterly crafted arrangement and a loping rhythm. Truly the moment when ska met R&B and created a whole new level of soul.

(The MP3 is taken from the original vinyl. I wouldn't have it any other way, to be honest - as the WFMU byline states, "surface noise runs deep", but if you're an ADD DDD kid, then hoist yourself off to go and score the venerable Trojan Record's "Behold! The Blues Busters Anthology". You will not regret it.)