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ROJAN SIXTIES BOX SET (TJETD174) - Reggae music, as well as Ska and Rocksteady before it, has always drawn on a variety of sources of material. Foremost, f course, has been original songwriting, as evidenced in the catalogues of the Wailers, the Ethiopians, Gregory Isaacs and many more. traditional Jamaican music has inspired some excellent discs, from Baba Brooks' @Bank To Bank@ to Prince Buster's 'Tie The Donkey Tail' and beyond. But Jamaican ears have long been attuned to sounds from across the sea in the USA or England - an interest which started with the R&B 78s which formed the play lists of 1950s sound systems, and which extended to home produced versions of songs from 'A foreign' as the island's recording industry got into gear from the early 1960s onwards.

This box set offers fifty prime examples of hits from abroad, given that Caribbean flavour. Unlike some such compilations, though, these are not revivals from decades later - they were cut while the the tunes were still hot property, often while the original versions were still in the UK or US charts. Jamaican fans clamoured for the very latest sounds, and as we shall see here, Kingston's producers and musicians were equal to the task of giving them what they wanted.