Bamboo Records

Howard Palmer celebrates a legendary UK reggae label

'I-and-I, Son of the Most High Jah Rastafari’, the earthy sound of Winston Rodney, the Burning Spear, echoed from my new ‘stereo’ late in the spring of 1970. The voice hit you from the ground and travelled up your spine and only left at the fingertips.

It was a time of Officer boots, narrow braces and the teenage angst of getting the cash together to buy a Ben Sherman that no-one else had. A few months after Lee Perry was ‘The witch doctor but you are the vampire’ and Symarip had requested ‘All you skinheads to get up on your feet.’

Clearly the Burning Spear on Door Peeper, the first Bamboo 45 I heard, was offering something different. Something black and deeply spiritual, moving and disturbing. Then, with not a Hammond organ in sight, the beat started up and hit you like a machine gun. Fast, tight and completely together. This was reggae, Jim, but not as we knew it. The essential genius of Clement ‘Coxsone’ Dodd was at play at a place known as Bamboo Records.

Bamboo Records was always different. Even their brilliant album covers of the typically 14/6d (about 72p) and 19/11d (just under £1) albums eschewed the semi-naked model in favour of African tribesmen. Whatever it was, this was the real thing.

In essence Bamboo combined the production genius of Coxsone Dodd, …

by Howard Palmer
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