Labour Of Love Vol.1 - UB40

...it must have been a labour of love can be heard in the loving way the songs are crafted and every track reproduces the excellence of the original. As a lover of real reggae I do have to make one minor criticism and that is that the album is too good. There is far more added production and professionalism to Labour Of Love. The original Jamaican reggae artists of the 1960s were usually poor and often recorded their songs on old second hand recording ...
...limited time available in the recording studios so the songs were often recorded in one take and were little better than demo tracks. What they lacked in production excellence they more than made up for in the immediacy and the urgency of the presentation. So where the old originals will regularly feature bum notes and missed intros the remakes by UB40 are clean and slick.

The album opens with the Eric Donaldson song Cherry Oh Baby ... more

The creation of entire albums of music from other artists is nothing new. It has been done to great effect by David Bowie, Bryan Ferry and many more. When UB40 followed up their first 2 albums which contained their own material with an album drawn from favourite reggae songs from their youth. Having established themselves as the conscience of 80s youth with their socially aware lyrics about unemployment and social injustice it could have been seen a s a commercial sell-out and perhaps ultimately it was. It was also, however, a very fine album.

That it must have been a labour of love can be heard in the loving way the songs are crafted and every track reproduces the excellence of the original. As a lover of real reggae I do have to make one minor criticism and that is that the album is too good. There is far more added production and professionalism to Labour Of Love. The original Jamaican reggae artists of the 1960s were usually poor and often recorded their songs on old second hand recording equipment handed on from the US. They also had very limited time available in the recording studios so the songs were often recorded in one take and were little better than demo tracks. What they lacked in production excellence they more than made up for in the immediacy and the urgency of the presentation. So where the old originals will regularly feature bum notes and missed intros the remakes by UB40 are clean and slick.

The album opens with the Eric Donaldson song Cherry Oh Baby which UB40 released as a single. The original features a much starker wailing section than UB40s but the song is a simple love song typical of early reggae before it gained its sociological credentials. Keep On Moving will be familiar to all Bob Marley fans. Marley was the most influential reggae artist of all time and it was he who oversaw the musics transition from local ethnic music to world music. Keep On Moving is standard early Marley stuff so far that you can read its good. UB40s version is nicely balanced and comes quite close to the original. Of course with Marley being the most accomplished reggae artist it would be.

Winston Grooveys Please Don’t Make Me Cry is a super song. UB40 sing it very well unlike Groovey (aka Winston Tucker) whose original version is one of those tracks which sounds amateurish to modern ears. Winston Groovey was a superstar of Jamaican reggae with many other hits. The Melodians Sweet Sensation is given a nice harmony version by the Campbell brothers which turns out well. Listening to the UB40 versions you do sense they are playing in their sleep. The songs are not musically challenging and the band is just strumming along contentedly.

Those who have seen UB40 live will know that Johnny Too Bad is a song always sung by Norman Hassan when the band play. The song was originally by the Slickers and the UB40 version features a very similar organ style. This is played by Johnny Mittoo who was not in UB40 but guested on this album. He attains a very similar style to the original.

The second side opens with Neil Diamonds Red Red Wine which became one of the bands greatest hits. The first version of it as a reggae song was by Tony Tribe. It was a regular feature of the early reggae scene in Jamaica to take an ordinary song and play it as a reggae tune. This again was done for reasons of expedience, if you wanted to book some backing musicians to record a record it was the greatest probability that they could strum a few chords in reggae time. At this time practically every record in the Jamaican charts was a reggae track and it sold in huge numbers. The records, like their recordings, were cheap and it encouraged a huge wave of reggae artists. The Tiger song Guilty follows and the excellent Ray Martell song She Caught The Train. This is a favourite track of mine which drives along with a great beat. Version Girl is next which was originally recorded by Trojan artist Boy Friday.

The final track is Many Rivers To Cross which was a hit for the great Jimmy Cliff. Before Bob Marley arrived Jimmy Cliff was the greatest superstar in reggae. He had hits with tracks like The Harder They Come and wrote You Can Get It If You Really Want. Many Rivers To Cross shows the great difference between how the originals sounded and the slick UB40 versions. Where Jimmy Cliffs original is sung with enormous feeling, his voice almost choking with emotion, the Ali Campbell version sounds like the singing version of method acting. There is emotion there but it is coached into it.

I have both this album and on a number of different CDs a lot of the originals which inspired it. I love reggae and for personal preference love these songs as they were originally recorded. They seem fresher, more innocent in their original form. However any reggae is good reggae, and UB40 are a very good reggae band. I personally prefer their own compositions like One In Ten or Food For Thought or even Cest La Vie. Having said all that I still would recommend this album. It is reggae at its best, its just some of us like our reggae slightly less perfect.

 

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